milttl U\mm ml * w ml ill I « » mm • I IPPP ! ! ffllii I 1 i ill i 11 fflllfffrJjifflifl :t|| ■ w BOOKER T. WASHINGTON BUILDER OF A CIVILIZATION Booker T. Washington 4 Builder of a Civilization By Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe Illustrated from Photographs Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1916 Copyright, IQ16, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian COPYRIGHT, I9l6, BY THE OUTLOOK PUBLISHING CO. OCT 30 1916 CI. A 446 14:i (V FOREWORD IN THE passing of a character so unique as Dr. Booker T. Washington, many of us, his friends, were anxious that his biography should be written by those best qualified to do so. It is therefore a source of gratification to us of his own race to have an account of Dr. Washington's career set forth in a form at once accurate and readable, such as will inspire unborn generations of Negroes and others to love and appreciate all mankind of whatever race or color. It is especially gratifying that this biography has been pre- pared by the two people in all America best fitted, by antecedents and by intimate acquaintance and association with Dr. Washington, to undertake it. Mr. Lyman Beecher Stowe is the grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose "Uncle Tom's Cabin " had a very direct influence on the abolition of slavery, and Mr. Emmett J. Scott was Dr. Washington's loyal and trusted secretary for eighteen years. Robert R. Moton. Principal Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, August I, iqi6. AUTHORS' PREFACE THIS is not a biography in the ordinary sense. The exhaustive "Life and Letters of Booker T. Washington" re- mains still to be compiled. In this more modest work we have simply sought to present and interpret the chief phases of the life of this man who rose from a slave boy to be the leader of ten millions of people and to take his place for all time among America's great men. In fact, we have not even touched upon his childhood, early training, and education, because we felt the story of those early strug- gles and privations had been ultimately well told in his own words in "Up from Slavery." This autobiography, however, published as it was fifteen years before his death, brings the story of his life only to the threshold of his greatest achievements. In this book we seek to give the full fruition of his life's work. Each chapter is complete in itself. Each presents a complete, although by no means exhaustive, picture of some phase of his life. We take no small satisfaction in the fact that we were personally selected by Booker Washington himself for this task. He considered us qualified to produce what he wanted: namely, a record of his struggles and achieve- ments at once accurate and readable, put in permanent form for the information of the public. He believed that vii AUTHORS' PREFACE such a record could best be furnished by his confidential associate, working in collaboration with a trained and ex- perienced writer, sympathetically interested in the welfare of the Negro race. This, then, is what we have tried to do and the way we have tried to do it. We completed the first four chapters before Mr. Wash- ington's death, but he never read them. In fact, it was our wish, to which he agreed, that he should not read what we had written until its publication in book form. Emmett J. Scott, Lyman Beecher Stowe. Vlll PREFACE IT IS not hyperbole to say that Booker T. Washington was a great American. For twenty years before his death he had been the most useful, as well as the most distinguished, member of his race in the world, and one of the most useful, as well as one of the most distinguished, of American citizens of any race. Eminent though his services were to the people of his own color, the white men of our Republic were almost as much indebted to him, both directly and indirectly. They were indebted to him directly, because of the work he did on behalf of industrial education for the Negro, thus giving impetus to the work for the industrial educa- tion of the White Man, which is, at least, as necessary; and, moreover, every successful effort to turn the thoughts of the natural leaders of the Negro race into the fields of business endeavor, of agricultural effort, of every species of success in private life, is not only to their advantage, but to the advantage of the White Man, as tending to remove the friction and trouble that inevitably come throughout the South at this time in any Negro district where the Negroes turn for their advancement primarily to political life. The indirect indebtedness of the White Race to Booker ix PREFACE T. Washington is due to the simple fact that here in Amer- ica we are all in the end going up or down together; and therefore, in the long run, the man who makes a substan- tial contribution toward uplifting any part of the com- munity has helped to uplift all of the community. Wher- ever in our land the Negro remains uneducated, and liable to criminal suggestion, it is absolutely certain that the whites will themselves tend to tread the paths of bar- barism; and wherever we find the colored people as a whole engaged in successful work to better themselves, and respecting both themselves and others, there we shall also find the tone of the white community