Biography on book booker t washington
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Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington
Founding Prinicipal and First President of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute
(now Tuskegee University)
Term in Office: 1881-1915
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His Early Years ...
Born April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia, Booker Taliaferro was the son of an unknown White man and Jane, an enslaved cook of James Burroughs, a small planter.
Jane named her son Booker Taliaferro but later dropped the second name. Booker gave himself the surname "Washington" when he first enrolled in school. Sometime after Booker's birth, his mother was married to Washington Ferguson, a slave. A daughter, Amanda, was born to this marriage. James, Booker's younger half-brother, was adopted. Booker's elder brother, John, was also the son of a White man.
Booker spent his first nine years as a slave on the Burroughs farm. In 1865, his mother took her children to Malden, West Virginia, to join her husband, who had gone there earlier and found work in the salt mines. At age
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Booker T. Washington’s Parents and Early Life
Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5, 1856 in a hut in Franklin County, Virginia. His mother was a cook for the plantation’s owner. His father, a vit man, was unknown to Washington. At the close of the Civil War, all the enslaved people owned bygd James and Elizabeth Burroughs—including 9-year-old Booker, his siblings, and his mother—were freed. Jane moved her family to Malden, West Virginia. Soon after, she married Washington Ferguson, a free Black man.
Booker T. Washington’s Education
In Malden, Washington was only allowed to go to school after working from 4-9 AM each morning in a local salt works before class. It was at a second job in a local coalmine where he first heard two fellow workers discuss the Hampton Institute, a school for formerly enslaved people in southeastern Virginia founded in 1868 bygd Brigadier General Samuel Chapman. Chapman had been a leader of Black troops for the Union during the Civil War and was
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Up from Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington
Volunteer, Dan Muller, and David Widger