Booker T. Washington Freedom Trail – Part 1

Booker T. Washington, educator and statesman, is Hampton University's most famous graduate and founder of Tuskegee University. In many ways, he embodies the spirit of all of Black higher education. He represented the core of the Black quest for education. Stressing the practical, but at no time ignoring the need to educate the whole person, he emphasized education as a tool to move people away from the crippling effects of slavery: the dependency, the social disorganization, the poverty, the ignorance.  Washington's political views were as controversial as his approach to education, but his achievements made him the most powerful Black American who ever lived. And today, the seeds of his unshakable belief in character and self-help have blossomed into one of the major forces in higher education.   (1005)