The Significance of the park at the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site

Significance statements express why a park’s resources and values are important enough to merit designation as a unit of the national park system. These statements are linked to the purpose of Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site and are supported by data, research, and consensus. Statements of significance describe the distinctive nature of the park and why an area is important within a global, national, regional, and systemwide context. They focus on the most important resources and values that will assist in park planning and management.

The following significance statements have been identified for Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site. 

1. Fueled by a dream and a grassroots campaign, Tuskegee Institute’s establishment by the state of Alabama came from the effort of a former slave, Lewis Adams, and a former slave owner, George Campbell, to form a school for educating African Americans during the Reconstruction era.
2. Designed, built, furnished, and operated by African Americans during a time of repression in Reconstruction-era Alabama, Tuskegee Institute became a beacon of hope for African Americans seeking to improve their condition through education and self-sufficiency.
3. Drawing on his own rise up from slavery through hard work and self-discipline, Tuskegee Institute’s first president, Booker T. Washington, was an African American educator, author, orator, advisor to U.S. presidents, and the dominant leader in the national African American community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For 34 years, from 1881 until his death in 1915, Washington steered Tuskegee Institute to improve the conditions of African Americans through education and entrepreneurship.
4. Born into slavery and becoming a nationally renowned agricultural scientist, educator, and humanitarian, George Washington Carver established Tuskegee Institute’s first agricultural department in 1896 and was one of Tuskegee Institute’s most influential professors, both locally and on the national stage.
5. At Tuskegee Institute, George Washington Carver’s Agricultural Experimental Station and the Movable School brought education and training to the doorstep of working farmers in rural communities and then to the world, becoming an important advancement in agricultural education and training in the South.
6. Tuskegee Institute’s early education program began as a progressive curriculum based on vocational, agricultural, and industrial trades as envisioned by Booker T. Washington. Tuskegee University has become a leader in the fields of aerospace and chemical engineering, veterinary medicine, and bioethics, all of which continue today.
   

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