50 Fun Facts About Booker T. Washington

Which president caused a Southern uproar in 1901 by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House?

Theodore Roosevelt had only just moved in when he asked his adviser to dinner with his family. Southern politicians and newspapers erupted, and the White House at first claimed the meal had never happened.

An ambassador who put on Booker T. Washington's coat by mistake at the White House said he found which charm inside?

A rabbit's foot was in the pocket, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador claimed after the 1905 mix-up. A Detroit paper joked that he could walk off with the coat but would struggle to fill its owner's shoes.

In 1940, Booker T. Washington became the first African American pictured on which everyday item?

A postage stamp worth ten cents carried his portrait from April 7, 1940. Six years later he was honoured again, this time on a commemorative coin.

What unusual entrance exam did Booker T. Washington pass to win a place at Hampton Institute in 1872?

Sweeping a room was the whole test, so he swept it three times and dusted it four. The head teacher could not find a speck of dirt, admitted him, and then offered him work as the school janitor.

Which 1901 autobiography by Booker T. Washington became a bestseller and has been widely read ever since?

Up from Slavery stayed the best-selling autobiography by an African American for more than sixty years. It was his second memoir, following The Story of My Life and Work a year earlier.

In Booker T. Washington's famous 1895 exposition speech, a ship's crew lost at sea is told to lower what?

A bucket came up full of fresh water, because the ship had drifted into the mouth of the Amazon River. He used the story to urge Black and white Southerners to rely on the neighbours they already had.

Which famous American author shared a New York stage with Booker T. Washington at a 1906 fundraiser for Tuskegee?

Mark Twain spoke alongside him at the school's silver anniversary lecture in January 1906. The evening launched a campaign to raise $1.8 million for the school.

Which civil rights leader skipped ninth grade to enroll at Georgia's Booker T. Washington High School?

Martin Luther King Jr. kept a B-plus average there, at what was then the city's only high school for Black students. It was also the first public high school for African Americans in Georgia.

Which basic fact about himself did Booker T. Washington say he never knew for sure?

His date of birth went unrecorded, and he wrote that he supposed he must have been born somewhere and at some time. Evidence found after his death points to April 5, 1856.

Which Northern scholar became Booker T. Washington's leading critic and demanded full civil rights at once?

W. E. B. Du Bois had supported the famous 1895 speech at first, then turned against its patience. He argued that a college-educated elite he called the talented tenth should lead the push for equality.

Booker T. Washington's famous 1895 speech at the Cotton States Exposition was delivered in which Southern city?

Atlanta heard him tell a mostly white crowd that the races could stay socially apart yet work as one for progress. Critics later named the address after the city and called it a compromise.

After emancipation in 1865, Booker T. Washington's mother took her children to which state, where he grew up?

West Virginia was a free state where her husband had fled during the war, and the family settled in the town of Malden. The boy was put to work there before he ever saw a classroom.

As a boy in Malden, Booker T. Washington started work before dawn at a furnace that produced what?

Salt was the great industry of Malden, and he often began packing it at four in the morning. He later moved to a coal mine, where he overheard two miners talking about a school for Black students.

Before he could read, young Booker T. Washington learned to recognize which mark on the barrels he packed?

The number 18 was written on every barrel his family filled, and he learned to draw the figure before he knew a single letter. It was his first step toward reading.

Washington Ferguson, who escaped bondage during the Civil War, was which relative of Booker T. Washington?

His stepfather was his mother Jane's husband, and he sent for the family as soon as freedom was declared. He had already found a job and a small cabin for them in the Kanawha Valley.

Jane, the mother of Booker T. Washington, did which job on the Burroughs plantation in Virginia?

Cook was her role, and she fed both the owners and the enslaved workers from a single open fireplace. The family's small cabin doubled as the plantation kitchen.

The Virginia farm where Booker T. Washington was born, now a national monument, raised which cash crop?

