Margaret Murray Washington

Margaret Murray Washington was one of the greatest women in the history of North America, in her day. She spoke to national audiences as first president of the National Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. But her greatest service came where she founded country schools, taught women how to live and attend to their homes, worked for the improvement of prisons, started the Mt. Meigs school for boys (which is now in Montgomery, AL) and an industrial school for girls, and constantly worked for the betterment of the poor and neglected.

Margaret Murray was an African American educator and clubwoman. The child of a Black woman and White father, she was from Macon, Mississippi. After the death of her father at the age of seven, Quakers took her in, and it was there that she received much guidance and education. She entered Fisk University in 1881 to become a teacher. She married Booker T. Washington in 1893 (his third wife) and stood faithfully beside him in making his dream of a great school (Tuskegee Institute) come true.

Murray joined the staff there and became the dean of the woman’s department after one year. Murray-Washington was the director of the Girl’s Institute at Tuskegee, which provided courses in laundering, cooking, dressmaking, sewing, millinery, and mattress making; skills which students were to use in maintaining healthy, efficient, and gracious homes.

In 1896, she became vice president of the National Federation of Afro American Women. Soon after she became president of the Alabama Association of Women’s Clubs until her death in 1925. Murray-Washington was a woman of great compassion, intelligence, and judgment. She became one of the greatest forces at Tuskegee and among Black leaders and thinkers in the America.