Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915), African American educator and racial leader, founded Tuskegee Institute for black students. His "Atlanta Compromise" speech made him America's major black leader for 20 years.

Booker Taliaferro (the Washington was added later) was born a slave in Franklin County, Va., on April 5, 1856. His mother was the plantation's cook. His father, a local white man, took no responsibility for him. His mother married another slave, who escaped to West Virginia during the Civil War. She and her three children were liberated by a Union army in 1865 and, after the war, joined her husband.

Growing Up Black

The stepfather put the boys to work in the salt mines in Malden, West Virginia. Booker eagerly asked for education, but his stepfather conceded only when Booker agreed to toil in the mines mornings and evenings to make up for earnings lost while in school. He had known only his...