Bill Text: WV HR15 | 2015 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Honoring Booker Taliaferro Washington, author, educator, orator and advisor to United States presidents, on the 100th anniversary of his death
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)
Status: (Passed) 2015-03-12 - Completed legislative action [HR15 Detail]
Download: West_Virginia-2015-HR15-Introduced.html
HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 15
(By Delegate Rowe)
Honoring Booker Taliaferro Washington, author, educator, orator and advisor to United States presidents, on the 100th anniversary of his death.
Whereas, Booker T. Washington was born a slave on a farm in Franklin County, Virginia in the year 1856; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington is recognized as one of America's great educators, statesmen, authors and orators for his leadership for ten million African Americans who continued to struggle after the Civil War into the twentieth century; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington's formative years were in Malden, Kanawha County, West Virginia from age nine until he was twenty-five years old; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington attended Hampton Institute in Virginia and returned to teach school in Malden where he observed freed slave families, including his own family, succeeding in an integrated community with valuable education and equal compensation for work unlike in many areas in the Old South; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington, in 1881, became the first leader of the new Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, now Tuskegee University, in Alabama, building the Institute into America's most prominent educational institution for African Americans and remaining affiliated with the Institute the rest of his life; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington sought to counter disfranchisement and violence against African-Americans in the south with a nonmilitant call to progress through education and entrepreneurship; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington united leaders in both white and black society to build strength in the black community through self-help and schooling; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington published his autobiographical classic, Up From Slavery in 1900. The book has been recognized as one of the best nonfiction books written in America in the twentieth century and details his great public career, being one of the nation's first celebrities regularly touring to speak to thousands of Americans, black and white, about his success as a freed slave positing the best of the American Dream, for a degraded people to have their families succeed through equal opportunity for education and fairly compensated work; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington's first family home was on property owned by Lewis Ruffner at the mouth of Campbells Creek, now known as Port Amherst, on the Great Kanawha River near Malden, West Virginia; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington died one hundred years ago on November 14, 1915, at fifty-nine years of age; and
Whereas, Booker T. Washington is one of West Virginia's most enduring national celebrities; and
Whereas, It is proper that the anniversary of the death of this historical figure should not go unnoticed; therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Delegates of West Virginia:
That members of the West Virginia House of Delegates take the opportunity of the 100th anniversary of the death of Booker T. Washington, on November 14, 1915 to honor this early civil rights leader who worked so tirelessly to improve the lives of his fellow man; and, be it
Further Resolved, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates, forward a certified copy of this resolution to the Booker T. Washington Family Association, the Ruffner Family Association, and the Kanawha Valley Historical and Preservation Society.
