Death Day of Booker T. Washington’s (1856-1915)
November 14

African-American educator, orator, and advisor to presidents Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. Born into slavery, he gained an education after emancipation and went on to become the guiding force behind Tuskegee Institute.

Booker T. Washington sums up his own life when he writes: "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." He passed this wisdom along to others through the philosophy that "few things help people more than to place responsibility upon them and to let them know that you trust them."

To take a virtual tour of Washington's birthplace, read his biography, and learn more about Tuskegee Institute, visit the Booker T. Washington National Monument webpages.

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