nation's African-American community from the 1890s to his death. Born to slavery and freed by the Civil War in 1865, he led the new Tuskegee Institute, then a teachers' college for blacks. It was to become his base of operations. The "Atlanta Exposition" speech of 1895 appealed to middle class whites across the South, asking them to give blacks a chance to work and develop separately, while implicitly promising not to demand the vote. White leaders across the North, from politicians to industrialists, from philanthropists to churchmen, enthusiastically supported Washington, as did most middle class blacks.  (less)