why is Booker T. Washington important?

Answer 1

Washington was the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, the first major institution of higher learning for African-Americans in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington

He was also a major spokesman for the African-American community, and debated WEB DuBois over major issues regarding the African-American community in the early 20th century.

Answer 2

Washington believed that the best interests of black people in the post-Reconstruction era could be realized through education in the crafts and industrial skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise, and thrift. He urged his fellow blacks, most of whom were impoverished and illiterate farm labourers, to temporarily abandon their efforts to win full civil rights and political power and instead to cultivate their industrial and farming skills so as to attain economic security. Blacks would thus accept segregation and discrimination, but their eventual acquisition of wealth and culture would gradually win for them the respect and acceptance of the white community. This would break down the divisions between the two races and lead to equal citizenship for blacks in the end. In his epochal speech (Sept. 18, 1895) to a racially mixed audience at the Atlanta (Ga.) Exposition, Washington summed up his pragmatic approach in the famous phrase: "In all things that are purely social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

Answer 3

He invented the all American food: peanut butter.

Answer 4

he started the tuskegee institute.