Tobacco was the cash crop on the 207-acre Burroughs farm in Franklin County. The site became a national monument in 1956, a century after his birth.

The T in Booker T. Washington stands for which name, chosen by his mother but forgotten for years?

Taliaferro was the name his mother gave him at birth, but it fell out of use and he only heard of it later. He revived it at once and kept it for the rest of his life.

Which book, the first Booker T. Washington ever held, did his mother find so he could learn the alphabet?

A Webster speller, an old blue-back copy, was his first. With no teacher to help him, he worked out most of the alphabet on his own within a few weeks.

To get to school on time, young Booker T. Washington secretly did what at the furnace where he worked mornings?

He moved the clock forward half an hour each morning, until the furnace boss caught on and locked it in a case. His shift ended at nine, the very hour that school began.

Penniless in Richmond on his way to Hampton, Booker T. Washington spent his nights sleeping where?

Under a sidewalk of raised boards he lay on the ground with his satchel for a pillow. By day he helped unload pig iron from a ship to earn money for food.

How did 16-year-old Booker T. Washington cover most of the long journey from Malden to Hampton Institute?

By walking and begging the odd ride, he covered most of roughly 500 miles with almost no money. He arrived so hungry and unwashed that the head teacher doubted whether to admit him.

Before Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington lived in a Hampton dormitory as house father to students from which group?

Native Americans were being schooled at Hampton on a large scale for the first time, and more than a hundred came from Western reservations. He lived among the young men and oversaw their quarters, clothing and discipline.

Samuel Armstrong, the general who picked Booker T. Washington for Tuskegee, grew up where as the son of missionaries?

Hawaii was where his missionary parents raised him, and he shaped Hampton's curriculum around that background. In 1881 he recommended his 25-year-old former student to lead a new school in Alabama.

Booker T. Washington chose which American holiday in 1881 to open his new school in Tuskegee?

Independence Day, July 4, brought thirty students to a broken-down shanty beside a church, with him as the only teacher. When it rained, a student held an umbrella over him while he taught.

At Tuskegee's first campus, Booker T. Washington turned a stable and which other farm building into classrooms?

A henhouse was cleaned out for lessons soon after the stable, because the run-down farm had little else beyond a cabin and an old kitchen. Students then cleared the land themselves.

After three brick kilns failed at Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington pawned what for fifteen dollars to try a fourth?

His watch paid for a fourth kiln, which finally worked, though the pawn ticket expired and he never saw it again. Brickmaking grew into one of the school's biggest trades.

Booker T. Washington preached a so-called gospel of which everyday item that every Tuskegee student had to own?

A toothbrush was compulsory, and no student who failed to keep and use one could stay. He borrowed the phrase from his Hampton mentor and called the brush a far-reaching force for civilisation.

Which Chicago retail magnate teamed up with Booker T. Washington to build rural schools for Black children?

Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, joined the Tuskegee board in 1912 and paid for six pilot schools in rural Alabama. The fund he set up later helped build nearly 5,000 more across the South.

Which Standard Oil millionaire, a close friend of Booker T. Washington, quietly funded 65 small country schools?

Henry H. Rogers sought him out after hearing him speak in New York, surprised that nobody had passed the hat. How much he gave over their 15-year friendship only came out after his sudden death in 1909.

Which steel magnate answered Booker T. Washington's written appeal by paying for a library at Tuskegee?

Andrew Carnegie offered to pay the library's bills as they came in, up to twenty thousand dollars. His answer arrived by the very next mail after the appeal was sent.

Which university surprised Booker T. Washington in 1896 by awarding him an honorary master's degree?

Harvard's invitation was, he wrote, the greatest surprise that ever came to him. Dartmouth followed with an honorary doctorate in 1901.

On a trip to England, Booker T. Washington and his wife took tea at Windsor Castle as guests of which monarch?

Queen Victoria received them with a party from the International Congress of Women, then meeting in London. Susan B. Anthony was in the same party at tea.