high. The patriotic white man with an interest in the welfare of this country is almost as heavily indebted to Booker T. Washington as the colored men themselves. If there is any lesson, more essential than any other, for this country to learn, it is the lesson that the enjoyment of rights should be made conditional upon the performance of duty. For one failure in the history of our country which is due to the people not asserting their rights, there are hundreds due to their not performing their duties. This is just as true of the White Man as it is of the Colored Man. But it is a lesson even more important to be taught the Colored Man, because the Negro starts at the bottom of the ladder and will never develop the strength to climb even a single rung if he follow the lead of those who dwell only upon their rights and not upon their duties. He has a hard road to travel anyhow. He is certain to be treated with much injustice, and although he will encounter x PREFACE among white men a number who wish to help him upward and onward, he will encounter only too many who, if they do him no bodily harm, yet show a brutal lack of con- sideration for him. Nevertheless his one safety lies in steadily keeping in view that the law of service is the great law of life, above all in this Republic, and that no man of color can benefit either himself or the rest of his race, unless he proves by his life his adherence to this law. Such a life is not easy for the White Man, and it is very much less easy for the Black Man; but it is even more important for the Black Man, and for the Black Man's people, that he should lead it. As nearly as any man I have ever met, Booker T. Wash- ington lived up to Micah's verse, "What more doth the Lord require to thee than to do Justice and love Mercy and walk humbly with thy God." He did justice to every man. He did justice to those to whom it was a hard thing to do justice. He showed mercy; and this meant that he showed mercy not only to the poor, and to those beneath him, but that he showed mercy by an understand- ing of the shortcomings of those who failed to do him justice, and failed to do his race justice. He always under- stood and acted upon the belief that the Black Man could not rise if he so acted as to incur the enmity and hatred of the White Man; that it was of prime importance to the well-being of the Black Man to earn the good will of his white neighbor, and that the bulk of the Black Men who dwell in the Southern States must realize that the White Men who are their immediate, physical neighbors xi PREFACE are beyond all others those whose good will and respect it is of vital consequence that the Black Men of the South should secure. He was never led away, as the educated Negro so often is led away, into the pursuit of fantastic visions; into the drawing up of plans fit only for a world of two dimensions. He kept his high ideals, always; but he never forgot for a moment that he was living in an actual world of three dimensions, in a world of unpleasant facts, where those unpleasant facts have to be faced; and he made the best possible out of a bad situation from which there was no ideal best to be obtained. And he walked humbly with his God. To a very extraordinary degree he combined humility and dignity; and I think that the explanation of this extraordinary degree of success in a very difficult com- bination was due to the fact that at the bottom his humility was really the outward expression, not of a servile attitude toward any man, but of the spiritual fact that in very truth he walked humbly with his God. Nowhere was Booker T. Washington's wisdom shown better than in the mixture of moderation and firmness with which he took precisely the right position as to the part the Black Man should try to take in politics. He put the whole case in a nut-shell in the following sentences: "In my opinion it is a fatal mistake to teach the young black man and the young white man that the dominance of the white race in the South rests upon any other basis than absolute justice to the weaker man. It is a mistake xii PREFACE to cultivate in the mind of any individual or group of individuals the feeling and belief that their happiness rests upon the misery of some one else, or their wealth by the poverty of some one else. I do not advocate that the Negro make politics or the holding of office an important thing in his life. I do urge, in the interests of fair play for everybody, that a Negro who prepares himself in property, in intelligence, and in character to cast a ballot, and desires to do so, should have the opportunity." In other words, while he did not believe that political activity should play an important part among Negroes as a whole, he did believe that in the interests of the White, as well as in the interests of the Colored, race, the upright, honest, intelligent Black Man or Colored Man should be given the right to cast a ballot if he possessed the qualities which, if possessed by a White Man, would make that White Man a valuable addition to the suffrage-exercising class. No man, White of Black, was more keenly alive than Booker T. Washington to the threat of the South, and to the whole country, and especially to the Black Man him- self, contained in the mass of