The primary voice of the African American community from 1890 to 1915, and the author of Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington was an educator and orator as well as a founder of the Alabama school that developed into Tuskegee University. Washington proposed that most African Americans would benefit from a practical trade rather than a liberal arts education — a position opposed by other black leaders, including W. E. B. Dubois, and the source of a debate that lingers to this day.
