Booker T. Washington has been a most controversial figure in the fight for civil rights since his rise to fame in the late 1800's. Many who knew him believed that he was a straightforward man, and he was admired as a genuine hero to black Americans. In his later years he earned several nicknames, including the Sage of Tuskegee and the Wizard of the Tuskegee Machine.
Washington was born heard rumors about his father being a white man. The soon-to-be-famous civil rights leader grew up in a cabin with an earthen floor and a slave in Franklin City, Virginia in 1858 or 1859. …
