Friday; November 29
Booker T. Washington was born in Virginia during the waning years of American slavery. Washington would have been a small child when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, but he came of age during the post-slavery era of the South. While his social and political theories were not embraced by everyone (even his own contemporaries) he became a leader in education and economic reform. I recently came across an interesting quote that transcends his life and times of the early 20 th Century, “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”. I am somewhat leery in quoting this statement because of the potential backlash about the times in which it was written; however, I think its value transcends the potential criticism. I believe that this observation is just as important in the 21 st Century as it was 100 years ago. Societies have come to advocate that pursuits such as philosophy and arts are more imp