5 The Greatest Good

Chapter 5 The Greatest Good George had no plans to leave Iowa State. He liked the faculty and the students there, and they liked him. He was studying for a graduate degree in agriculture and was teaching young men and women, too. It looked as if George was set for a long career at the school. But in April 1896, he

received a letter that changed his life. It was from educator and orator Booker T. Washington. Washington was perhaps the most famous black man in America in the late 1800s. In 1895, he gave a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. The speech has come to be called the "Atlanta Compromise." Washington essentially urged blacks to accept the idea of separate-but-equal in

exchange for education, job training, and fairness in the court system. He wanted blacks to work with whites, not against them, to fight racism. Not everyone agreed with Booker T. Washington. Some of his critics in the civil-rights movement felt that accepting separate-but-equal meant whites would always think blacks were not as good as they were. Booker T. Washington, of course, didn't believe that. But he believed that if blacks ever were to achieve true equality in the United States, they would need better education. That was why Booker jumped at the chance to start an all-black school in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881. The Tuskegee Institute opened in a run-down, one-room building that year with just $2,000 from the state of Alabama. The next year, the school purchased one hundred acres of land, and the campus began to develop.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856–1915) BOOKER TALIAFERRO WASHINGTON WAS BORN INTO SLAVERY. HE GREW UP

TO BECOME AN EDUCATOR, AN AUTHOR, AND A WELL-KNOWN SPEAKER. IN 1881, HE ESTABLISHED THE TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE IN TUSKEGEE, ALABAMA, BECAUSE HE FELT THAT EDUCATION WAS THE BEST PATH FOR BLACK PEOPLE TO ACHIEVE TRUE EQUALITY. IN HIS TIME, WASHINGTON WAS THE MOST FAMOUS LEADER OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY. IN 1901, HE BECAME THE FIRST BLACK PERSON TO BE OFFICIALLY INVITED TO THE WHITE HOUSE WHEN PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASKED HIM TO DINNER.

THE TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE Tuskegee wasn't a traditional college, like Iowa State, that accepted only high-school graduates. Instead, some Tuskegee students had as little as a fifth-grade education. Many of their parents and grandparents had been slaves. They were there for hands-on learning they could use in their day-to-day lives. As part of their classes, some early Tuskegee students actually built the classrooms that rose on the new campus.