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Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was founded in 1868 by General Samuel Armstrong. He was interested in
moral training and a practical, industrial education for southern blacks. In 1872, Booker T. Washington—who had
born a slave in Virginia—arrived at the school with fifty cents in his pocket. After graduating, Washington was
given administrative responsibilities at the school, and in 1881 Armstrong recommended Washington to head
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. By 1900, that school has numerous buildings, 100 faculty members, and
more than 1,400 students.
Both Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute trained "an army of black educators," and those teachers
emphasized self-improvement and job training to enable black students to become gainfully employed and
self-supporting as craftsmen or industrial workers. Armstrong and Washington accepted segregation as the
natural inclination of both races. Washington considered immediate agitation for social equality to be
"the extremist folly."
Booker T. Washington's projects, and schools that followed his principles, were funded by wealthy, white,
northern donors including John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Anna T. Jeanes, and Julius Rosenwald. They approved
his approach of not directly confronting racial inequality but "uplifting the people" through education. Washington
became known as an apostle of accommodation and, until his death in 1915, was the undoubted spokesman
of black Americans. Even before his death, however, his ideas had come under challenge.
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Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)
Photograph by the Scurlock Studio, Washington, D.C.
Virginia Historical Society. |
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Streetcar interior
The first decade of the twentieth century was a grim period for African
Americans in Virginia. The Constitutional Convention of 1901–2 established poll taxes and literacy tests to inhibit
voting by blacks and poor whites. On June 14, 1906, a law went into effect in the state requiring segregated
seating on streetcars, despite boycotts and strident editorials in the black press. Courtesy Library of Virginia. |
Next: W. E. B. Du Bois and the NAACP
Previous: The World of Jim Crow
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