Booker Taliaferro Washington was a former slave who established Tuskegee Institute, in Tuskegee, Alabama, and who became the most well known African American of the post-Reconstruction era. While his 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address earned him the title “spokesman of his race”, he is equally celebrated for his second autobiography,
Up From Slavery(1901), which is considered an American classic.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave in 1856 on James Burroughs's Virginian farm. His mother, Jane, was the Burroughs's cook; his white father's identity remains unknown. After emancipation, Washington moved with his mother, stepfather (Washington Ferguson), half-brother (John), and half-sister (Amanda) to Malden, West Virginia, where the family lived in an impoverished community of black and
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Citation: Knight, Alisha R.. "Booker T. Washington". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 July 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4618, accessed 21 November 2024.]
