Booker T. Washington

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“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome” –Booker T. Washing. Booker Taliaferro Washington was born in Hale’s Ford, Virginia on April 5th, 1856 to Jane Burroughs and an unknown White man. Washington was married three times. His first wife was Fannie N. Smith from Malden, West Virginia. Booker and Fannie were married in the summer of 1882 and had one child together named Portia M. Washington. Fannie died two years later in May 1884. The second wife was Olivia A. Davidson in 1885. Olivia was a teacher in Mississippi and Tennessee. She then worked as a school teacher in Tuskegee and that is how she met Booker T. she was an assistant principal. Olivia and Booker had two sons, before she died in 1889 Booker T. Washington Jr. and Ernest Davidson Washington. His third wife was Margaret James Murray they married in 1893. Margaret and Booker never had children together but she treated his children as her own. She died after Booker T. Washington in 1925. When Booker T. was nine years old his stepfather insisted that he go to work. He worked in the mines and dreamed of going to college on day. When he turned sixteen he went and fulfilled his dreams. Washington traveled to Hampton, Virginia. He attended Hampton Institute and graduated with honors in 1875. Washington traveled back home to Malden he taught school there for some years. He moved to Washington D.C... He returned to teach at Hampton where he befriended Samuel Chapman Armstrong a white man whom was the principal of the institute. After two years of being part of the staff Armstrong endorsed Washington to become a principal of a trade school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama they hired him e...

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