SHREVEPORT, La. ( KTAL/KMSS ) – When it comes to Black education in post-Civil War America , fewer men had more of an influence in Northwest Louisiana than Booker T. Washington .
Washington worked with equality greats such as Julius Rosenwald to create an organized system to educate people of color in the American South . In every Rosenwald schoolhouse across the South hung a picture of Booker T. Washington.
And by the early 1900s Washington’s popularity had grown immensely.
Historic archives show how Washington’s popularity captured the attention of Claiborne Parish residents when the famous educator made a rare trip to Louisiana in April of 1915.
An advertisement in The Guardian-Journal, Homer, Louisiana, showed that tickets were available on an excursion train that would arrive in Haynesville at 7:40 a.m., Homer at 8:30 a.m., and Athens at 9:04 a.m. before arriving in Gibsland to hear Washington speak.