DID YOU KNOW?
Marriages And Children
In 1882, Booker T. Washington married Fannie N. Smith in Rice’s Zion Baptist Church in the Tinkersville section of Malden. She was a student of Washington. A year later, the couple were blessed with a child who was named Portia. On May 4, 1884, Fannie Smith Washington died suddenly of unknown causes.
A couple of years later, on August 11, 1886, in Athens, Ohio, Booker T. Washington married Olivia A. Davidson. She was a free woman of color who had helped Washington develop the Tuskegee Institute. Olivia and Booker had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr., born on May 29, 1887; and Ernest Davidson Washington, born on February 6, 1889. On May 9, 1889, shortly after the birth of her second child, Olivia A. Davidson died due to tuberculosis.
On October 10, 1892, Booker T. Washington married Margaret Murray in
create a mark for himself as a prominent political figure among African Americans. He also had substantial influence within the networks of white politicians and philanthropists.
Tuskegee. The couple did not have any children, but Murray helped raise the three children of Washington from his previous marriages. Murray out lived Washington and died on June 4, 1925. Murray had come to Tuskegee as lady principal in 1889 and directed the programs for female students. She went on to play a prominent role in the women’s liberation movement and in improving the educational system for African Americans. In 1972, she was inducted into Alabama’s Women Hall of Fame.
Later Career
On September 18, 1895, Washington gave a speech which became the basis for the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites would guarantee that blacks would receive basic education and due process in law. Although, through the Atlanta Compromise, Washington was able to secure basic educational rights for the African Americans, his tactics were severely criticized by prominent African American leader W. E. B. Du Bois to be too accommodating to the demands of the white community.
Now, Washington received honorary degrees from Harvard University in 1896 and Dartmouth College in 1901. In 1900, he organized the Negro Exhibition at the Exposition Universelle in Paris along