Which president brought his cabinet to visit Booker T. Washington's school shortly after the Spanish–American War?

William McKinley came on December 16, 1898, with all but one of his cabinet officers, drawing the biggest crowd the little town had ever seen.

Northern critics of Booker T. Washington's cautious approach helped found which civil rights organization in 1909?

The NAACP grew from the belief that open protest and political pressure, not patience, would win equal rights. It long outlasted the Tuskegee network, which fell apart soon after its leader died.

Which organization did Booker T. Washington found in Boston in 1900 and lead as its first president?

The National Negro Business League held its first meeting in Boston that August. He wanted Black-owned shops, banks and farms to build the wealth that political demands could later rest on.

While publicly urging patience, Booker T. Washington secretly paid for which kind of challenge to Jim Crow?

Court cases against segregation and voting bans drew his private money, including one heard by the Supreme Court in 1903. In public he kept arguing that confronting white Southerners head-on could end in disaster.

Booker T. Washington's 1912 book The Man Farthest Down reported on poor working people of which continent?

Europe was where he travelled with the sociologist Robert E. Park to study the working class. He wanted to compare its poorest people with Black Southerners back home.

At his first school roll call, Booker T. Washington made up which thing on the spot because he had none?

A surname was something every other child seemed to have, so when the teacher asked, he calmly answered Booker Washington. He later wrote that few men get the privilege of naming themselves.

Which composer turned Booker T. Washington's 1901 White House dinner into an opera called A Guest of Honor?

Scott Joplin took the opera on tour in 1903, but he could not meet his company's payroll and the score disappeared. No copy has ever been found.

Which celebrated singer christened the Liberty ship SS Booker T. Washington when it launched in 1942?

Marian Anderson launched the first major oceangoing ship named for an African American. Its captain, Hugh Mulzac, the first Black holder of a US shipmaster's licence, led a racially integrated crew.

In 1946, Booker T. Washington became the first African American on a United States coin of which denomination?

The half dollar showed his portrait on one side and his birthplace cabin on the other. Its designer, Isaac Scott Hathaway, was a Black artist who had offered his models for free.

The famous Tuskegee statue of Booker T. Washington shows him lifting what from a seated man?

A veil is being drawn away from a man who holds a book, standing for ignorance lifted by education. The bronze by Charles Keck was dedicated in 1922.

Margaret Murray, the third wife of Booker T. Washington, was a graduate of which historically Black college?

Fisk was where she finished her degree before joining Tuskegee as lady principal. She outlived her husband by ten years and led national clubs for Black women.

Portia, the only daughter of Booker T. Washington, made her living teaching which subject?

Music was her calling, and she taught piano and choir in Dallas and later back at Tuskegee. She was also the first African American to graduate from Bradford Academy in Massachusetts.

Who succeeded Booker T. Washington as principal of Tuskegee Institute after his death in 1915?

Robert Moton led the school for the next twenty years. The airfield where the Tuskegee Airmen first trained during the Second World War was named after him.

Medical records opened in 2006 showed which condition caused Booker T. Washington's fatal kidney failure?

Hypertension, with readings more than twice normal, lay behind it. At the time, his death at 59 was put down to heart failure made worse by overwork.

Which HBO period drama features Booker T. Washington as a character, played by Michael Braugher?

The Gilded Age brings him into its story of old New York society. On screen he has also been played by Roger Guenveur Smith, in the Netflix miniseries Self Made.

Because of his political skill, Booker T. Washington was nicknamed which figure "of Tuskegee"?

The Wizard of Tuskegee ran a nationwide network of editors, ministers, donors and Republican allies. Opponents had a colder name for the same network: the Tuskegee Machine.

Which rough garment did Booker T. Washington call the most trying ordeal of his enslaved boyhood?

A flax shirt felt, he wrote, like a hundred pin-points against the skin when it was new. His older brother John sometimes wore one for several days to break it in for him.