Booker T. Washington
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50 free Booker T. Washington trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Booker T. Washington was born enslaved on a small Southern farm and became the most influential Black leader of his generation. Along the way he taught himself to read, travelled hundreds of miles to reach college, and built a school in Alabama whose students raised their own classrooms. This quiz covers the fun facts people look for: his childhood and family, his three marriages and his children, the early days at Tuskegee, the speech that made him famous, his books, his powerful friends and critics, and the memorials that carry his name. It suits students, teachers planning a Black History Month lesson, and anyone who likes a good life story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story as you play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which president caused a Southern uproar in 1901 by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House?
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Q 02An 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
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.
Q 03In 1940, Booker T. Washington became the first African American pictured on which everyday item?
A postage stamp
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.
Q 04What unusual entrance exam did Booker T. Washington pass to win a place at Hampton Institute in 1872?
Sweeping a room
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.
Q 05Which 1901 autobiography by Booker T. Washington became a bestseller and has been widely read ever since?
Up from Slavery
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.
Q 06In Booker T. Washington's famous 1895 exposition speech, a ship's crew lost at sea is told to lower what?
A bucket
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.
Q 07Which famous American author shared a New York stage with Booker T. Washington at a 1906 fundraiser for Tuskegee?
Mark Twain
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.
Q 08Which civil rights leader skipped ninth grade to enroll at Georgia's Booker T. Washington High School?
Martin Luther King Jr.
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.
Q 09Which basic fact about himself did Booker T. Washington say he never knew for sure?
His date of birth
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.
Q 10Which Northern scholar became Booker T. Washington's leading critic and demanded full civil rights at once?
W. E. B. Du Bois
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.
Q 11Booker T. Washington's famous 1895 speech at the Cotton States Exposition was delivered in which Southern city?
Atlanta
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.
Q 12After emancipation in 1865, Booker T. Washington's mother took her children to which state, where he grew up?
West Virginia
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.
Q 13As a boy in Malden, Booker T. Washington started work before dawn at a furnace that produced what?
Salt
Q 21Penniless in Richmond on his way to Hampton, Booker T. Washington spent his nights sleeping where?
Under a sidewalk
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.
Q 22How did 16-year-old Booker T. Washington cover most of the long journey from Malden to Hampton Institute?
By walking
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.
Q 23Before Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington lived in a Hampton dormitory as house father to students from which group?
Native Americans
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.
Q 14Before he could read, young Booker T. Washington learned to recognize which mark on the barrels he packed?
The number 18
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.
Q 15Washington Ferguson, who escaped bondage during the Civil War, was which relative of Booker T. Washington?
His stepfather
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.
Q 16Jane, the mother of Booker T. Washington, did which job on the Burroughs plantation in Virginia?
Cook
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.
Q 17The Virginia farm where Booker T. Washington was born, now a national monument, raised which cash crop?
Tobacco
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.
Q 18The T in Booker T. Washington stands for which name, chosen by his mother but forgotten for years?
Taliaferro
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.
Q 19Which book, the first Booker T. Washington ever held, did his mother find so he could learn the alphabet?
A Webster speller
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.
Q 20To get to school on time, young Booker T. Washington secretly did what at the furnace where he worked mornings?
Moved the clock forward
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.
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.
Q 24Samuel Armstrong, the general who picked Booker T. Washington for Tuskegee, grew up where as the son of missionaries?
Hawaii
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.
Q 25Booker T. Washington chose which American holiday in 1881 to open his new school in Tuskegee?
Independence Day
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.
Q 26At Tuskegee's first campus, Booker T. Washington turned a stable and which other farm building into classrooms?
A henhouse
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.
Q 27After three brick kilns failed at Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington pawned what for fifteen dollars to try a fourth?
His watch
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.
Q 28Booker T. Washington preached a so-called gospel of which everyday item that every Tuskegee student had to own?
A toothbrush
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.
Q 29Which Chicago retail magnate teamed up with Booker T. Washington to build rural schools for Black children?
Julius Rosenwald
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.
Q 30Which Standard Oil millionaire, a close friend of Booker T. Washington, quietly funded 65 small country schools?
Henry H. Rogers
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.