Works of Booker T. Washington - Booker T. Washington [218]
In the summer of 1865, when he was nine, he migrated with his brother John and his sister Amanda to Malden in Kanawha County, West Virginia to join his stepfather, Washington Ferguson. Washington's mother was a major influence on his schooling. Even though she couldn't read herself, she bought her son spelling books which encouraged him to read. She then enrolled him in an elementary school, where Booker took the last name of Washington because he found out that other children had more than one name. When the teacher called on him and asked for his name he answered, "'Booker Washington,' as if I had been called by that name all my life;.." He worked with his mother and other free blacks as a salt-packer and in a coal mine. He even signed up briefly as a hired hand on a steamboat. About the only other jobs available for blacks at the time were in agriculture. He was hired as a houseboy for Viola Ruffner (née Knapp), the wife of General Lewis Ruffner, who owned the salt-furnace and coal mine. Many other houseboys had failed to satisfy the demanding Mrs. Ruffner, but Booker's diligence met her standards. Encouraged by Mrs. Ruffner, young Booker attended school and learned to read and to write. Soon he sought more education than was available in his community.
Leaving Malden at sixteen, Washington enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, in Hampton, Virginia. Students with little income such as Washington could work at the school to pay their way. The normal school at Hampton was founded to train teachers, as education was seen as a critical need by the black community. Funding came from the federal government and white Protestant groups. From 1878 to 1879 Washington attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., and returned to teach at Hampton. The president of Hampton, Samuel C. Armstrong recommended Washington to become the first principal at Tuskegee Institute, a similar school being founded in Alabama.
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute
Booker T. Washington's house at Tuskegee University
The organizers of the new all-black Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute found the energetic leader they sought in 25 year-old Booker T. Washington. Washington believed with a little self help, people may go from poverty to success. The new school opened on July 4, 1881, initially using space in a local church. The next year, Washington purchased a former plantation, which became the permanent site of the campus. Under his direction, his students literally built their own school: constructing classrooms, barns and outbuildings; growing their own crops and raising livestock, and providing for most of their own basic necessities. Both men and women had to learn trades as well as academics. Washington helped raise funds to establish and operate hundreds of small community schools and institutions of higher educations for blacks. The Tuskegee faculty utilized each of these activities to teach the students basic skills to take back to the mostly rural black communities throughout the South. The main goal was not to produce farmers and tradesmen, but teachers of farming and trades who taught in the new high schools and colleges for blacks across the South. The school later grew to become the present-day Tuskegee University.
The institute illustrated Washington's aspirations for his race. His theory was that by providing needed skills to society, African Americans would play their part, leading to acceptance by white Americans. He believed that blacks would eventually gain full participation in society