(gentle music) - [Narrator] Imagine that you were not allowed to go to school.

This might seem like fun at first, but without going to school, how would you learn to read, or count, or know the difference between a quarter and a nickel?

Back before the Civil War, during the time of slavery in the US, it was illegal for an enslaved person to learn to read or go to school, but after the Civil War ended and enslaved people were freed, people started setting up schools to teach formerly enslaved people.

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery.

As a small child, he would wish that he could go into the schoolhouse and learn to read.

After enslaved people gained freedom, Booker's step-father worked in a mine.

When Booker and his brothers were old enough, they joined him in working the mines.

It was hard, dangerous work.

Booker knew that this life was not one that he wanted.

He continued to dream of going to school and getting an education.

Why did Booker T. Washington say you should get an education?

Education helped Booker T. Washington make an incredible life journey, leading him to become the head of the prestigious Tuskegee Institute.

His journey to a better life began when he heard some of the workers in the mine talking about a place called Hampton Institute, a school for Black people.

He immediately knew that Hampton was the place for him, so at age 16, he left home and walked 500 miles to enroll.

One of his teachers was General Samuel Armstrong.

He taught Washington writing, reading, math, and science.

Students also spent a lot of their time raising animals and learning farming, bricklaying, and carpentry.

General Armstrong showed Washington the importance of self-reliance, which means relying on one's own powers and resources rather than those of others.

Booker T. Washington graduated Hampton Institute with honors in 1875.

Washington wanted to help Black people in their daily lives, so he used the lessons that he had learned at Hampton to build a new school for Black people in Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute.

In 1881, he arrived in Tuskegee to an empty lot.

Within a week, he had started classes using an old church as a classroom.

The Tuskegee Institute trained students to be teachers and more.

Washington taught students to learn by using their hands, their heads, and their hearts.

Educating the hand.

In addition to learning teaching skills, every student at Tuskegee was expected to learn a practical skill.

This was the education of their hands.

Through their own labor, students supplied a large part of the needs of the school.

Students built a kiln, made bricks for school buildings, and sold bricks to raise money.

Within a few years, they built a classroom building, a dining hall, a girls' dormitory, and a chapel.

They learned agriculture and grew their own foods.

They acquired hands-on knowledge of numerous skilled trades like carpentry, furniture and cabinet making, printing, shoemaking, and bricklaying.

Washington believed that industrial education taught moral education.

Industrial training, or vocational training, had three functions.

First, Black students could work to pay their expenses at school.

Secondly, they could develop skills that would be of economic value when they left school.

Third, and most important, was to teach students about the importance of a strong moral backbone.

Washington also understood that students needed to learn how to think.

Educating the head.

Educating the head, or academic learning, was not a separate, isolated pursuit.

Washington encouraged students to use what they learned while studying math, reading, writing, and science in their industrial work.

He wanted to ensure that Tuskegee graduates would be hired for all kinds of jobs, not just manual labor.

His belief in the need for a knowledgeable labor force could be seen in the Tuskegee Institute helping Black farmers throughout the Black Belt by instructing them in crop science and household management.

The education of teachers at Tuskegee prepared them both to provide instruction in academics and to establish schools on the Tuskegee model throughout the South.

Tuskegee-trained teachers were also community organizers, carpenters, fundraisers, and nutritionists.

In 1882, Washington helped create the Alabama State Teachers Association to assist Black teachers in their mission to elevate the rural population, a task made more difficult by the sharecropping and convict lease systems that kept Blacks uninformed and in debt.

To Washington, education was a process of refinement, of making oneself better, and to have a good heart is an essential part of a good education.

Educating the heart.

Washington believed that the goal of education is not only knowledge or skills, but goodness, usefulness, and the power to help others, that a person's happiness came from a life of service.

He dedicated his life to giving back and sharing his knowledge with his students, inspiring them to live well-rounded lives and uplift their communities.

His actions served as an example of being a kind and generous spirit with a good heart.

Booker T. Washington held that education was the route to success, financial freedom, and equality for Black people.

He made learning his life.

Through education, he saw a path for Black people to overcome obstacles and achieve economic independence, as well as develop strength, self-reliance, and most importantly, self-esteem.

(gentle music)