The memoirs and accounts of the Black educator are presented with letters, speeches, personal documents, and other writings reflecting his life and career.

The memoirs and accounts of the Black educator are presented with letters, speeches, personal documents, and other writings reflecting his life and career.

Washington's gradual rise to prominence as an educator, race leader, and shrewd political broker is revealed in this volume, which covers his career from May 1889 to September 1895, when he delivered the famous speech often called the Atlanta Compromise address. Much of the volume relates to Washington's role as principal of Tuskegee Institute, where he built a powerful base of operations for his growing influence with white philanthropists in the North, southern white leaders, and the black community.

From the time of his famous Atlanta address in 1895 until his death in 1915, Booker T. Washington was the preeminent African-American educator and race leader. But to historians and biographers of the last hundred years, Washington has often been described as an enigma, a man who rose to prominence because he offered a compromise with the white South: he was willing to trade civil rights for economic and educational advancement. Thus one historian called Washington's time the "nadir of Negro life in America." Raymond W. Smock's interpretive biography explores Washington's rise from slavery to a position of power and influence that no black leader had ever before achieved in American history. He took his own personal quest for freedom and acceptance within a harsh, racist climate and turned it into a strategy that he believed would work for millions. Was he, as later critics would charge, an Uncle Tom and a lackey of powerful white politicians and industrialists? Sifting the evidence, Mr. Smock sees Washington as a field general in a war of racial survival, his compromise a practical attempt to solve an immense problem. He lived and worked in the midst of an undeclared race war, and his plan was to find a way to survive and to flourish despite the odds against him.

The University of Illinois Press offers online access to "The Booker T. Washington Papers," a 14-volume set published by the press. Users can search the papers, view images, and purchase the print version of the volumes. Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) was an African-American educator who was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.

The University of Illinois Press offers online access to "The Booker T. Washington Papers," a 14-volume set published by the press. Users can search the papers, view images, and purchase the print version of the volumes. Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) was an African-American educator who was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.

Reproduction of the original.

This book was written by Booker Taliaferro Washington, an African-American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. This book provides his insights on the value of industrial training and the methods employed to develop it.

Aims to put in more definite & permanent form the ideas regarding the negro & his future which the author expressed many times on the public platform & through the press & magazines.

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