Changemaker 20: Booker T. Washington

On the first day of Black History Month in the US, today’s changemaker is Booker T. Washington. Born on the Burroughs plantation in Southwest Virginia, as an enslaved man, Washington never had a birth certificate; therefore, his actual birthdate was unknown until after his death when the information was discovered in the Burroughs family Bible. After the Civil War, as a free man, Washington pursued his studies at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and Wayland Seminary. In 1881, at the age of twenty-five, he purchased a former plantation in Alabama where he constructed and expanded the Tuskegee Institute, now known as Tuskegee University. 

His speeches and the institution he founded helped inspire Black communities to become economically self-reliant. Washington was the first Black person invited to the White House in 1901 and became an advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft. Additionally, he was an author and published a biography of Frederick Douglass in 1901. 

His birthplace is now preserved as the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Virginia.

Fun fact: #DouglassWeek 2021 & 2022 participant and supporter, Kenneth B. Morris Jr., is a direct descendant of both Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass!

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