Booker T. Washington was the most prominent African American leader of his era, an educator and reformer whose advocacy of self-improvement and vocational training made him a powerful, if controversial, voice in the decades after slavery. Born a slave on a Virginia farm, he gained his freedom as a child at the end of the Civil War and worked his way through school by his own determination, laboring in salt furnaces and coal mines.
In 1881 he was chosen to lead a new school for Black students in Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute, which he built from almost nothing into a renowned center of education. There he preached a philosophy of practical skills, hard work, thrift, and economic self-reliance as the path by which Black Americans could earn dignity and prosperity.
Washington rose to national fame with his 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" address, in which he urged Black Americans to focus on economic advancement and, for the time being, to accept social separation from whites. The speech made him the most influential Black leader in America, courted by presidents and philanthropists.
His accommodationist stance drew sharp criticism from other Black leaders, notably W. E. B. Du Bois, who demanded immediate civil and political rights. The debate between them shaped Black political thought for generations. Washington died in 1915, his autobiography Up from Slavery a lasting testament to his remarkable life.