Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856–1915) was an African-American educationist and reformer. He was a leading spokesperson for black Americans between 1895 and 1915. His support for segregation and his emphasis on black people’s vocational skills attracted censure from other African American leaders.
Born into slavery in Franklin Country, Virginia, Washington was educated at Hampton Institute. In 1881, he was appointed principal of the newly opened Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University,) Alabama. He built it into a major center of African-American education—when he died 34 years later, Tuskegee had more than 100 buildings, 200 teaching staff, 1,500 students, and a two-million-dollar endowment.
Washington became the voice of black America and encouraged African Americans to focus on gaining economic independence by working hard and achieving economic equality before fighting for social or political justice. In his famous speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, Washington said, “In all things that are purely social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Other prominent 20th-century civil rights leaders, including William Du Bois, fervently opposed Washington’s position. In 1900, Washington organized the National Negro Business League.
Among Washington’s dozen books is his autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901,) and The Story of the Negro (1909.) These memorable American life-stories recall in vivid detail the hardships and racial hatreds of the South.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Booker T. Washington
The more you know the less you show.Character is power.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Character
Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Character
Success is not measured by the heights one attains, but by the obstacles one overcomes in its attainment.
—Booker T. Washington
There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Racism
Character is power.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Character
No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Results
I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Hatred
We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Prejudice
We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Language
I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Hatred, Hate, Being True to Yourself, Attitude
Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the everyday things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Little Things, Attention, Things
No race can prosper ’til it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling the field, as in writing a poem.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Dignity, Learn, Pride, Labor
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Service
Any man’s life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life — that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Doing Your Best, Encouragement, Support
The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Ability
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Kindness
I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do that which you can do yourself”. My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not do that which others can do as well”.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Confidence
There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Helpfulness, Influence, Earth, Leadership, Life
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Perseverance
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Responsibility, Trust
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Strength
I think I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Helpfulness, Joy
I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Success, Obstacles, Racism, Failure, Opposition
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Excellence
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
—Booker T. Washington
Topics: Oppression, Adversity
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