ignorant, propertyless, semi- vicious Black voters, wholly lacking in the character which alone fits a race for self-government, who nevertheless have been given the ballot in certain Southern States. In my many conversations and consultations with him it is, I believe, not an exaggeration to say that one-half the time we were discussing methods for keeping out of office, and out of all political power, the ignorant, semi-criminal, • • • xin PREFACE shiftless Black Man who, when manipulated by the able and unscrupulous politician, Black or White, is so dreadful a menace to our political institutions. But he felt very strongly, and I felt no less strongly, that one of the most efficient ways of warring against this evil type was to show the Negro that, if he turned his back on that type, and fitted himself to be a self-respecting citizen, doing his part in sustaining the common burdens of good citizenship, he would be freely accorded by his White neighbors the privileges and rights of good citizenship. Surely there can be no objection to this. Surely there can be no serious objection thus to keep open the door of hope for the thoroughly decent, upright, self-respecting man, no matter what his color. In the same way, while Booker T. Washington firmly believed that the attention of the Colored race should be riveted, not on political life, but on success sought in the fields of honest business endeavor, he also felt, and I agreed with him, that it was to the interest of both races that there should be appointments to office of Black Men whose characters and abilities were such that if they were White Men their appointments would be hailed as being well above the average, and creditable from every standpoint. He also felt, and I agreed with him, that it was essential that these appointments should be made relatively most numerous in the North — for it is worse than useless to preach virtue to others, unless the preachers themselves practise it; which means that the Northern communities, which pride themselves on possessing the proper attitude xiv PREFACE toward the Negro, should show this attitude by their own acts within their own borders. I profited very much by my association with Booker T. Washington. I owed him much along many different lines. I valued greatly his friendship and respect; and when he died I mourned his loss as a patriot and an American. Theodore Roosevelt. Sagamore Hill, August 28, 1916. XV CONTENTS PAGE Foreword by Robert R. Moton v Authors' Preface vii Preface by Theodore Roosevelt ix CHAPTER I. The Man and His School in the Making . . 3 II. Leader of His Race 19 III. Washington: the Educator 57 IV. The Rights of the Negro 82 V. Meeting Race Prejudice 107 VI. Getting Close to the People 135 VII. Booker Washington and the Negro Farmer . 164 VIII. Booker Washington and the Negro Business Man 185 IX. Booker Washington Among His Students . . 222 X. Raising Hundreds of Thousands a Year . . 248 XI. Managing a Great Institution 272 XII. Washington: The Man 300 xvii ILLUSTRATIONS Booker T. Washington .... Frontispiece FACING PAGE Tuskegee in the making. Nothing delighted Mr. Washington more than to see his students do- ing the actual work of erecting the Tuskegee Institute buildings . . . . . 12 Tuskegee Institute students laying the foundation for one of the four Emery buildings . . 14 "His influence, like that of his school, was at first community wide, then county wide, then State wide, and finally nation wide" ... 16 A study in black. Note the tensity of expression with which the group is following his each and every word . . . . . . . 32 Showing some of the teams of farmers attending the Annual Tuskegee Negro Conference . . 58 An academic class. A problem in brick masonry 62 Mr. Washington in characteristic pose addressing an audience ....... 136 Mr. Washington silhouetted against the crowd upon one of his educational tours .... 136 Mr. Washington in typical pose speaking to an audience . . . . . . .136 xix ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE A party of friends who accompanied Dr. Washing- ton on one of his educational tours . . 138 This old woman was a regular attendant at the Tuskegee Negro Conference . . . .170 The cosmopolitan character of the Tuskegee stu- dent body is shown by the fact that during the past year students have come from the foreign countries or colonies of foreign countries in- dicated by the various flags shown in this pic- ture ........ 238 In 1906 the Tuskegee Institute celebrated its 25th Anniversary. A group of well-known Ameri- can characters attended .... 248 Some of Mr. Washington's humble friends . . 274 Soil analysis. The students are required to work out in the laboratory the problems of the field and the shop ...... 274 Mr. Washington was a great believer in the sweet potato 280 Mr. Washington had this picture especially posed to show off" to the best advantage a part of the Tuskegee dairy herd ..... 290 Mr. Washington feeding his chickens with green stuffs raised in his own garden . . . 306 Mr. Washington in his onion patch . . . 306 Mr. Washington sorting in his lettuce bed . . 