Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856–1915) was an African-American educationist and reformer. He was a leading spokesperson for black Americans between 1895 and 1915. His support for segregation and his emphasis on black people’s vocational skills attracted censure from other African American leaders.
Born into slavery in Franklin Country, Virginia, Washington was educated at Hampton Institute. In 1881, he was appointed principal of the newly opened Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University,) Alabama. He built it into a major center of African-American education—when he died 34 years later, Tuskegee had more than 100 buildings, 200 teaching staff, 1,500 students, and a two-million dollar endowment.
Washington became the voice of black America and encouraged African Americans to focus on gaining economic independence by working hard and achieving economic equality before fighting for social or political equality. In his famous speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, Washington said, “In all things that are purely social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Other prominent 20th-century civil rights leaders, including William Du Bois, fervently opposed Washington’s position. In 1900, Washington organized the National Negro Business League,
Among Washington’s dozen books is his autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901,) and The Story of the Negro (1909.) These memorable American life-stories recall in vivid detail the hardships and racial hatreds of the South.
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I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Success, Failure, Racism, Obstacles
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Adversity
I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Attitude, Hatred
Any man’s life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life — that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Doing Your Best, Encouragement, Support
The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Ability
There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Life, Helpfulness, Leadership
Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the everyday things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.
—Booker T. Washington
No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Results
I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do that which you can do yourself”. My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not do that which others can do as well”.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Confidence
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Kindness
Success is not measured by the heights one attains, but by the obstacles one overcomes in its attainment.
—Booker T. Washington
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Trust, Responsibility
No race can prosper ’til it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling the field, as in writing a poem.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Pride, Dignity
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Strength
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Perseverance
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