Through his personal faith that God would aid their efforts toward racial justice with or without the help of others, Washington urged the nation to fulfill its creed of equal rights for all people as articulated in the American Declaration of Independence. Though not successful in entirely reconciling blacks and whites, Washington encouraged American blacks to to lay aside their grievances over past experiences and work toward building a more just and inclusive America, at the same time making it next to impossible for Marxism to ever be taken seriously by the masses of American blacks. Du Bois, were influenced by Marxist interpretations of class struggle and denigrated Washington as an "accommodationist" and "Uncle Tom." Yet, Washington displayed the courage and leadership to take the masses of newly freed blacks in the only direction that made sense in the context of Reconstruction. Washington and his program of self-improvement were bitterly attacked by the Northern black intelligentsia in the early twentieth century. Stressing personal morality and irreproachable character, Washington believed that economic self-reliance had to precede demands for equal social status and political rights. Washington believed that education should encompass both academic and vocational training, but, more importantly, character development. The school prospered largely through Washington's promotional efforts across the country and among people of wealth and influence, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Washington was named as the first principal of the historic black Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, in 1881. Eschewing militancy, Washington sought to improve opportunities for freedmen through a program of education and empowerment that would equip them with employable and entrepreneurial skills. #BOOKER T. WASHINGTON FULL#Washington, who lived the horrors of the slave system as a youth, recognized both the psychological and social barriers African Americans faced in their quest for full participation in the nation's civic life. In the decades after the war, millions of Southern freedmen needed an action program to meet the challenges of poverty, illiteracy, and social dislocation. Respectfully dubbed as "The Wizard of Tuskegee," Washington worked to achieve economic and social equality for American blacks after their emancipation from centuries of slavery following the U.S. Booker Taliaferro (T.) Washington (Ap– November 14, 1915) was an African-American reformer, businessman, educator, public speaker, and author.
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