Olivia A. Davidson

Olivia America Davidson Washington (June 11, 1854 – May 9, 1889) was an American teacher and educator.

She was born free as Olivia America Davidson in Virginia. After her family moved to the free state of Ohio, she studied in common schools and later college.

Davidson was hired by Booker T. Washington as a teacher and assistant principal of the Tuskegee Institute from 1881. In this role she also did fundraising and gave public speeches, especially about the education of black women. In 1886 she married Washington. She was his second wife; they had two sons together and raised Portia Washington, his daughter by his first marriage to Fannie Smith Washington. Olivia Washington died four years later of tuberculosis.

Early life and education Olivia America Davidson was born free on June 11, 1854, in Mercer County, Virginia, now Mercer County, West Virginia. Her mother was a free woman of color and her father, Elias Davidson, had been freed from slavery. He worked in agriculture. Under the laws of slavery, children took the status of their mother. Olivia had at least two sisters and a brother; all were born free. When Olivia was a child, her family left western Virginia because of its discriminatory treatment of free blacks.

They moved to Ironton, Ohio, as it was a free state. Some time after her father died, the family moved to Albany, Ohio. Davidson continued to study at common schools. By 1870, she was living with her sister Mary and brother-in-law Noah Elliot in Gallipolis. Her sister, a dressmaker and milliner, relocated with her husband several times before they settled in the larger city of Columbus, Ohio. She threw herself into the work despite her precarious health, becoming Washington's partner in building Tuskegee. His first wife, Fannie N. Smith, died in 1884.

On August 11, 1886, in Athens, Ohio, Davidson and Washington married. She served as stepmother to young Portia Washington, the child of Booker T.'s first marriage.

Private life and death Washington's first son, Booker T. Washington, Jr., was born on May 29, 1887. Her second son, Ernest Davidson Washington, was born February 6, 1889. Two days later, the Washingtons' house at Tuskegee burned down. Olivia Washington suffered exposure to the early morning cold and had likely already contracted tuberculosis. Her health deteriorated and she died three months later of laryngeal tuberculosis on May 9, 1889, at Massachusetts General Hospital.