The Life of Booker T. Washington Booker T. Washington was a great influence for the black community. The efforts this man put to become such a wonderful leader were incredible. Booker T. Washington was a man that started up from scratch. He grew up as a Black slave, who did not have much choices in life. He was born in Virginia in 1856, and he had a white father and a black mother. After the Emancipation Proclamation he went to work in a coal mine, while still a child. When Booker was seventeen he went of to Hampton Institute, he worked there as a janitor. He then became a student there. Following all the hard work Booker T. Washington has put in his life he became a very famous sp