WASHINGTON, BOOKER TALIAFERRO (c. 1859— 1915), American negro teacher and reformer, was born on a plan tation in Franklin county, Virginia. Soon after the Civil War he went to Malden, W.Va., where he worked in a salt furnace and then in a coal mine. He obtained an elementary education at night school, and became a house servant in a family where his ambition for knowledge was encouraged. In 1872 "by walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars" he travelled 5oom. to the Hampton (Va.) Normal and Agricultural institute, where he remained three years, working as janitor for his board, and graduated in 1875. For two years he taught at Malden, his former home, and studied for eight months (1878-79) at the Way land seminary in Washington, D.C. In 1879 he became instruc tor at the Hampton institute, where he trained about 75 Ameri can Indians with whom Gen. S. C. Armstrong was carrying on an educational experiment, and he developed the night school, which became one of the most impor tant features of the institution. In 1881 he was appointed organ izer and principal of a negro normal school at Tuskegee, Ala. (q.v.), for which the State legis lature had made an annual appro priation of $2,000. Opened in July, 1881, in a little shanty and church, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial institute became, un der Washington's presidency, the foremost exponent of indus trial education for the negro. In the first 19 years of the school's
existence 4o buildings were erected, all but four largely by student labour, and student labour also provided other necessities. To promote the interests of the school and to establish better under standing between whites and blacks, Washington delivered many addresses throughout the United States, notably a speech in 1895 at the opening of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition. In 1900 at Boston, Mass., he organized the National Negro Business League. Harvard conferred upon him the honorary degree of A.M. in 1896, and Dartmouth that of LL.D. in 1901. He died at Tuskegee on Nov. 14, 1915, as the result of overwork.
Among his publications are The Future of the American Negro (1899); Sowing and Reaping (1900) ; Up from Slavery (1901), a strong autobiography; Character Building (1902) ; Working with the Hands (19o4); Tuskegee and its People (1905) ; Putting the Most into Life (1906) ; Life of Frederick Douglas (1907) ; The Negro in Business (19o7); The Story of the Negro (1909) ; My Larger Education (1911); and The Man Farthest Down; a Record of Observation and Study in Europe (1912).