Booker T. Washington

1856–1915 · American educator, author and first leader of Tuskegee

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in Virginia and freed as a child. He worked in salt furnaces and coal mines, walked much of the way to Hampton Institute to get an education, and in 1881 was named the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute, which he led until his death. Up from Slavery (1901) made him internationally famous; his strategy of accommodation with the white South made him, in the same years, one of the most contested figures in American public life.

Traced to source

6 quotes we’ve traced to Booker T. Washington

“Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon them”

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“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”

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“I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him”

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“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem”

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“Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles overcome”

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“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way”

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