Booker T. Washington Quotes


I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I resolved then that I would permit no man, no matter what his color, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.


Citations

Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901, p. 165.

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Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
  • Born: April 5, 1856
  • Died: November 14, 1915
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Educator, Author, African American Civil Rights Leader

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.