B ooker Taliaferro Washington (1856–1915) was a prominent Black leader of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born into slavery and, following his emancipation, became a key voice for former slaves and their descendents through his roles as an educator, author, orator, and advisor to several Presidents of the United States.

By age 25, Washington became the leader of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (teachers’ college), now Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Alabama. In addition to academics, all students—male and female—had to learn a trade. Washington led the school for over 30 years.

Booker T. Washington came to national attention with his Atlanta Compromise speech, delivered to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia on September 18, 1895. At the time, Reconstruction—following the end of the Civil War in 1865—continued to struggle. Washington was a realists and felt that vocational education and free basic education were the paths to improving Black lives and thereby their communities’ commercial interests. “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of ... struggle rather than of artificial forcing ... It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.” His Compromise also included the ideas that blacks should refrain from retaliation against racist behavior and tolerate segregation and discrimination, at least for the time being, while they honed their marketable skills.

Come the turn of the 20th century, other black leaders disagreed with Washington‘s theories, most notably W.E.B. du Bois. Following Washington’s death, Atlanta Compromise supporters began turning to civil rights activism, leading up to the Civil Rights Movement that commenced in the 1950s.