On July 4, 1881, educator and activist Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, known today as Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Washington served as the school’s first princ
ipal and presided over the first day of class, which was held in a one-room church before the first official building was erected one year later. A driving force behind building the school’s legacy, Washington recruited the most qualified Black teachers to teach at the school, including scientist George Washington Carver, who arrived in 1896.
