By convention, today we celebrate the birthday of Booker Taliaferro Washington. Born into slavery in Virginia in 1856—and emancipated in 1865—at 16 Washington attended the Hampton Normal Agricultural Institute, where he worked as a janitor to pay his tuition. Later, he led the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers—now Tuskegee University—in Alabama from its founding in 1881 until his death in 1915, as it grew from a one-room shack to a nationally recognized institution. Washington believed in vocational training and self-reliance, and urged African Americans to seek economic opportunity before pressing for social or political equality. Although this stance made him popular with some white leaders—he advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft—contemporaries like W.E.B. DuBois criticized Washington for his accommodationist views. Washington wrote dozens of books, including the best-selling autobiography Up From Slavery, and was the first African American to receive...