Booker T. Washington, educator, author, reformer and founder of what is now Tuskegee University, died in Tuskegee, Alabama, at the age of 59. Washington is a representative of the last generation of Black leaders born into slavery. He famously called for Blacks in the post-Reconstruction-era south — most of whom who were illiterate farm workers — to pour their efforts into their industrial and farming skills in order to attain economic security, with hopes that would gradually bring harmony between Blacks and the white community.

(Photo: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)