More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honored and distinguished ancestry which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead and yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my color to do that for me which I should do for myself. Later in my life I found that my mother had given me the name of “Booker Taliaferro” soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as soon as I found out about it I revived it, and made my full name “Booker Taliaferro Washington.” I think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have. By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him “Booker Washington,” as if I had been called by that name all my life and by that name I have since been known. I was in deep perplexity, because I knew that the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only one.

When I heard the school roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of having three. From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply “Booker.” Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather A name. Washington speaks about going to school after he and his family are free. Below is a passage from Chapter 2 of his 1901 autobiography, Up From Slavery.

Washington was a leader of the African American community until his death in 1915. He founded and was named head of the Tuskegee Institute, a black university in Alabama. He dedicated himself to education and started many schools for black students. Washington was born into slavery in 1856.

Up from slavery