The Influence of Personalities on the Public Education of Negroes in Alabama, I

Whatever importance be assigned to the role of personalities in the historical process, the habit of thinking and writing of social processes in terms of individualities makes the subject one of significance. In Alabama the presence of a commanding personality, and the school Tuskegee Institute, which was his lengthened shadow, requires a detailed attention to this force in the interpretation of education of Negroes in the state. Booker Taliaferro Washington was born in Virginia at sometime in the middle 'fifties of the eighteenth century.1 His life, he said, had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.2 He entered Hampton Institute in 1872, finishing the course of instruction there in 1875.3 After teaching in West Virginia for two years, he spent a fruitless year at Wayland Seminary, a classical school in Washington; later returned to Hampton Institute as an assistant in charge of the Indian boys domiciled there at that time, and later served as instructor in the Night School for work students.4 In May of 1881 Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Hampton Principal, received a letter from Alabama asking him to recommend a principal for a new school to be established at Tuske

Mathematics education · Personality · Personality psychology · Political science · Sociology · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology