Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
Tuskegee University is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on July 4th in 1881 by the Alabama Legislature.
Samuel Chapman Armstrong was an American soldier and general during the American Civil War who later became an educator, particularly of non-whites. The son of missionaries in Hawaii, he rose through the Union Army during the American Civil War to become a general, leading units of Black American soldiers. He became best known as an educator, founding and becoming the first principal of the normal school for Black American and later Native American pupils in Virginia which later became Hampton University. He also founded the university's museum, the Hampton University Museum, which is the oldest Black American museum in the country, and the oldest museum in Virginia.
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of the American educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). The book describes his experience of working to rise up from being enslaved as a child during the Civil War, the obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, and his work establishing vocational schools like the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to help Black people and other persecuted people of color learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of teachers and philanthropists who helped educate Black and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and dignity into students. His educational philosophy stresses combining academic subjects with learning a trade. Washington explained that the integration of practical subjects is partly designed to "reassure the White community of the usefulness of educating Black people".
Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association after the American Civil War to provide education to freedmen. The campus houses the Hampton University Museum, which is the oldest museum of the African diaspora in the United States and the oldest museum in the commonwealth of Virginia. First led by former Union General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Hampton University's main campus is located on 314 acres in Hampton, Virginia, on the banks of the Hampton River.
Charlotte Louise Bridges Grimké was an African-American anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator. She grew up in a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia. She taught school for years, including during the Civil War, to freedmen in South Carolina. Later in life, she married Francis James Grimké, a Presbyterian minister who led a major church in Washington, DC, for decades. He was a nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and was active in civil rights.
Emancipation Oak is a historic tree on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, in the United States. The large, sprawling southern live oak, believed to be over 200 years old, is 98 feet in diameter, with branches which extend upward as well as laterally. It is part of the National Historic Landmark district of Hampton University.
Mary Smith Peake, born Mary Smith Kelsey, was an American teacher, humanitarian and a member of the black elite in Hampton, best known for starting a school for the children of former slaves starting in the fall of 1861 under what became known as the Emancipation Oak tree in present-day Hampton, Virginia near Fort Monroe. The first teacher hired by the American Missionary Association, she was also associated with its later founding of Hampton University in 1868.
Margaret Murray Washington was an American educator who was the principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, which later became Tuskegee University. She also led women's clubs, including the Tuskegee Woman's Club and the National Federation of Afro-American Women. She was the third wife of Booker T. Washington. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1972.
Hallie Quinn Brown was an African-American educator and activist. She moved with her parents while quite young to a farm near Chatham, Ontario, Canada, in 1864 and then to Ohio in 1870. In 1868, she began a course of study in Wilberforce University, Ohio, from which she graduated in 1873 with the degree of Bachelor of Science.
The Calhoun Colored School (1892–1945), was a private boarding and day school for Black students in Calhoun, Lowndes County, Alabama, about 28 miles (45 km) southwest of the capital of Montgomery. It was founded in 1892 by Charlotte Thorn and Mabel Dillingham, from New England, in partnership with Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, to provide education to rural black students. African Americans comprised the majority in this area, and the state had segregated facilities. Calhoun Colored School was first designed to educate rural black students according to the industrial school model common at the time.
The Logan family are African Americans descended from Warren Logan and his wife Adella Hunt Logan. The family has become part of the educated, professional black elite in the United States.
Letitia Woods Brown was an American researcher and historian. Earning a master's degree in 1935 from Ohio State University, she served as a researcher and historian for over four decades and became one of the first black women to earn a PhD in history from Harvard University.
Fannie Cobb Carter was an American educator, humanitarian, and activist for school integration in the United States.
Fannie Smith Washington was an American educator, and the first wife of Booker T. Washington. Before her premature death in 1884, Fannie Washington aided her husband in the early development of the Tuskegee Institute.
Bess Bolden Walcott (1886-1988) was an American educator, librarian, museum curator and activist who helped establish the historical significance of the Tuskegee University. Recruited by Booker T. Washington to help him coordinate his library and teach science, she remained at the institute until 1962, but continued her service into the 1970s. Throughout her fifty-four year career at Tuskegee, she organized Washington's library, taught science and English at the institute, served as founder and editor of two of the major campus publications, directed public relations, established the Red Cross chapter, curated the George Washington Carver collection and museum and assisted in Tuskegee being placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Jennie B. Moton (1879-1942) was an American educator and clubwoman. As a special field agent for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in the 1930s and 40s, she worked to improve the lives of rural African Americans in the South. She directed the department of Women's Industries at the Tuskegee Institute, presided over the Tuskegee Woman's Club, and was a two-term president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).
Adella Hunt Logan was an African-American writer, educator, administrator and suffragist. Born during the Civil War, she earned her teaching credentials at Atlanta University, an historically black college founded by the American Missionary Association. She became a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute and became an activist for education and suffrage for women of color. As part of her advocacy, she published articles in some of the most noted black periodicals of her time.
Della Irving Hayden was an American educator. She founded in 1904, Franklin Normal and Industrial Institute in Franklin, Virginia.
Portia Marshall Washington Pittman was the daughter of Booker T. Washington and Fannie Smith Washington. Pittman was the first African-American to graduate from the Bradford Academy in Bradford, Massachusetts.
