Booker Washington

Biography

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) 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. Born into slavery on April 5, 1856, in Hale's Ford, Virginia, Washington was freed when U.S. troops reached the area during the Civil War. As a young man, Booker T. Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary. In 1881, he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an institute for black higher education. He expanded the college, enlisting students in construction of buildings. Work at the college was considered fundamental to students' larger education. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. Washington played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among more liberal whites. Washington wrote an autobiography, Up from Slavery, in 1901, which became a major text. In that year, he dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, which was the first time a black person publicly met the president on equal terms. After an illness, he died in Tuskegee, Alabama on November 14, 1915. Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class Black people, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with the goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by focusing on self-help and education. Washington had the ear of the powerful in the United States of his day, including presidents. He used the nineteenth-century American political system to manipulate the media, raise money, develop strategy, network, distribute funds, and reward a cadre of sup

Bio from Wikipedia

Discography

Records they worked on — most-collected first.

• 

  This Is The Big Band Era

  1971

• 

  Count Basie In Kansas City: Bennie Moten's Great Band Of 1930-1932

  1965

Credited work

86 releases · 21 albums · active 1954–2013

• Performance · 81
• Other credits · 17

Studios: RCA Recording Studios · Atlantic Studios · The Birdhouse

Frequent collaborators

• Various
• Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra
• Bennie Moten And His Orchestra
• Pete Johnson
• Count Basie
• Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra
• Jay McShann
• Albert Wynn And His Gutbucket Seven

Around the web

• Wikipedia