Tuskegee Women’s Club
Margaret Washington, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
Elite Black women who lived on and around the campus of black colleges organized Woman’s Clubs as self-help and philanthropic groups. Started in 1895, Tuskegee Women’s Club, only admitted female faculty members of Tuskegee Institute or wives or female relatives of male Tuskegee faculty. Margaret Washington, the wife of Booker T. Washington, and founder of the Tuskegee Woman’s Club, was a typical progressive era reformer in many ways but not in others. She championed black landownership which she believed would lead to black economic independence.