306 xx BOOKER T. WASHINGTON BUILDER OF A CIVILIZATION CHAPTER ONE THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL IN THE MAKING IT CAME about that in the year 1880, in Macon County, Alabama, a certain ex-Confederate colonel con- ceived the idea that if he could secure the Negro vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he coveted in the State Legislature. Accordingly, the colonel went to the leading Negro in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he could do to secure the Negro vote, for Negroes then voted in Alabama without restriction. This man, Lewis Adams by name, himself an ex-slave, promptly re- plied that what his race most wanted was education and what they most needed was industrial education, and that if he (the colonel) would agree to work for the pas- sage of a bill appropriating money for the maintenance of an industrial school for Negroes, he (Adams) would help to get for him the Negro vote and the election. This bargain between an ex-slaveholder and an ex-slave was made and faithfully observed on both sides, with the result that the following year the Legislature of Alabama appropriated $2,000 a year for the establishment of a normal and in- dustrial school for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General Armstrong of Hampton Institute a young colored man, Booker T. Washington, a 3 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON recent graduate of and teacher at the Institute, was called from there to take charge of this landless, buildingless, teacherless, and studentless institution of learning. This move turned out to be a fatal mistake in the politi- cal career of the colonel. The appellation of "nigger lover" kept him ever after firmly wedged in his political grave. Thus, by the same stroke, was the career of an ex- slaveholder wrecked and that of an ex-slave made. This political blunder of a local office-seeker gave to education one of its great formative institutions, to the Negro race its greatest leader, and to America one of its greatest citizens. One is tempted to feel that Booker T. Washington was always popular and successful. On the contrary, for many years he had to fight his way inch by inch against the bitterest opposition, not only of the whites, but of his own race. At that time there was scarcely a Negro leader of any prominence who was not either a politician or a preacher. In the introduction to "Up from Slavery," Mr. Walter H. Page says of his first experience many years ago with Booker Washington: "I had occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as 'The Rev. Booker T. Washington.' In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as a clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and persisted in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a postscript: 'I have no claim to Rev.' I knew most of the colored men who at that time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher; and I had not heard of the head of an important colored school 4 THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL who was not a preacher. 'A new kind of man in the colored world,' I said to myself — 'a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one." And just because Booker Washington did look "upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one " he was at first regarded with suspicion by most of the preachers of his race and by some openly denounced as irreligious and the founder of an irreligious school. Like so many men of greater opportunity in all ages and places, many of these Negro ministers confounded theology and religion. Finding no theology about Booker Washington or his school, they assumed there was no religion. Some of them even went so far as to warn their congregations from the pulpit to keep away from this Godless man and his Godless school. To this formidable and at first almost universal opposition from the leaders among his own people was added the more natural opposition of the neighboring white men who assumed that he was "spoiling the niggers" by education. A youth with a high collar, loud necktie, checked suit, and patent-leather shoes, dangling a cane, smoking a cigarette, and loitering im- pudently on a street corner was their mental picture of an educated Negro. Among the original group of thirty students with whom Mr. Washington started Tuskegee Institute on an old plantation equipped with a kitchen, a stable, and a hen- house, was a now elderly man who to-day has charge of the spacious and beautiful grounds of the Institute. He was 5 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON approaching middle age when he entered this original Tuskegee class. The following is a paraphrase of his ac- count of the early days of the school : "After we'd been out on the plantation three or four weeks Mr. Washington came into the schoolroom and said: 'To-morrow we're going to have a chopping bee. All of you that have an axe, or can borrow one, must bring it. I will try and provide those of you who cannot furnish an axe. We will dismiss school early to-morrow afternoon and start for the chop- ping bee.' So we came to school next day with the axes, all of us that could get them; we were all excited and eager for that chopping bee, and we were all discussing what it would be like, because we had never been to one before. So in the afternoon Mr. Washington said it was time for that chopping bee, so he put his axe over