The Life of Booker T. Washington

A detailed Summary of The Life of Booker T. Washington

I, Booker Taliaferro Washington, was born into slavery on a small farm in the back country of Virginia. I, like many other Americans of a darker skin were considered to be a piece

of property of the whites, who owned plantations in the south. After the emancipation act was

passed and I was declared a "free" black man, my mother, brother John and I, traveled many

hundred miles from the plantation in Franklin County, Virginia to Malden in West Virginia, there

we were joined with my step-father who worked in the salt furnaces and coal-mines. There, while

attending the Kanawha Valley school I took the name Washington. Once while working in a coal

mine I overheard some exciting and exhilarating news. I overheard two men talk of a school for

the colored where poor but worthy students could work for their bed and board while learning a

trade. This lead me to have a great ambition, that one day I would attend Hampton. After I was

educated at the secondary school, I had dreamed of going to, Hampton Institute, I taught at an

upgraded school, and there I was able to experiment some, with the studies of law and ministry.

But it was a teaching position I had at Hampton, that helped me assure my future career.

God has always played a key role in my teachings at the Institute. I constantly told my students to say to themselves: "I am not going to be conquered by little mean thoughts, words and acts any longer. Thereafter all my thoughts, all my words, all my acts, shall be large, generous high, pure." The goal of religious life, for me, was to share in the character of God. "To be Christ-like was not to be unnatural, but by living it one could discover the power and helpfulness practically." I believe that the higher qualities of a person are the invisible, eternal qualities that last in a person forever.

institutions, are educating to use their education in helping the masses of the colored people to lift

The book became a top seller. In 1900 I also founded the National Negro Business, I was also

they teach by precept and example the necessary lesson of thrift economy, and property-getting, and friendship between the races."

r 1881, I founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, in the Black Belt of Alabama. I persuaded southern white employees and governors that the Institute offered an education that would keep blacks on the farm and in the trades. But to blacks education was

l907 I gave a speech to ministers in Nashville, Tennessee which concluded: "If you want to know how to solve the race problem, In place your hands upon your heart and then, with a prayer

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Approximate Word count = 1002
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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