Editing Booker T. Washington (section)

== Later career ==
Washington led Tuskegee for more than 30 years after becoming its leader. As he developed it, adding to both the curriculum and the facilities on the campus, he became a prominent national leader among African Americans, with considerable influence with wealthy white philanthropists and politicians.{{sfn|Harlan|1971}}

Washington expressed his vision for his race through the school. He believed that by providing needed skills to society, African Americans would play their part, leading to acceptance by white Americans. He believed that blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by acting as responsible, reliable American citizens. Shortly after the [[Spanish–American War]], President [[William McKinley]] and most of his cabinet visited Booker Washington. By his death in 1915, Tuskegee had grown to encompass more than 100 well-equipped buildings, roughly 1,500 students, 200 faculty members teaching 38 trades and professions, and an endowment of approximately $2&nbsp;million (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US-GDP|value=2000000|start_year=1915}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}).<ref name="Britannica entry">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Booker T. Washington |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica |date= 2020 |publisher=Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Booker-T-Washington |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200510080242/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Booker-T-Washington |archive-date=May 10, 2020 |access-date=May 13, 2020}}</ref>

Washington helped develop other schools and colleges. In 1891 he lobbied the West Virginia legislature to locate the newly authorized [[West Virginia Colored Institute]] (today [[West Virginia State University]]) in the [[Charleston metropolitan area, West Virginia|Kanawha Valley]] of West Virginia near Charleston. He visited the campus often and spoke at its first commencement exercise.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.wvstateu.edu/news/default.aspx?news=233 |title= Booker T. Washington Monument to Be Dedicated in Malden |publisher= WVSU |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120218230444/http://www.wvstateu.edu/news/default.aspx?news=233 |archive-date= February 18, 2012 }}</ref>

[[File:Booker T. Washington by Francis Benjamin Johnston, c. 1895.jpg|thumb|upright|Washington circa 1895, by [[Frances Benjamin Johnston]]]]

Washington was a dominant figure of the African-American community, then still overwhelmingly based in the South, from 1890 to his death in 1915. His [[Atlanta Compromise|Atlanta Address of 1895]] received national attention. He was a popular spokesman for African-American citizens. Representing the last generation of black leaders born into slavery, Washington was generally perceived as a supporter of education for freedmen and their descendants in the post-Reconstruction, [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow-era]] South. He stressed basic education and training in manual and [[domestic labor]] trades because he thought these represented the skills needed in what was still a rural economy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hamilton |first1=Kenneth |title=Booker T. Washington in American Memory |date=2017 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=978-0252082283 |page=6}}</ref>

Throughout the final twenty years of his life, he maintained his standing through a nationwide network of supporters including black educators, ministers, editors, and businessmen, especially those who supported his views on social and educational issues for blacks. He also gained access to top national white leaders in politics, philanthropy and education, raised large sums, was consulted on race issues, and was awarded honorary degrees from [[Harvard University]] in 1896 and [[Dartmouth College]] in 1901.<ref name="Britannica entry" />

Late in his career, Washington was criticized by civil rights leader and NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Bois.  Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Address as the "Atlanta Compromise", because it suggested that African Americans should work for, and submit to, white political rule.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/booker-t-washington-and-atlanta-compromise |title=Booker T. Washington and the 'Atlanta Compromise' |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=n.d. |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |publisher=Smithsonian |access-date=October 14, 2020 |archive-date=October 7, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201007220803/https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/booker-t-washington-and-atlanta-compromise |url-status=live }}</ref>  Du Bois insisted on full civil rights, due process of law, and increased political representation for African Americans which, he believed, could only be achieved through activism and higher education for African Americans.{{sfn|Du Bois|1903|p={{page needed|date=November 2020}}}} He believed that "the [[talented tenth]]" would lead the race. Du Bois labeled Washington, "the Great Accommodator."{{sfn|Du Bois|1903|p={{page needed|date=November 2020}}}} Washington responded that confrontation could lead to disaster for the outnumbered blacks, and that cooperation with supportive whites was the only way to overcome racism in the long run.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

While promoting moderation, Washington contributed secretly and substantially to mounting legal challenges activist African Americans launched against segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks.{{Sfn | Meier | 1957}}{{Rp | needed = yes|date=January 2013}} In his public role, he believed he could achieve more by skillful accommodation to the social realities of the age of [[racial segregation|segregation]].{{Sfn | Harlan | 1983 | p = 359}}

Washington's work on education helped him enlist both the moral and substantial financial support of many major white [[philanthropist]]s. He became a friend of such self-made men as [[Standard Oil]] magnate [[Henry Huttleston Rogers]]; Sears, Roebuck and Company President [[Julius Rosenwald]]; and [[George Eastman]], inventor of roll film, founder of [[Kodak|Eastman Kodak]], and developer of a major part of the photography industry. These individuals and many other wealthy men and women funded his causes, including Hampton and Tuskegee institutes.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}}

He also gave lectures to raise money for the school. On January 23, 1906, he lectured at [[Carnegie Hall]] in New York in the [[Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture]]. He spoke along with prominent orators of the day, including [[Mark Twain]], [[Joseph Hodges Choate]], and [[Robert Curtis Ogden]]; it was the start of a capital campaign to raise $1,800,000 (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US-GDP|value=1800000|start_year=1906}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}) for the school.<ref>[http://www.twainquotes.com/19060123.html "Choate and Twain Plead for Tuskegee | Brilliant Audience Cheers Them and Booker Washington"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160308003518/http://www.twainquotes.com/19060123.html |date=March 8, 2016 }}, ''The New York Times,'' January 23, 1906.</ref>

The schools which Washington supported were founded primarily to produce teachers, as education was critical for the black community following emancipation. Freedmen strongly supported literacy and education as the keys to their future. When graduates returned to their largely impoverished rural southern communities, they still found few schools and educational resources, as the white-dominated state legislatures consistently underfunded black schools in their segregated system.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}}

To address those needs, in the 20th century, Washington enlisted his philanthropic network to create matching funds programs to stimulate construction of numerous rural public schools for black children in the South. Working especially with [[Julius Rosenwald]] from Chicago, Washington had Tuskegee architects develop model school designs. The [[Rosenwald Fund]] helped support the construction and operation of more than 5,000 schools and related resources for the education of blacks throughout [[Southern United States|the South]] in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The local schools were a source of communal pride; African-American families gave labor, land and money to them, to give their children more chances in an environment of poverty and segregation. A major part of Washington's legacy, the model rural schools continued to be constructed into the 1930s, with matching funds for communities from the [[Rosenwald Fund]].{{Sfn | Anderson | 1988}}{{Rp | needed = yes|date=January 2013}}

Washington also contributed to the Progressive Era by forming the National Negro Business League. It encouraged entrepreneurship among black businessmen, establishing a national network.{{Sfn | Anderson | 1988}}{{Rp | needed = yes|date=January 2013}}

His autobiography, ''[[Up from Slavery]],'' first published in 1901,{{Sfn | Washington | 1901}} is still widely read in the early 21st century.