Booker T. Washington

1. What was Booker's childhood like?

* His childhood wasn't good at all. He lived with his family as a slave in a little cabin on a farm. There was very little space in this cabin so it was hard to do anything in it. His mother didn't show him the attention he wanted growing up.

2. What did he think about slavery?

* He obviously didn't like being a slave, and all he wanted to do was be a normal kid that went to school like the other white kids.

3. What did Booker most want to do as a boy?

* Booker just wanted the chance to go to school when he was growing up.

4. How did he measure success?

* "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 while trying to succeed." - Booker T. Washington

5. What did he learn while working for Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of the salt

furnace/coal mine owner?

* While he stayed with Viola, she taught him strong work ethic which molded him into a hard working person.

6. What was Booker's "test" to enter Hampton Institute?

* He was to clean the school and was tested on how good of a job he did after he was done cleaning

7. How did he pay for his education?

* After passing the cleaning test, he was hired as the janitor for the school to help pay for the costs.

8. What did he learn at Hampton?

* He learned how to read and write, and he later learned how to use public speaking as a tool for becoming a teacher back home.

9. Booker criticized freedmen because of their views on education. What were these views?

* Most of the former slaves didn't have the money to put themselves through school so they weren't that interested in even trying to raise money to go. He criticized their efforts in becoming successful men and women.

10. What fault did he find with the federal government in its handling of freedmen

during Reconstruction?

* During Reconstruction, former slaves and many small white farmers became trapped in a new system known as sharecropping. In exchange for land, a cabin, and supplies sharecroppers agreed to raise a cash crop and give half the crop to their landlord. High interests rates charged for goods bought on credit transformed sharecropping into a system of economic dependency and poverty. Most of the slaves that took place in this sharecropping ended up in debt because they couldn't keep up with the taxes of the land.

11. What were Booker's first teaching jobs?

* When he returned home to Wayland he started teaching Sunday School, he then taught at the Hampton institute

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