Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was an ethically abusive study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis. Although the African-American men who participated in the study were told that they were receiving free health care from the federal government of the United States, they were not.
Tuskegee University is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. The campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War II's Tuskegee Airmen.
Robert Ezra Park was an American urban sociologist who is considered to be one of the most influential figures in early U.S. sociology. Park was a pioneer in the field of sociology, changing it from a passive philosophical discipline to an active discipline rooted in the study of human behavior. He made significant contributions to the study of urban communities, race relations and the development of empirically grounded research methods, most notably participant observation. From 1905 to 1914, Park worked with Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute. After Tuskegee, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1914 to 1933, where he played a leading role in the development of the Chicago School of sociology. Park is noted for his work in human ecology, race relations, human migration, cultural assimilation, social movements, and social disorganization.
Carter Godwin Woodson was an American historian, author, journalist, and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He was one of the first scholars to study the history of the African diaspora, including African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been called the "father of black history". In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month.
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of American educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). The book describes his personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of both teachers and philanthropists who helped in educating Black people and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and a feeling of dignity to 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 as to the usefulness of educating Black people.
Robert Russa Moton was an American educator and author. He served as an administrator at Hampton Institute. In 1915 he was named principal of Tuskegee Institute, after the death of founder Booker T. Washington, a position he held for 20 years until retirement in 1935.
Dorothy Louise Porter Wesley was an African-American librarian, bibliographer and curator, who built the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University into a world-class research collection. She published numerous bibliographies on African-American history.
An Alabama's Colored Women's Club refers to any member of the Alabama Federation of Colored Women's Club, including the "Ten Times One is Ten Club", the Tuskegee Women's Club, and the Anna M. Duncan Club of Montgomery. These earliest clubs united and created the Alabama Federation of Colored Women's Club in 1899. By 1904, there were more than 26 clubs throughout Alabama. The most active ones were in Birmingham, Selma, Mobile, Tuskegee, Tuscaloosa, Eufaula, Greensboro, and Mt. Megis.
The Future of the American Negro, a book written in 1899 by American educator Booker T. Washington, set forth his ideas regarding the history of enslaved and freed African-American people and their need for education to advance themselves. It was re-published as a second edition in 1900 and was made available in electronic form in 2008 via Project Gutenberg.
Eunice Verdell Rivers Laurie was an African American nurse who worked in the state of Alabama. She is best known for her work as the coordinator of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment from 1932 to 1972. The Tuskegee Experiment was an inhumane study that deliberately allowed black men to develop syphilis when there was treatment for the disease.
Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited is a 1999 biography of American General Samuel Chapman Armstrong and his associated normal school for freedmen, Hampton Institute, written by Robert Francis Engs and published by the University of Tennessee Press. The first full biography of its kind, the book portrays Armstrong as a complex politician and administrator in the postbellum period who balanced the needs of opposed parties surrounding the Virginia school: its African American students, Southern white neighbors, and Northern philanthropist funders. Previous works presented Armstrong in a polarized fashion, as either a savior or handicap for freedmen. The book emphasizes Armstrong's upbringing as a missionary in Hawaii in the development of his educational philosophy.
Emmett Jay Scott was a journalist, founding newspaper editor, government official and envoy, educator, and author. He was Booker T. Washington's closest adviser at the Tuskegee Institute. He was responsible for maintaining Washington's nationwide "machine," with its close links to the black business leadership, white philanthropists, and Republican politicians from the local level to the White House. After Washington job he lost his Tuskegee connection but moved to Washington as Special Adviser of Black Affairs to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Scott was the highest-ranking African-American in President Woodrow Wilson's administration. After 1919, he was less and less visible in national affairs, with the NAACP taking the leadership role that Booker T. Washington had dominated.
The Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture was an event at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1906, to support the education of African Americans in the South. It involved many prominent members of New York society, with speakers including Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, Joseph Hodges Choate, and Robert Curtis Ogden. It was the beginning of a fund raising drive started by Booker T. Washington for the Tuskegee Institute with a goal of making up the annual operating shortfall, plant improvements, and creating an endowment. There were three distinct appeals for the fundraising: adding an annual income of $90,000 a year, creating an endowment of $1,800,000, and installing a heating plant at a cost of $34,000.
The Separate Problem is a 1979 book by Judy Jolley Mohraz. It is a collection of case studies of Black education in the Northern United States from 1900-1930.
Oberlin Academy Preparatory School, originally Oberlin Institute and then Preparatory Department of Oberlin College, was a private preparatory school in Oberlin, Ohio which operated from 1833 until 1916. It opened as Oberlin Institute which became Oberlin College in 1850. The secondary school serving local and boarding students continued as a department of the college. The school and college admitted African Americans and women. This was very unusual and controversial. It was located on the Oberlin College campus for much of its history and many of its students continued on to study at Oberlin College. Various alumni and staff went on to notable careers.
Charles Walter Greene (1849-1926) was the first teacher of agriculture at Tuskegee Institute and the second head of the Agriculture Department at Tuskegee. He was a graduate of Hampton Institute and classmate of Booker T. Washington. He took over as Tuskegee Institute's farm manager in June 1888. The school had mostly trained teachers up until then. George Washington Carver was recruited to the Agriculture faculty in 1896.
James Nathan Calloway was an American agriculturalist. Born in slavery in Tennessee, Calloway graduated from Fisk University before joining the faculty of the Tuskegee Institute. Initially a lecturer in mathematics, he became involved in agricultural science and was appointed manager of the institute's largest farm in 1897. He was selected to lead an expedition to German Togoland in 1900 to promote the production of cotton there. Calloway bred a special strain of the plant suited to local conditions but returned to the United States a year later. The experimental station that he founded remained in use until 1919 and established cotton as a staple crop of the colony. He returned to Tuskegee as farm manager and taught agriculture there until at least 1930.
David F. Labaree is a historian of education and Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University.
Gordon David Houston was Professor of English at Howard University, one of the first African-American educators to teach Old English literature and the first African-American from Cambridge to graduate from Harvard University.
