Description:Booker T. Washington, a controversial African-American figure, was perhaps one of the last great abolitionists to visit Birmingham who had lived through the devastation of the American Civil War. In its aftermath, he became a founder of the African American Tuskegee Institute in the American South. In his famous autobiography 'Up from Slavery' he writes of the journey he made to England in 1899:
"In Birmingham, England, we were the guestsfor several days of Mr. Joseph Sturge, whose father was a great abolitionists and friend of Whittier and Garrison. It was a great privilege to meet throughout England those who had known and honoured the late William Lloyd Garrison, the Hon. Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists."
'Up from Slavery' was published by Booker T. Washington in 1901. His fitting comment on Birmingham shows that the area had not lost contact with its antislavery roots (or the memory of Joseph Sturge) even at the turn of the twentieth century.