2023 Road Trip: Civil Rights Trail: Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site (5/5/2023)

Friday, May 5, 2023 (continued)

Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site:

General view of Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University

The Tuskegee Institute was established in 1881 as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, as a result of an agreement between former Confederate Colonel, W F Foster, who was a candidate for re-election to the Alabama Senate, and a local Black leader, Lewis Adams. If Adams secured the vote of his Black constituents, then Foster would help establish a school for Black people in the county.

Lincoln Gate (1904, by Robert R Taylor, the first
Black student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology/MIT,
who designed many of the early buildings at Tuskegee Institute)

Booker T Washington was hired at age 25 years from the Hampton Institute in Virginia, to lead the development of the school. Washington believed in knowledge of practical trades and self-reliance, and maintained an all-Black faculty, resulting in a name change to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. In 1896, Washington hired George Washington Carver, who also believed a practical education would make African-Americans self-sufficient.

The George Washington Carver Museum building
(1915, as the campus laundry) is also the Visitor Center
for the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site
(the museum is a Roadside America attraction)

As a botany and agricultural teacher and researcher, Carver
wanted to devise practical farming methods, which
led to his many inventions and new uses for farm crops

A re-creation of Carver's first laboratory

Preserves of the many vegetables Carver studied

And, of course, the peanut plant!

Carver was also an artist!

Carver worked with Henry Ford to see if automobile parts
could be manufactured from "soybean plastic," (Mr and Mrs
Henry Ford were at the dedication of the museum in 1941)

Carver used this Jesup Agricultural Wagon
as a mobile classroom to educate the local
farmers and sharecroppers, including the women
with lessons on preserving food and sewing

Later, the Jesup Wagon was actually a
customized truck

Bust of George Washington Carver

Booker T Washington Monument at Tuskegee University

Lifting the Veil of Ignorance
(1922, by Charles Keck)

The Oaks (1899-1900, by Robert R Taylor in
Queen Anne style) had electricity and steam heat, and
was built by students and faculty at Tuskegee Institute;
the house is temporarily closed "for rehabilitation"

Next: Montgomery, AL.