In the fall of 1901, Booker T. Washington sat inside the White House for a private dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt—a moment of unprecedented political access that stood in stark contrast to a bizarre incident earlier that day, when an ambassador walked off with Washington's coat and discovered a lucky rabbit's foot in the pocket. Born into slavery on a Virginia plantation around 1856, Washington's journey to becoming the most powerful African American of his era began in absolute deprivation, working West Virginia salt furnaces and coal mines as a child before walking 500 miles to the Hampton Institute. It was there that he passed the famous "broom exam," proving his academic grit by sweeping a recitation room to meet General Samuel Armstrong's standards of practical discipline. Taking this hands-on philosophy to Alabama in 1881, he foun ...