Booker T. Washington letter (MS.2014.021)

Biographical/Historical note

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was one of the foremost African-American leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into slavery Virginia, Booker T. Washington put himself through school and became a teacher. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama (now known as Tuskegee University), which focused on training African Americans in agricultural pursuits. A political adviser and writer, Washington clashed with intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois over the best avenues for racial uplift. Washington advocated for education and economic success as the first step toward racial equality rather than pushing immediately for the end of segregation and disenfrachisement.

John C. Minkins

John Carter Minkins was born in January 1869 in Virginia. He moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island as early as 1900 and became a writer, journalist and managing editor of the Providence Evening News. It is believed that Minkins was the first African American to become the managing editor of a daily newspaper intended for white readers. He delivered an address before the Union Lyceum in New Bedford, MA on January 3, 1909 then revised it and read it again on Sunday, March 18, before the Bethel Lyceum. That address was later printed in Providence, RI in 1909 as the pamphlet "Negro Progress Since Emancipation." He also gave an address to the Boston Literary and Historical Association in May 1910 in which he put forth his reasons for not opposing laws against miscegenation. An article titled John C. Minkins on Race Purity about his talk was printed on the first page of The Indianapolis Recorder for May 7, 1910.

Minkins married Rosa Lerisa Jessup (1871-1945), also of Virginia, in 1894 and they had 8 daughters, 5 of whom survived to adulthood.