Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915) was an African-American educator and author. He was born into slavery to an enslaved woman, and a white father. He worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary. In 1881 he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a private, black university. Washington attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895: a verbal agreement between African-American leaders and Southern white leaders. He was a supporter of education for freedmen in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow-era South. He had a nationwide network of supporters including black educators, ministers, editors, and businessmen. He gained access to top national leaders in politics, philanthropy and education, raised large sums, was consulted on race issues and was awarded honorary degrees from leading American universities. His autobiography, Up From Slavery, first published in 1901, is still widely read today. He collapsed in NYC and was brought home to Tuskegee. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died in 1915, at the age of 59.