Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington was a very successful ex-slave following the Civil War. He was the epitome of hard work and success. He was born in 1856 on the Burrough's tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a plantation. He mentions about his early years from his autobiography, Up From Slavery. His mother was a cook, his father a white man from a nearby farm. "The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin," he wrote, "were not very different from those of other slaves." He went to school in Franklin County--not as a student, but to carry books for one of James Burrough's daughters. It was illegal to educate slaves at that time. "I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise," he wrote. In April 1865, The Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burrough's home. He soon left to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia. He took a job in a salt mine that began at 4 a.m. in the morning so he could attend school later in the day. Within a few years, Booker was taken in as a houseboy by a wealthy towns-woman who further encouraged his longing to learn. At age 16, he walked many of the 500 miles back to Virginia to enroll in a new school for black students. He knew that even poor students could receive an education at Hampton Institute, paying their way by working.

The head teacher at Hampton was suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes. He was finally admitted after cleaning a room to her satisfaction. He earned his living by performing menial tasks. His entrance into Hampton led him away from a life of forced labor for good. He became an instructor there. He later founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881. He was recognized as the nation's foremost black educators.

Washington would invoke his own past to illustrate his belief in the dignity of work. "From the time that I can remember anything, almost everyday of my life has been occupied in some kind of labor." "There was no period of my life that was devoted to play." The concept of self-reliance was the cornerstone of Washington's social philosophy.

Washington also had his critics as well. Many charged his conservative approach undermined the quest for racial equality. He faced liberal opposition from the Niagara Movement (1905-09) and the NAACP. These two were civil rights groups demanding civil rights and encouraging protests in response to white agression in such areas as lynchings, disfranchisement, and segregation laws. Some of the statements he made was, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers," he proposed to a biracial audience in his 1895 Atlanta Compromise Address. "Yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." It is now known that Washington secretly funded antisegregationist activities. He never wavered from his belief in freedom. "From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery."

By the last years of his life Washington moved away from many of his accommodationist policies and attacked racism. In 1915 he joined ranks with his former critics to protest the stereotypical portrayal of blacks in a new movie, "Birth of a Nation." Some months later he died at age 59. I appreciate Booker T. Washington and his stance on hard work. He achieved prominence due to his work ethic and determination. I believe all citizens regardless of race should possess the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. However, regardless of race, if you want to be successful in life, you must labor. That's God's formula for success.