By Gary Blanson
Our focus this week is on a great African-American leader, Booker T. Washington.
Mr. Washington was a leader, educator, philanthropist and advocate for racial uplift through industrial and domestic education.
He was one of the most well-known African American public figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Mr. Washington rose to prominence as the head of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute where he secured funding from white philanthropists including Andrew Carnegie and later Julius Rosenwald. His thrust into public notoriety occurred after he delivered “The Atlanta Compromise Speech” in 1895.
In 1901, Booker T. Washington formally incorporated The National Negro Business League In New York. It grew rapidly with 320 chapters in 1905 and more than 600 chapters in 34 states in 1915.
Booker T. Washington believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic and that African American entrepreneurship was vital. Thus, he founded the league to further the economic development of the African American businesses in order to achieve social equality in the American society.
Members in the league included small business owners, farmers, doctors, lawyers, craftsmen, and other professionals. The National Negro Business League ended up paving the way for W.E.B. Dubois and The Niagara Movement, Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association, and O.W. Gurley and BLACK WALL STREET.
