September 19, 1881: On this day Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, held its first classes. Booker T. Washington, then the school’s only teacher, instructed the inaugural class of thirty African American students out of a one-room shanty near the Butler Chapel AME Zion Church. As the newly hired principal in Tuskegee, Booker Washington began classes for his new school in a rundown church and shanty. The following year (1882), he purchased a former plantation of 100 acres in size. In 1973 the Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, did an oral history interview with Annie Lou…
Black in the Day…The Start of the Golden Tigers
