Booker T Washington National Monument

Early 1900s America's most influential and powerful black activist was born a slave on a small Virginia tobacco farm in 1856.  Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, the Washington family moved to West Virginia, where young Booker struggled to take advantage of a startling new opportunity:  education.  First he rose every day before dawn to work in a salt mine so his afternoons would be free for school.  Then, at the age of 16, Booker walked most of the 500 miles back to Virginia to attend th Hampton Institute, one of the country's leading schools for blacks, where he would eventually become a teacher.

In 1881 Washington opened his own school, the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  His nonconfrontationsl stance, calling for interracial cooperation without abolishing social segregation too abruptly, drew protests from within his own race.

Nonetheless, Washington endured critical attacks and racial slurs to become the leading black figure of his day.  His famous Atlanta Compromise Address of 1895 crystallized his conservative viewpoint, which gradualy become more liberal in his later years.  In 1901 he published an autobiography.  Up From Slavery, and he died at Tuskegee in 1915.

The farm where Washington was born into servitude is on Route 122 west of Smith Mountain Lake.  Start your vistit to the monument here. At the visitors center, which has a short video and museum displays on Washington's life.  From there, a short walking trail leads past reconstructed buildings and stone outlines of the original structures, including the owners' home and the building where Washington was born.  The 1.5 mile Jack-o-Lantern Trail heads off into the woods, and rangers offer guided tours in the summer, contact the park for times.