Martin Luther King, Jr. and Booker T. Washington Essay

Submitted By sking5105
Words: 487
Pages: 2

Dear Mr.president,
If you live in a Nation, if you want to live in harmony and peace, if you want your voice to be heard, if you want Freedom and democracy to cherish all over, then you must participate in the civic and political matter and you must vote! No Democracy would ever exist on earth without your participation and no freedom would ever be there for you. Civic and political participation is as well important so that decisions are not made by a few people. Participation by the masses insures greater freedom. Many strong hearted men and women showed this idea to be true and one of these influential persons was Booker T. Washington.
Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia and after the Civil War he worked in a coal mine and went to school at night. Education was important to him, but he also recognized that blacks in the South had very little power, little money, few rights, and were unable to vote. His suggestion was that blacks should get jobs in blue collar craft work and farming and teaching. He pushed for the creation of agricultural and technical schools, such as Tuskegee Institute in Alabama which he founded. But by working hard and earning respect and accepting their legal status for the time being, blacks would ultimately gain the respect of whites, who would grant them more rights. This made Washington very popular with whites at that time and he was even invited to dine at the White House with Teddy Roosevelt.
In September of 1895 Washington became a national hero. He was invited to speak at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Washington publicly accepted disfranchisement and social segregation as long as whites would allow black economic progress, educational opportunity, and justice in the