The Future of the American Negro

Born a slave on a Virginia farm in 1856, Booker T. Washington taught himself to read after emancipation, worked hard to fund his own education, and eventually attended the Hampton Institute. He became a prominent Black educator and an important voice on race in America during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Future of the American Negro, written by Washington in 1899, outlines his ideas on the history of enslaved and freed African American people and their need for education to advance themselves. In one chapter, the author discusses the founding of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881, which he would lead until his death in 1915.