Washington, Booker T(aliaferro)

US educationist, pioneer in higher education for black people in the South. He was the founder and first principal of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, in 1881, originally a training college for blacks, and now an academic institution. He maintained that economic independence was the way to achieve social equality.

Washington argued that blacks should abandon their struggle for immediate civil rights and instead concentrate on acquiring wealth, culture, and education, and that these in turn would bring respect, acceptance, and eventual equality for blacks. This stance caused him to be shunned by many black intellectuals and civil-rights leaders such as W E B du Bois.