Booker Taliaferro Washington believed that education was the key to the black community ascending in the economic-social structure of the United States. He became their leader and spokesman at the national level. Although his style of non-confrontation was criticized by some he was very successful in his relationships with great philanthropists such as Anna T. Jeanes, Henry Huddleston Rogers, Julius Rosenwald and the Rockefeller family, who sponsored thousands of dollars education in Hampton and Tuskegee. They also financed hundreds of public schools for black children in the south and made donations to promote legal change on segregation and voting rights.