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The University of Illinois Press offers online access to "The Booker T. Washington Papers," a 14-volume set published by the press. Users can search the papers, view images, and purchase the print version of the volumes. Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) was an African-American educator who was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia

Probably nothing in Booker T. Washington' life had as much symbolic significance for the blacks for whom he claimed to speak as the day he dined with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, October 16, 1901. Not even the publication of his autobiography earlier that year had indicated so clearly just how far "up from slavery" Washington had traveled. Though criticized by many, the dinner was a sign, especially to his black supporters, of Washington's arrival at the heart of power in America. Even as Washington expanded his political influence to become a counselor of presidents, the racial climate was worsening and black political rights in the South were plummeting. Volume 6 documents the events of this somber period, including Washington's secret challenge to the Alabama grandfather clause. It also includes evidence of T. Thomas Fortune's diminishing influence with Washington and the extension of the Tuskegee Machine's web of influence into the North

When Booker T. Washington died in November 1915, he was mourned by blacks and whites alike as a national hero. Such prominent figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald publicity paid him high tribute. Distinguished journals and newspapers published editorials praising his work and lamenting his passing. The present volume includes much of this response to Washington's death and, in covering the final two years of his life, brings to a close one of the most critically acclaimed documentary projects of the past two decades