After achieving freedom at the end of the Civil War, Booker Taliaferro Washington became one of the most famous Black American leaders, authors, and educators in the country. He was of the last generation born into slavery and lived through the Reconstruction Era as the freedoms gained during the War were systematical replaced with a regime of extreme political violence, racism, and legal discrimination. Booker T. Washington was an expert in political maneuvering and worked to help ‘uplift his race’ in the ways that he believed were best, education and economic development. He helped to establish more than 5000 schoolhouses for Black children across the South and in 1900 Washington established the National Negro Business League. He also wrote 14 influential books, including his autobiography, Up from Slavery. Perhaps Washington’s greatest legacy, is Alabama's historic university, the Tuskegee Institute, which he founded in 1882 and led until his death in 1915.
https://www.nps.gov/bowa/index.htm
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Booker T. Washington