Jim Crow Stories

People

Booker T. Washington

was an author and educator. He was born a slave on a Virginia farm, and traveled

hundreds of miles to be educated at the Hampton Institute, at which he later taught. Washington went on to open the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, organize the National Negro Business League, and speak at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition. He believed in prioritizing African American financial prosperity over civil rights gain, and lost popularity for accepting segregation and African American inferiority. Washington was also quite influential in the government, and became an advisor to two presidents through his acceptance of racial inequality.