page_title: Booker T. Washington
section_title: Honors and memorials
hierarchical_section_title: Booker T. Washington / Honors and memorials
caption_attribution_description: English: Booker_T_Washington_1940_Issue-10c.jpg
context_page_description: Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college he founded in Tuskegee, Alabama. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the "Atlanta compromise", which brought him national fame. He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South.
context_section_description: For his contributions to American society, Washington was granted an honorary master's degree from Harvard University in 1896 and an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College in 1901.
  
  At the center of Tuskegee University, the Booker T. Washington Monument was dedicated in 1922. Called Lifting the Veil, the monument has an inscription reading: 
  He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.
  In 1934 Robert Russa Moton, Washington's successor as president of Tuskegee University, arranged an air tour for two African-American aviators.  Afterward the plane was renamed as the Booker T. Washington.
  On April 7, 1940, Washington became the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
  In 1942, the liberty ship Booker T. Washington was named in his honor, the first major oceangoing vessel to be named after an African American. The ship was christened by noted singer Marian Anderson.
  In 1946, he was honored on the first coin to feature an African American, the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar, which was minted by the United States until 1951.
  On April 5, 1956, the hundredth anniversary of Washington's birth, the house where he was born in Franklin County, Virginia, was designated as the Booker T. Washington National Monument.
  A state park in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was named in his honor, as was a bridge spanning the Hampton River adjacent to his alma mater, Hampton University.
  In 1984 Hampton University dedicated a Booker T. Washington Memorial on campus near the historic Emancipation Oak, establishing, in the words of the University, "a relationship between one of America's great educators and social activists, and the symbol of Black achievement in education".
  Numerous high schools, middle schools and elementary schools across the United States have been named after Booker T. Washington.
  In 2000, West Virginia State University (WVSU; then West Va. State College), in cooperation with other organizations including the Booker T. Washington Association, established the Booker T. Washington Institute, to honor Washington's boyhood home, the old town of Malden, and Washington's ideals.
  On October 19, 2009, WVSU dedicated a monument to Booker T. Washington. The event took place at WVSU's Booker T. Washington Park in Malden, West Virginia. The monument also honors the families of African ancestry who lived in Old Malden in the early 20th century and who knew and encouraged Washington. Special guest speakers at the event included West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III, Malden attorney Larry L. Rowe, and the president of WVSU. Musical selections were provided by the WVSU "Marching Swarm".
  At the end of the 2008 presidential election, the defeated Republican candidate Senator John McCain recalled the stir caused a century before when President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House. McCain noted the evident progress in the country with the election of Democratic Senator Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States.
caption: Booker T. Washington was honored on a Commemorative U.S. Postage stamp, issue of 1940.[citation needed]
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