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• 1 media/Tuskegee Institute at the Founding in 1881.jpg 2018-03-14T17:28:01-07:00 Racial Uplift 10 image_header 2018-05-31T19:52:01-07:00 In 1881, Booker T. Washington arrived in Tuskegee, Alabama to open a new Negro school in the heart of the black belt, modeled after Hampton Institute, an industrial arts school for Negroes in Virginia. Hampton was created in 1868 by Samuel Armstrong to provide an education that would prepare freed slaves to work in a money economy. Booker T. Washington had walked 500 miles to attend Hampton in 1872, graduating with honors and teaching until General Armstrong asked him to continue the mission of Hampton in the deep South, specifically in Tuskegee, Alabama. Because it’s location was in the region known as the Black Belt surrounded by armed, belligerent Southerners, Washington had to be artful in his requests for financial and political backing of the black school. He had to convince the dominant race that supporting the Tuskegee Idea was to their benefit. Though Washington's gradual technique would be less contentious, others believed attaining racial equality would too slow.