Who started the first African American school where they could learn skills such as farming and shoemaking?

Answer 1

Booker T. Washington, the prominent African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States was asked to be the first leader of of the new Tuskegee Institute a normal school (teacher's college). He arrived only to discover no land, buildings, teachers or student and he set to work to remedy all of those issues.

Over half of Tuskegee's 5,000 acre campus was a working farm. Students learned agriculture, soil conservation, animal husbandry, dairying, crop management and the like in morning classes, then applied their knowledge in the afternoon to operating the farm. He introduced training in 45 trades, from carpentry and masonry to electrical and mechanical engineering, shoemaking, printing, publishing, nursing and even "domestic skills".

He built a 150-teacher faculty, hiring the best he could find: people like George Washington Carver to head the Agricultural Department and Robert Taylor, the first black architect to graduate from MIT. Under his leadership, Tuskegee's enrollment grew to 2,000 plus and its endowment to $45 million (adjusted for inflation).

Answer 2

Booker T. Washington

Tuskegee Negro Normal Institute was opened on the 4th July, 1888.

Answer 3

George Washington Carver me

Answer 4

George Washington Carver