Booker T. Washington: Most Prominent African American Educator of His Time (Essay Sample)

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American History
Part One
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was born into slavery. It grew to prominence as a 19th-century African-American intellectual, establishing Tuskegee Standard and Industrial Institute (currently Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two centuries later. Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft were both advised by Washington. His historic segregation confrontations with Black activists like W. E. B. Du Bois generated a commotion, but he is now acknowledged as the most prominent African American educator of their time.
For Black people living in the South after Reconstruction, life was complicated. During the Jim Crow era, discrimination was rampant. It was perilous to exercise one's voting rights under the 15th Amendment, and job and educational opportunities were severely constrained. The prospect of retaliation for pushing for civil liberties was genuine as the Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence. On September 18, 1895, in Atlanta, Washington delivered by far his most famous address, telling a predominantly white audience that the way forward towards African Americans was consciousness through an effort to "dignify and exalt common labor." He believed that it was preferable to remain segregated from whites than to strive to desegregate as long as whites allowed their Black friends and neighbor’s opportunity to economic advancement, education, and justice in US courts:
The legacy of Booker T. Washington is nuanced. His public opinions favoring segregation look antiquated today, even though he lived via a historic sea change in African American life. As the views of his greatest critic, W.E.B. Du Bois gained traction and spurred the civil rights movement, his concentration on growth and self over civil and political rights fell