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Booker T. Washington - Success and LeadershipBooker T. Washington - Success and Leadership

 

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

African American leader (pictured right), born a Virginian slave, but freed when he was six.

 

Why was he a great leader and successful?

 

1. Principles

He believed that everyone (black or white) has the right to:

  • be happy 
  • make the best of their opportunities (through the best possible education and hard work -see point 2).

“One cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him”, he said.

 

2. Fighter for character and education

He thought that African Americans would be the equals of whites through:

  • education and self-reliance 
  • responsibility and character.

Washington said

“Character, not circumstances, makes the man”

He also strongly believed in a virtuous, simple and useful life without intellectual snobbery.

“No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem”, he said.

 Booker T. Washington - Success and Leadership

3. Co-operation

To help African Americans, Washington

  • co-operated with powerful and rich white people .
  • was the first African American (in 1901) to visit the White House as a guest of the president (Theodore Roosevelt) - pictured right above together. Booker T. Washington - Success and Leadership 
  • attracted the support of rich whites like the businessmen, Andrew Carnegie (pictured right), Henry Rogers and Julius Rosenwald (pictured right below), who together funded thousands of schools for blacks.

Washington even:

  • accepted segregation Booker T. Washington - Success and Leadership 
  • didn’t publicly condemn lynchings.

But his conciliatory attitude was attacked by more militant black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963).

Du Bois (pictured right below)

  • called Washington “The Great Accommodator”. Booker T. Washington - Success and Leadership 
  • believed that blacks would remain permanently inferior without big changes in American society and more militant action.

 

4. Determination

Washington was a self-made man, who overcame:

  • the tragic deaths of his first two wives.
  • hostility from other blacks (see point 3).
  • his poor background.

As a boy he had to work, but went to night school and eventually university.

 

5. Hard work

He died young (59) due to a lifetime of hard work and dedication to the African American people.

 He said:

“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work”.

.

Booker T. Washington - Success and Leadership

6. Support

He said he would not have been successful without the love and support of his three wives (pictured right with his third wife, Margaret, and two sons).


 

Key quote on management

You cannot hold a man down without staying down with him

 

Key quote on work

No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem

 

Key quote on ethics

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

 

Key quote on influencing people

The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.

 

Key quote on empowerment

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.

 

Key quote on careers

Excellence is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

 

Key quote on communication

We must reinforce argument with results.

 

Key quotes on success

The circumstances that surround a man's life are not important. How that man responds to those circumstances is important.

Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

 

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