Olivia A. Davidson

Deceased Person

1854 – 1889

 Credit ยป
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Who was Olivia A. Davidson?

Olivia America Davidson Washington was a co-founder of the Tuskegee Institute and the second wife of Booker T. Washington. She was born on June 11, 1854 in Mercer County, Virginia, now Mercer County, West Virginia, to a freed slave and a free black woman. She died May 9, 1889.

Mrs. Washington's family fled Virginia because of the treatment of free blacks and went to Ironton, Ohio. Some time after her father Elias died, the family moved to Albany, Ohio, where Washington continued to get a common school education. She lived with her sister Mary and brother-in-law Noah Elliot in Gallipolis, Ohio at the time of the 1870 Census. Her sister, a dressmaker and milliner, relocated several times before going to Columbus, Ohio.

In 1870, at the age of sixteen, Mrs. Washington began teaching in parts of Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas, spending some time in Spencer, Mississippi. In 1874, she became a sixth-grade teacher in the new Clay Street School in Memphis, Tennessee, now the Booker T. Washington High School, where her sister Margaret was also a teacher and where her brother Joseph lived. There, her principal instituted changes that she had recommended.

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Born
1854
United States of America
Also known as
  • Olivia Davidson
Spouses
Nationality
  • United States of America
Education
  • Hampton University
Died
May 9, 1889

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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