This Booker T. Washington Issue stamp honors Booker T. Washington, the first head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia in 1856; the stamp features the log cabin on the Burroughs Plantation where he was born. He was a dominant figure in the African-American community. A skilled orator, Washington helped to gain support for civil rights for disenfranchised African-Americans in the post-Reconstruction period. He focused on education, literacy and entrepreneurship.
United States; Virginia; West Virginia; Alabama; Booker T. Washington; African-American; black; slave; American Civil War; Reconstruction; Jim Crow Laws; civil rights; educator; author; orator; advisor; Tuskegee Institute; founder