This essay gives the brief histories Booker. T Washington and General Armstrong. It discusses these two men’s friendship, their lives and personalities. It also gives the reason for their respect to each other.
Booker T. Washington was born as a slave at western Virginia farm in the year1859 during the time of severe slavery. Washington states, “From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life has been occupied in some kind of labor.” Due to this slavery, his exact birth day date and month is not known as well as his ancestry (Knol). . He was a very substantial force in shaping the progress agenda of the black people in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Washington become the leader of the Negro race in and he was well recognized America. Although he struggled to realize success proof to other black men and women that they could raise themselves, he received much criticism that he kept the Negro down in his place. Also, his leadership became more controversial. His mother gave him a copy of a book known as Webster’s blue-black spelling book which inspired him to begin his education. He started attending night classes where he was about the values of hard work for economic and moral strength. In the year 1881, booker t. was invited to Alabama where he was given a responsibility as a principal at a normal school in Tuskegee (Washington T. Pg 3). From 1881 to his death in the year 1915, he exerted much influence on the consciousness of the Negroes. Some organizations and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People opposed Washington’s policies of racial accommodation. He put more emphasis on industrial and economic education rather than civil and political rights (Cunnigen D, Dennis M & Glascoe G. Pg 33). He said, “In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (Profcover). His Christian character and his education give an insight into himself and his approaches.
General Armstrong. General Chapman Armstrong was born in 1839 in Wailuku and he was the founder of the Hampton Institute and he was a pragmatic accommodationist who dedicated his life and energies to the actions that aimed at changing the hearts, minds and the social structures of the Negroes. He asserted that “it meant something to Hampton School, and perhaps to the ex-slaves of America, that, from 1820 to 1860, the distinctly missionary period, there was worked out in the Hawaiian Islands, the problem of emancipation, enfranchisement and Christian civilization of dark-skinned Polynesian people in many respects like the Negro race.” He educated and inspired them to resume their inferior positions in the South’s social structures (Lindsey F. Pg 1-2)
His greatest success was Booker T. Washington who graduated from Hampton and the first principal of Tuskegee Institute. Armstrong was inspired by Washington’s statement that “In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress”. This made him to develop his vision for the Indian education and he had a dream of a model multiracial society at the Hampton Institute. He was recruited into the army where he rose to higher ranks. At the age of 51 his left side of the body was paralyzed by strokes which led to his death. He was buried at the school cemetery as simple soldier. (Lindsey F. Pg 6).