The memoirs and accounts of the Black educator are presented with letters, speeches, personal documents, and other writings reflecting his life and career.

The University of Illinois Press offers online access to "The Booker T. Washington Papers," a 14-volume set published by the press. Users can search the papers, view images, and purchase the print version of the volumes. Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) was an African-American educator who was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.

The memoirs and accounts of the Black educator are presented with letters, speeches, personal documents, and other writings reflecting his life and career.

Michael Boston offers a radical departure from other interpretations of Booker T. Washington by focusing on the latter’s business ideas and practices. More specifically, Boston examines Washington as an entrepreneur, spelling out his business philosophy at great length and discussing the influence it had on black America. He analyzes the national and regional economies in which Washington worked and focuses on his advocacy of black business development as the key to economic uplift for African Americans. The result is a revisionist book that responds to the skewed literature on Washington even as it offers a new framework for understanding him. Based upon a deep reading of the Tuskegee archives, it acknowledges Washington not only as a champion of black business development but one who conceived and implemented successful strategies to promote it as well. The Business Strategy of Booker T. Washington makes abundantly clear that Washington was not an accommodationist; it will be required reading for any future discussion of this titan of history.

The University of Illinois Press offers online access to "The Booker T. Washington Papers," a 14-volume set published by the press. Users can search the papers, view images, and purchase the print version of the volumes. Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) was an African-American educator who was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.

The memoirs and accounts of the Black educator are presented with letters, speeches, personal documents, and other writings reflecting his life and career.

Washington's gradual rise to prominence as an educator, race leader, and shrewd political broker is revealed in this volume, which covers his career from May 1889 to September 1895, when he delivered the famous speech often called the Atlanta Compromise address. Much of the volume relates to Washington's role as principal of Tuskegee Institute, where he built a powerful base of operations for his growing influence with white philanthropists in the North, southern white leaders, and the black community.