Booker T. Washington Rediscovered

A new take on this icon of African American educational reform, drawing on previously unpublished materials. Booker T. Washington, a founding father of African American education in the United States, has long been studied, revered, and reviled by scholars and students. Born into slavery, freed and raised in the Reconstruction South, and active in educational reform through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Washington sought to use education to bridge the nation’s racial divide.