Wealthy Friends and Benefactors
Washington associated with the richest and most powerful businessmen and politicians of the era. He was seen as a spokesperson for African Americans and became a conduit for funding educational programs. His contacts included such diverse and well-known personages as Andrew Carnegie, William Howard Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Huttleston Rogers, George Eastman, Julius Rosenwald, Robert Ogden, Collis Potter Huntington and William Henry Baldwin Jr., who donated large sums of money to agencies such as the Jeanes and Slater Funds. As a result, countless small schools were established through his efforts, in programs that continued many years after his death. Along with rich people, black communities also helped their communities by donating time, money and labor to schools. Churches such as the Baptist and Methodist also supported black elementary and secondary schools.
Read more about this topic: Booker T. Washington
Famous quotes containing the words wealthy, friends and/or benefactors:
“You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family—but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)