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[[image: black & white photograph of an African-American man sitting in ornate wooden chair, dressed in suit and bow-tie. Legs are crossed, and he is looking to the left of the camera]]
[[caption]]Booker T. Washington.[[/caption]]

Booker Taliaferro Washington
1856-1915

Educator and statesman, Booker T. Washington was Frederick Douglass' successor as the foremost American Negro leader of his day. Unlike Douglass, Washington was never to hold official federal office, but he managed, nonetheless, to exert considerable influence upon several areas of public affairs - in particular, civil rights.

Washington was born a slave in Hale's Ford, Virginia, reportedly in April 1856. It is known that he entered Hampton Institute in 1872 and graduated four years later. After teaching for a short while, he continued his studies at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C.

Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881, at the same time becoming its first president. Later, in addition to instituting a variety of programs for rural extension work there, he helped establish the National Negro Business League.

In sharp contrast to his famous predecessor, Washington was intent on setting forth a less militant and more conciliatory policy with respect to civil rights. Already in 1884, he emphasized the fact that "the best cause to pursue in regard to the civil rights bill in the South is to let it alone...and it will settle itself."

Some 11 years later, in his now-famous speech at the opening of the Cotton States Exposition, he expounded views that - by their very moderacy - were to turn most Negro intellectuals against him. It was even feared in certain quarters that the stand he was taking would only serve to encourage the foes of equal rights.

His central theme was that Negroes would best protect the rights vouchsafed them by the U.S. Constitution through their own economic and moral advancement; his major task, in this connection, was to win over to his moderate course diverse elements among Southern whites, without whose support the program he envisaged would have been impossible.

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