Booker T. Washington ranks among the great men in American history. One cannot read his autobiography, Up from Slavery, without sharing in its pride, dedication, and principles. Booker T. Washington deserves recognition during February's National Black History Month and beyond.

Born a slave in 1856, Washington was 7 when the Emancipation Proclamation rang in his ears. At 11, he got his first book and taught himself to read. He thought to "get into a schoolhouse and study ... would be about the same as getting into paradise."

Washington did attend day school, but his attendance was irregular; eventually he had to quit and begin working again. But he pursued paradise and took up night school after his "day's work was done." Washington reports, "Often I would have to walk several miles at night in order to recite my night lessons."

He set off alone at 16 -- on a 500-mile journey with $1.50 in his pocket -- to study at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. At Hampton, deserving students were provided opportunities by which they could earn their keep. Thus, Washington again attended classes during the day and labored at night to earn his room and board.

Washington was proud of his janitorial job, and he worked diligently to do it well. When offered the position, Washington exclaimed, "I gladly accepted, because it was a place where I could work out nearly all the cost of my board. The work was hard and taxing, but I stuck to it. I had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work late into the night, while at the same time I had to rise by four o'clock in the morning, in order to build the fires and have a little time in which to prepare my lessons."

Washington recounts, "At Hampton I ... learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants brings." Great accomplishments followed Washington's graduation from Hampton.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the 1881 founding, and ensuing leadership, of the Tuskegee Normal School for Coloured Youth. The school still stands today, its name having been changed to the Tuskegee Institute, a living monument to Booker T. Washington.

Washington recognized that an education and a solid work ethic were the cornerstones to an individual's betterment. He married these two at Tuskegee.

Tuskegee Normal School was built by its students -- literally. They designed and constructed virtually every building on the campus. Tuskegee students made the bricks and dug "out the earth where the foundations were to be laid." Washington proudly wrote in Up from Slavery that students labored "after the regular classes were over," as he did while at Hampton. Profits from student-run businesses helped defray room and board costs for poor students.

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." So believed the man born into the world as a slave.

"I have never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. I have always had high regard for the man who could tell me how to succeed." So believed the man who delivered an opening address at the 1895 International Exposition in Atlanta, received an honorary degree from Harvard in 1896, and built a school that was worthy of a presidential visit in 1899.

Booker T. Washington's words, actions, and character are a timeless inspiration for all. His determination and dedication were unshakable. He set his heart on a goal and humbly achieved it, seemingly knowing recognition would follow. Washington noted, "No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward. This is a great human law which cannot be permanently nullified."

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Kurt T. Weber is Vice-President of the Cascade Policy Institute and an adjunct scholar of the Sutherland Institute, a Utah public policy research institute. Permission to reprint this article in whole or in part is granted provided credit is given to the author and to the Sutherland Institute.

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