Booker T Washington High School
Booker T Washington High School
Booker T Washington Elementary is the first HISD African American School renamed between 1911 and 1913 in honor of Booker T. Washington. During the time, it was the only school to be named after a living person. Booker T. Washington was admired by many and considered the wizard of Tuskegee. Therefore, when his name was presented to the school board, it was adopted without thought of its effect upon custom. The school's first principal was E. O. Smith.
Later, the Old Colored High School founded in 1893 located on San Felipe was renamed Booker T High School in 1928. The school’s first principal was Charles H. Atherton. The first student to graduate from the high school was Wright Mungin in 1896.
Booker T Washington
On April 5, 1856, Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia near Hale's Ford. His mother's name was Jane and his father was an unknown white man. Jane was the slave of James Burroughs.
The Civil War ended when Washington was nine years old. Washington recalls the day in his 1901 book Up from Slavery to the White House: As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper, the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading, we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying but fearing that she would never live to see." Jane immediately moved her family to West Virginia to join her husband Washington Ferguson.
When Washington was ten years old, he worked as a houseboy for a white family. He also worked in a salt furnace and coal mines to earn money to further his education. Washington attended and worked his way through Hampton Institute in 1862 at the age of 16. He later attended Wayland Seminary, Washington, DC for six months. After graduating, Washington returned to Hampton Institute and became a teacher. Former Union Brevet Brigadier General Sam Chapman Armstrong, Hampton Institute's President, recommend the 25-year-old Washington to head Tuskegee Institute in 1881. Washington modeled Tuskegee Institute after Armstrong's philosophy at Hampton Institute.
Washington was married to Fannie N. Smith, Olivia A. Davidson, and Margaret James Murray. He fathered three children, Portia M. Washington, Booker T. Washington Jr., and Ernest Davidson Washington. Washington credits his three wives for their contributions to the success of Tuskegee Institute. The success of Tuskegee Institute won Washington support amongst Colored leaders and northern white philanthropist especially Julius Rosenwald.
In 1895, during his Atlanta Compromise address at the Cotton States Exposition, Washington struck the keynotes of racial accommodationism: Cast down your buckets where you are. In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. Washington was an educator, author, orator, and adviser to United States Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
