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R. R. Moton
(1867 - 1940)
Robert Russa Moton was born in Amelia County, Virginia, on August 26, 1867. As a young boy, he moved with his family to eastern Prince Edward County, where his father worked as foreman on the Vaughan plantation, while his mother was the family’s cook. When he was old enough, Moton worked as a house servant. Moton’s mother was literate and taught him how to read. The Vaughan family also tutored Moton.
Once the state of Virginia established a public school system in 1870, Moton attended a school, led by a Confederate veteran, near his home. In his autobiography, Moton recalled taking pride in already knowing how to read when so many of his fellow students did not. He also observed that a “coloured free school, with fifty or sixty children on the opening day, and meeting in the daytime as well, was a real marvel.”
In 1885, Moton enrolled at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a school established in 1868 to educate former slaves to become teachers and to excel in the agriculture and industrial arts. While still a student at Hampton, Moton taught 150 children in a two-room school in Cumberland County, north of Prince Edward.
In 1890, Moton graduated from Hampton and served there as commandant in charge of discipline for twenty-five years. In 1915, Moton succeeded Booker T. Washington as president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Moton retired from the presidency in 1935, due to declining health, and lived at Holly Knoll in Gloucester County, Virginia, where he died in 1940.