Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute Founded 1881

Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama on July 4, 1881, with $2,000 from the state legislature and no land or building. Students made their own bricks and built the campus. By 1899 Tuskegee had 1,400 students and 84 teachers. Its model of vocational education produced thousands of Black teachers, farmers, and tradespeople, though critics argued it implicitly accepted exclusion from higher education and political life.