Booky T Washington Influence On African Americans

In the late nineteenth century, racial discrimination towards the so-called “colored people” was rampant. These “colored people” were the African-Americans. At that time, they were subjected to slavery and was viewed as the lesser being next to people with fair complexions. They were deprived of their civil and political rights and of the chance for higher education. Consequently, the African-Americans endured the hostility and violence towards them.
One of the African-Americans that had lived through this dark time was Booky T. Washington. Washington was born at Franklin County Virginia plantation and grew up in the slavery system. His mother was an enslaved woman while his father, a man he never knew the identity, was a White American.

In fact, Washington agreed to spearhead the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama when General Armstrong asked him. From there, he taught the students several knowledges that will enable them to survive their poverty-stricken life. They aspired them to be artisans and landowners one day. By the same token, he also influenced the African-Americans to concentrate their efforts in becoming wealthy. Similarly, he struggled for the reconciliation of the South. In the same fashion, Washington spent his summers in places where wealthy men and women resided to search for people who would provide donations for the African- Americans. He had gone to Bar Harbor, Maine and Saratoga Springs in New York and had met and befriended several notable persons such as Queen Victoria, Mark Twain, and William Howard Taft. As a result, a number of successful persons contributed to his cause including J.P Morgan, Collis P. Huntington and John

First, at the same time of inspiring his fellow African- Americans to develop their self- worth and self- esteem, he had also disheartened them to have the courage to defy the injustices that were directed toward them. This only strengthened the claim of the Whites that the African- Americans were the lesser kind of human beings and only existed for the sole purpose of serving their masters-the Whites. Furthermore, while Washington ambitioned the Black- Americans to someday rise and became craftsmen and landowners, he imbued to them that their civil and political rights were of no importance. Correspondingly, this advocacy of Washington was beyond the bounds of possibility because the African- Americans would not freely and fully exist if they did not have the right to vote. Lastly, at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he had deprived the African- American youths of their rights for higher learning. He had only wanted them to learn industrial trainings that would aid them in surviving their harsh society. Although these trainings may be beneficial for the African- Americans to rose from poverty, Washington’s plan had not taught them to live their lives to the fullest, but to merely survive. By all means, these measures resulted to further degrade the dignity of the African- Americans. Likewise, it had led