Signs of Progress Among the Negroes

Born in Virginia in the mid-to-late 1850s Booker T. Washington put himself through school and became a teacher. In 1881 he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama (now known as Tuskegee University) which grew immensely and focused on training African Americans in agricultural pursuits. A political adviser and writer Washington clashed with intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois over the best avenues for racial uplift.