The Exhibit of American Negroes: Tuskegee Institute

The Exhibit of American Negroes WORLD'S FAIR, PARIS 1900
Introduction • The Georgia Negro • Black Colleges • Black Life and Culture • Black Literature
Black Colleges
Fisk • Howard • Tuskegee • Hampton • Claflin • Agricultural and Mechanical College • Other Colleges

Tuskegee Institute

Tuskegee Normal School opened on July 4, 1881, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Booker T. Washington, a graduate of Hampton Institute, was recommended to head the school by Hampton’s founding principal, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Washington rapidly rose to prominence among white social and political leaders. In his 1895 speech at the Atlanta Exposition, Washington took an accomodationist stance, one highly popular with mainstream white leadership. In doing so, he alienated many other black leaders, but assured the continued support of Tuskegee by white philanthropists. W. E. B. DuBois, at first an admirer of Washington, wrote perhaps the most telling early critique of Washington and the "Tuskegee Plan" in his 1903 work The Souls of Black Folk.

Almost all of the photographs sent from Tuskegee to the Paris Exhibition were photomontages. They are very large, measuring approximately 36 by 20 inches.

Tuskegee

Tuskegee Institute and Its Industries

For more images of Tuskegee, click here.