Booker T. Washington National Monument
Hardy, Virgina

Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856, in a small kitchen log cabin on a tobacco farm in Virginia's backcountry. As a young boy, a knowledge-thirsty Washington walked to school in Franklin County each day carrying the books of one of farm owner James Burrough's daughters hoping that he, too, would be permitted to learn.

After Abraham Lincoln's 1865 Emancipation Proclamation, Washington, who was born into slavery and, therefore, forbidden by law to attend school or be educated, sought a secondary education at Virginia's Hampton Institute. He paid his tuition and board by working as a janitor. At Hampton, he was trained to be a teacher and later became an instructor at the school.

In 1881, Washington was named the principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Washington believed in work, study, self-discipline, and self-reliance, qualities he emphasized at Tuskegee.

He raised money for the school by going on speaking tours and soliciting donations. He received money from white northerners, such as John D. Rockefeller, who were impressed with his work and non-threatening views on race relations. Under Washington's leadership, the school grew to be a world-famous institution and he was recognized as the nation's foremost African-American educator.

By the end of the 19th Century, Washington was widely considered the most prominent African American in the country. He advised number of business leaders and presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft.

Booker T. Washington was a renowned lecturer, civil rights activist, professor, author, and poet. His birthplace is now part of a larger site that includes a smokehouse, blacksmith shed, tobacco barn, corncrib, horse barn, and chicken lot that on April 5, 1956 was designated Booker T. Washington National Monument. The site allows visitors to see up close the landscape and remnants of the life that many African Americans experienced as slavery prevailed in the South.

The Booker T. Washington National Monument celebrates cultural diversity and the role that its namesake, one of the country's most influential African Americans, played in shaping American history.

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