The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 515, Mar. 1889, U. of Illinois Press

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MARC H · ~ 889 189~. There is conflicting evidence on her birth and early life. She said in 1899 that her father was James Murray, an Irish immigrant, and contended that she was born on Mar. 9, 1865. That year was later inscribed on her tombstone. It is certain that she was born in Macon, Noxubee County, Miss., but no James Murray or any other white Murray appeared in the town of Macon in either the 1860 or 1870 census, nor any slaveholder of that name in the county. Her father could, on the other hand, have been a railroad worker, for Lucy Murray, her mother, is reported as head of a household near the railroad yard workers' boardinghouse in Macon in 1870, her occupation being washerwoman. An article by Emmett J. Scott of the Tuskegee staff, presumably written with her approval, reported that her father died when she was seven years old and that she went the next day to live with white Quaker schoolteachers, a brother and sister named Sanders. (Scott, ''Mrs. Booker T. Washington's Part in Her lIusband's Work,'' 42.) No one of that name appeared in the 1870 or 1880 census except John W. Sanders, a retail grocer born in England. A few doors away, however, were a white dry-goods merehant, Elijah Sandler, and Eliza Sandler, both born in Alabama. Whatever the element of truth in Margaret Washington's story, according to the 1870 census Lucy Murray, black, lived with two daughters, Laura, lo, mulatto, and Margaret, 9, mulatto, and two sons, Willis, 7, mulatto, and Thomas, 4, black. Margaret Murray possibly lived with the Sanders or Sandler family, but in 1880 the census reported her as living with her mother, now married to a black man, Henry Brown, a brick mason. In 188~, deciding that she needed more schooling, Margaret Murray entered Fisk University at the bottom of the preparatory school as a half-rater, that is, working to pay part of her expenses. She progressed through the preparatory and college classes in eight years and was a model pupil, often serving as a monitor for the girls in the lower classes. She may have misstated her age to secure admission to Fisk. One of her fellow students was W. E. B. Du Bois, who remained a lifelong friend despite his ideological differences with BOW. In 1895 Margaret Washington was president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and served for many years as president of the Southern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. She was also active in organizing groups of women for self-help in the town of Tuskegee and at various plantation settlements in the surrounding countryside. She presided at Dorothy Hall on the Tuskegee campus as superintendent of women's industries, and later as dean of women. She continued her work for the school after her marriage, and was hostess to an almost continuous flow of distinguished visitors, black and white. This work absorbed most of her energies. The welfare worker Florence L. Kitchelt, of the New York College Settlement, described Margaret Washington in egos: ''Mrs. Washington is lighter than he and has beautiful features, arched brows, blue (?) eyes, a Grecian nose, and a poise of the head like a Gibson girl. Her hands are white as mine and beautifully shaped. But her hair is kinky.'' (Florence L. [Cross] Kitehelt, journal entry, Apr. 3, egos, Sophia Smith Collection, MNS.) She outlived BTW by ten years. She continued active in women's-elub work, aided in the establishment of reform schools for black boys and girls in Alabama, and in 1922 was elected president of the International Council of Women of the Darker Races. 5I5