The business ideas and practices of Booker T. Washington

This dissertation is about the business ideas and practices of Booker T. Washington. It extracts Washington's business ideas from his speeches and writings and explains how many of them were implemented through his uplift organizations, the Negro Farmer's Conference, the National Negro Business League, and the Tuskegee Institute campus. This dissertation also shows the consistency apparent between Washington's business ideas and practices and accentuates key factors that contributed to the formation and development of Washington's business ideas, as well as tracing the origins of many of them. Finally, it demonstrates and explores Washington's broad economic influence on African-American life and history, by focusing on a diverse sampling of individuals who were influenced by his business philosophy.; More importantly, this dissertation calls for a reinterpretation of how Booker T. Washington is generally conceived. Rather than the reactive accommodationist with a narrow economic program, this study finds Washington to have been a shrewd and proactive economic individual, who espoused business formation and development as an uplift strategy. This claim is supported by five major arguments. (1) Of the numerous factors that contributed to molding and developing Washington's business philosophy, his experience of observing how Tuskegee Institute became an indispensable asset to its surrounding community was a critical influence. (2) Washington's business philosophy promoted capturing the African-American market as well as a significant share of the open market. (3) Washington's business philosophy was the core of his leadership platform. (4) Washington's business philosophy play at the core of his broader liberation and empowerment strategy for African Americans, and (5) every program that Washington's implemented was cast in an economic mold.; This dissertation contributes to the current literature on Washington because unlike other works, it examines Washington from a business perspective and constructs his business philosophy from his speeches and writings, clearly delineating his system. It also shows how his business philosophy permeated and dominated all facets of his uplift programs.