Tuskegee is a city in Macon County

Macon County, Alabama

Macon County is a county in the U.S. state of Alabama. Its name is in honor of Nathaniel Macon, a member of the United States Senate from North Carolina. Developed for cotton plantation agriculture in the nineteenth century, it is one of the counties in Alabama within the Black Belt of the South.As...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. At the 2000 census the population was 11,846 and is designated a Micropolitan Statistical Area. Tuskegee has been an important site in various stages of African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 history.

It is where, in 1881, Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...

 founded the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers on a former plantation. It was later named the Tuskegee Institute and then Tuskegee University

Tuskegee University

Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund...

, with the mission of educating freedmen for self-sufficiency.