Booker T. Washington was a former slave who would manage to get a comprehensive education that allowed him to become the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a school for the education African-American teachers. He helped collect funds to open numerous community schools and universities for African-American students. He also lobbied state and federal governments for funding and support of educational venues and opportunities for African-American students. He brokered a famous agreement called the Atlanta Compromise, in which he obtained concessions from the Southern White Establishment in favor of expanding educational venues and opportunities for African-Americans in exchange of their acceptance of Southern White supremacy (though he also secretly funded African American organizations that legally fought to eliminate such supremacy and all other forms of institutional racism and discrimination. He was so popular and accepted that he was the first African-American leader invited to the White house by president Theodore Roosevelt to dine with him and his family which won a great deal of political support for the cause of education opportunities for African Americans.
