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Booker T. Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 15, 1915) was an African-American political leader, educator and author. He was one of the dominant figures in African-American history from 1890 to 1915.

He was born into slavery at the community of Hale's Ford in Franklin County, Virginia, and after emancipation, moved west with his mother who worked as a salt-packer in West Virginia. There he learned to read and write. At the age of 16, he made his way east about 400 miles to obtain schooling at Hampton in eastern Virginia at a normal school established to train teachers.

He gained national recognition as the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881 and his famous Atlanta Address of 1895, becoming both a leading educator and a prominent and popular spokesperson for African American citizens of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Although labeled by some activists as an "accommodator", his work cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists helped raise funds to establish and operate dozens of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of black persons throughout the south.

In his time, Dr. Washington did much to improve the friendship and working relationship between the races. His autobiography, , first published in 1901, is still widely read by those studying African American history in the United States.

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Booker T. Washington was born into slavery on the Burroughs farm at the community of Hale's Ford in Franklin County, Virginia. His mother Jane was a cook and his father was a white man from a nearby farm. In April of 1865, emancipation of the slaves took place in most of Virginia after the end of the American Civil War. (The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed later in 1865 freed all slaves nationwide.) Three months later, at the age of 9, Booker and his brother John moved to Malden in Kanawha County, West Virginia with their mother. He worked with his mother and other free blacks as a salt-packer and also was employed as a houseboy. When he could, young Booker attended school and learned reading and writing, encouraged to do so by the woman in whose home he worked.

Leaving Malden at 16, Washington worked odd jobs to make his way across West Virginia and Virginia (a distance of about 400 miles) to reach Elizabeth City County near Hampton Roads where, in 1872, he enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, in Hampton, Virginia. Poor students such as Washington could get a place there by working to pay their way. He was given a place after cleaning a room to the satisfaction of the head teacher who had previously been suspicious of his ragged clothes and country ways. The normal school at Hampton was founded for the purpose of training black teachers and had been funded by individuals such as William Jackson Palmer, a Quaker, among others. In many ways he was back where he had started, earning a living through menial tasks, but his time at Hampton led him away from a life of labor. From 1878 to 1879 he attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., and returned to teach at Hampton. Soon, Hampton officials recommended him to become the first principal of a similar school being founded in Alabama.

In 1881, organizers of a new Normal School in Tuskegee, Alabama sought a bright and energetic leader for their new school. They found the desired qualities in Booker T. Washington, who became the first principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. The new school later developed into the Tuskegee Institute and is now Tuskegee University.

Tuskegee provided an academic education but placed more emphasis on providing young black boys with practical skills such as carpentry and brick making. The institute illustrates Washington's aspirations for his race. His theory was, that by providing these skills, African Americans would play their part in society and this would lead to acceptance by white Americans. He believed that African Americans would eventually gain full Civil Rights by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens.

Still an important center for African-American learning in the 21st century, according to its website, Tuskegee Institute was created "to em and enable the goals of self-reliance." These themes were fundamental to the rest of Washington's life and work over a period of more than 30 additional years. He was principal of the school from July 4, 1881, until his death in 1915.

, he gave all three women enormous credit for their work at Tuskegee and was emphatic that he would not have been successful without them.

Fannie N. Smith was from Malden, West Virginia, the same Kanawha River Valley town located eight miles upriver from Charleston where Washington lived from age nine to sixteen (and maintained ties throughout his later life). Washington and Smith were married in the summer of 1882. They had one child, Portia M. Washington. Their marriage was short-lived, as Fannie passed away in May 1884.

He next wed Olivia A. Davidson in 1885. Davidson was born in Ohio, spent time teaching in Mississippi and Tennessee and received her education at Hampton Institute and the Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham. Washington met Davidson at Tuskegee, where she had come to teach. She later became the assistant principal there. They had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr. and Ernest Davidson Washington, before she died in 1889.

His third marriage took place in 1893 to Margaret James Murray. Murray was from Mississippi and was a graduate of Fisk University. They had no children together. Murray outlived Washington and died in 1925.

Active in politics, Booker T. Washington was routinely consulted by Congressmen and Presidents about the appointment of African Americans to political positions. He worked and socialized with many white politicians and notables. He argued that self-reliance was the key to improved conditions for African Americans in the United States and that they could not expect too much having only just been granted emancipation.

His 1895 Atlanta Compromise address — given at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia — sparked a controversy wherein he was cast as an accommodationist among those who heeded Frederick Douglass' call to "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate" for social change. A public debate soon began between those such as Washington, who valued the so-called "industrial" education and those who, like W.E.B. DuBois, supported the idea of a "classical" education among African-Americans. Both sides sought to define the best means to improve the conditions of the post-Antebellum African-American community. Washington's advice to African-Americans to "compromise" and accept segregation, incensed other activists of the time, such as DuBois, who labeled him "The Great Accommodator". It should be noted, however, that despite not condemning Jim Crow laws and the inhumanity of lynching publicly, Washington privately contributed funds for legal challenges against segregation and disfranchisement — see Giles v. Harris (1903).

Although early in DuBois' career the two were friends and respected each other considerably, their political views diverged to the extent that after Washington's death, DuBois stated "In stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and public school, and the firmer establishment of color caste in this land."

Around 1894, Dr. Washington developed a friendship with millionaire industrialist and financier Henry Huttleston Rogers. The latter had attended one of his speeches in New York City, and had been surprised that no one had "passed the hat" afterwards. Rogers had risen from a working-class family in a small town to become a partner of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. With additional interests in natural gas, copper, mining, and railroads, Rogers was one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Despite his great wealth, and widespread reputation for tough business dealings, Rogers was apparently both a modest and generous man. Dr. Washington became a frequent visitor to Rogers' office, to his family's 85-room mansion in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and was an honored guest aboard Rogers' yacht . Their friendship extended over a period of 15 years, during which time Rogers quietly financially supported and encouraged Washington in his work.

Among many other enterprises, Rogers was the builder of the Virginian Railway, completed in 1909. Although Rogers had died suddenly a few weeks earlier, Dr. Washington went on a previously arranged speaking tour in June, 1909 along the route of the new railroad which was built to transport bituminous coal from the mountains of West Virginia to port at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads.

Dr. Washington rode in Rogers' personal rail car, "", making speeches at many locations over a 7-day period. He told his audiences that his recently departed friend, Henry Rogers, who was held in their esteem for having financed the railroad from his personal fortune, had urged him to make the trip and see what could be done to improve relations between the races and economic conditions for African Americans along the route of the new railway, which touched many previously isolated communities in the southern portions of Virginia and West Virginia.

Some of the places where Dr. Washington spoke on the tour were (in order of the tour stops), Newport News, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lawrenceville, Kenbridge, Victoria, Charlotte Courthouse, Roanoke, Salem, and Christiansburg in Virginia, and Princeton, Mullens, Page and Deepwater in West Virginia. One of his trip companions reported that they had received a strong and favorable welcome from both white and African American citizens all along the tour route.

It was only after the multi-millionaire's death that Dr. Washington said he felt compelled to reveal publicly some of the extent of Henry Rogers' contributions for his causes. The funds, he said, were at that very time, paying for the operation of at least 65 small country schools for the education and betterment of African Americans in Virginia and other portions of the South, all unknown to the recipients. Known only to a few trustees, Rogers had also generously provided support to institutions of higher education.

Dr. Washington later wrote that Henry Rogers had encouraged projects with at least partial matching funds, as that way, two ends were accomplished:

olRecipients would have a stake in knowing that they were helping themselves through their own hard work and sacrifice., invitation to the White House

Honors and memorials