THE BIG SIX / 003 / EDUCATION
Booker T. Washington
Build. Grow. Own.
The historical record
Booker T. Washington became Tuskegee’s first principal in 1881. Under his leadership, the institution connected education with practical work and the development of skills. Tuskegee’s agricultural work became part of a broader effort to build educational opportunity for Black students.
The institution also became a home for George Washington Carver’s work and the farmer-education efforts associated with Thomas Monroe Campbell. Their stories are connected, but each represents a distinct contribution.
Historical sources: National Park Service — Booker T. Washington; Tuskegee University Archives — institutional collections.
The T&T principle: education
We use education to connect understanding with the ability to do something useful. A young person can study a plant, help care for it, understand the costs of growing it and consider the business that could be built around it.
Our application of this principle is practical and contemporary: bring classrooms, working farms and enterprise development into conversation. Academic knowledge and community knowledge should strengthen one another.
A question to carry forward
What should every learner be able to demonstrate—not simply describe—at the end of a farm-learning experience?
“Build. Grow. Own.” is T&T’s interpretive brand statement, not a quotation from Washington. Selecting an educational principle does not equate the figures’ full political or historical perspectives.
