Tuskegee's Mantle

Above: Booker T. Washington, 1902, Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, Library of Congress, Booker T. Washington Papers online.

Booker T. Washington was born in slavery on a small plantation some forty miles east of Christiansburg, in Franklin County, Virginia. He gained freedom after the Civil War and graduated in 1875 from Hampton Institute. Hampton was founded in Virginia's tidewater region in 1868 by General Samuel Armstrong of the federal Freedmen's Bureau. In 1881 Washington answered Armstrong's call to serve as the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

National prominence came to Washington in 1895 when he addressed an integrated audience at Atlanta's Cotton States and International Exposition. He emphasized both interracial cooperation and African-American self-reliance: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This proclamation drew criticism from other black leaders, as it seemed to give up on fighting the racial segregation then being implemented by southern lawmakers. The next year, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson leant Constitutional power to "equal but separate" public facilities.

Read Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition speech, as it was later published in Up From Slavery (1901). Explore public reaction to the speech by searching the Booker T. Washington Papers for the keywords "Atlanta Exposition." Source: The Booker T. Washington Papers, edited by Louis R. Harlan, et al. (University of Illinois Press, 1975), online at the History Cooperative.

Washington's educational program at Tuskegee emphasized practical learning in domestic service, agriculture, and trades. He insisted on cleanliness, punctuality, and moral discipline. By these means, he believed African Americans could work their way into land ownership, entrepreneurship, and middle class respectability. Washington never saw industrial education as the only kind of education black people should strive for nor did he think it was for black people only. By focusing on vocational education rather than higher academic training, he gained the financial support of white moderates and liberals and faced the criticism of W. E. B. DuBois and other African-American intellectuals.

Washington used photographs effectively to illustrate the academic and industrial aspects of his program. Browse Francis Benjamin Johnston's photographs of Tuskegee's campus, students, and faculty in 1902 and 1906. Christiansburg Institute's leaders continually kept Tuskegee in mind as a model. Source: The Booker T. Washington Papers, edited by Louis R. Harlan, et al. (University of Illinois Press, 1975), online at the History Cooperative.

At Christiansburg Institute in 1895, all eyes were on Tuskegee. The principal, Hiram Thweatt, was a Tuskegee graduate. The Freedmen's Friends' Association of Philadelphia (FFA) had already begun to expand the curriculum. According to an 1895 FFA report, the school's program "reaches from the French Primer to Corinne, from Caesar to Cicero, from Algebra to Astronomy, and includes the study of book-keeping in the Senior year." In addition, "Industrial Courses have taken a firm place" in the high school, including three years each of carpentry for the boys, and sewing and cooking for the girls. The third year also included "study concerning the 'table manners of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Persians.' "

This FFA report joked that "the most obvious objection in the eyes of a hungry man is, that learning to cook chickens and fish is deferred to the third year." The students, however were quite serious. Several of them presented "original compositions and orations" at the Atlanta Exposition. Surely they attended Washington's famous lecture while there.

Washington became the supervisor for the newly renamed Christiansburg Industrial Institute in 1896. At first he was reluctant, pointing out that CII was located far from the center of the South's rural black population. He also feared that the school, under the influence of its founder, Charles Schaeffer, still emphasized academics over vocational training. On a visit to CII, Washington found a "want of cleanliness, thrift, order" on the grounds and complained that the "industrial is not given an equal chance with the literary work" in the curriculum. He finally agreed to serve, however, establishing a unique relationship between CII and Tuskegee that outlasted his own life by nearly twenty years.

Above: Elliston Perot Morris, FFA Board member, courtesy of Christiansburg Community Center.

Read the 1896 correspondence between Booker T. Washington and FFA board member Elliston Morris: Morris to Washington, 6 February 1896. Washington to Morris, 30 March 1896. Morris to Washington, 3 April 1896. Source: The Booker T. Washington Papers, edited by Louis R. Harlan, et al. (University of Illinois Press, 1975), online at the History Cooperative.

Washington's influence was felt deeply, though he did not supervise CII directly. When he appointed Charles L. Marshall principal in 1896, he told the FFA he believed Marshall would "try as far as possible to create a 'Tuskegee' at Christiansburg." Washington shaped CII mainly through the Tuskegee graduates he recommended for appointments to the faculty. They remained in touch with Tuskegee and modeled CII's program on their experiences at their alma mater. Washington's brother, John, made occasional visits to CII and advised the FFA.

On June 25, 1910, Booker T. Washington made a ceremonial visit to Christiansburg Industrial Institute, delivering a public lecture to a crowd of 5,000, the majority white. Emphasizing discrimination's impact on oppressors and oppressed alike, Washington instructed his listeners, "No man can keep another in the ditch withough getting down in the ditch with him."

Above: Booker T. Washington addressing the crowd at Christiansburg Industrial Institute, 25 June 1910, Christiansburg Institute Collection.

In May 1910, Robert Russa Moton, then of Hampton Institute, spoke at CII's graduation ceremonies. When Washington died in 1915, Moton succeeded him as Tuskegee's superintendent and served, as Washington had, as CII's supervisor until 1934.

Above: Christiansburg Institute principal Edgar A. Long (second from left) poses with school supervisor Booker T. Washington (third from right) and Robert Moton (second from right), the man who whould succeed him as supervisor, and three unidentified persons, ca. 1910, Christiansburg Institute Collection.

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