his shoulder and led us to the woods and put us to work cutting the trees and clearing the land. He went right in and worked harder and faster and handled his axe better than any of us. After a while we found that a chopping bee, as he called it, was no different from just plain cutting down trees and clearing the land. There wasn't anything new about that — we all had had all we wanted of it. Some of the boys said they didn't come to school to cut down trees and clear land, but they couldn't say they were too good for that kind of work when Mr. Washington himself was at it harder than any of them. So he kept with us for some days till everybody had his idea. Then he went off to do something more im- portant. "Now, in those days he used to go off every Saturday 6 THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL morning and he wouldn't come back till Monday morning. He'd travel all round the country drumming up students for the school and telling the people to send their children. And on Sunday he'd get the preachers to let him get up in their pulpits and tell the people about the school after they had finished preaching. And the preachers would warn their people against him and his school, because they said it wasn't Methodist, and it wasn't Baptist, and it wasn't Presbyterian, and it wasn't Episcopalian, and it wasn't Christian. And they told the people to keep their children away from that Godless man and his school. But when he came along and asked to speak to the people they had to leave him, just as everybody always did — let him do just what he wanted to do. And when they heard him, the people, they didn't pay no attention to the preachers, they just sent their children as fast as ever they could contrive it. "Now, in those days Mr. Washington didn't have a horse, nor a mule, nor a wagon, and he wanted to cover more country on those trips than he could afoot, so he'd just go out in the middle of the road and when some old black man would come along driving his mule wagon he'd stop him and talk with him, and tell him about the school and what it was going to do for the black folks, and then he'd say: 'Now, Uncle, you can help by bringing your wagon and mule round at nine o'clock Saturday morning for me to go off round the country telling the people about the school. Now, remember, Uncle Jake, please be here promptly at nine,' and the old man would say, 'Yes, boss, 7 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON I sure will be here!' That was how he did it — when he needed anything he'd go out and put his hand on it. First, he could put his hand on anything he wanted round the town; then, he could put his hand on anything he wanted all over the county; then he could put his hand on any- thing he wanted all over the State; and then finally they do tell me he could put his hand on anything he wanted away up to New York. "In those days, after we came to live here on the 'plantation,' I used to take the wheelbarrow and go round to the office when Mr. Washington opened up the mail in the morning, and if there was money in the mail then I could go along to the town with the wheelbarrow and get provisions, and if there was no money then there was no occasion to go to town, and we'd just eat what we had left. Most of the white storekeepers wouldn't give us credit, and they didn't want a 'nigger school' here anyhow. Times have changed. Now those storekeepers get a large pro- portion of their trade here at the Institute, and if there should be any talk of moving, they'd just get up and fight to the last to keep us here and keep our trade. "And in those days the Negro preachers, or the most of them, and the white folks, or the most of them, were al- ways trying to dispute with Mr. Washington and quarrel with him, but he just kept his mouth shut and went ahead. He kept pleasant and he wouldn't dispute with them, nor argue with them, nor quarrel with them. When the white folks would come round and tell him he was 'spoiling good niggers by education,' he would just ask them to wait 8 THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL patiently and give him time to show them what the right kind of education would do. And when the colored preachers would come round and tell him he was no Christian, and his school had no religion, he would ask them to just wait and see if the boys and girls were any less Christian because of the education they were get- ting. But whoever came along and whatever happened Mr. Washington just kept his mouth shut and went ahead. "After two years of school I went out and rented some land and planted cotton, and just about time to harvest my crop Mr. Washington sent for me one Saturday and said : 'I need you. I want you to come back and work for the school on the farm. I want you to start in Monday morning.' When I told him about my cotton crop just ready to be picked he said: 'Can't help that, we need you. You'll have to arrange with your neighbors to harvest your crop for you.'" To the inquiry, "Well, did you come?" the old man re- plied, "Of course I did. When Mr. Washington said come I came same as everybody did what he told them. I got a neighbor to harvest my crop and I lost money on it, but I came to work that Monday morning more than thirty years ago, and I've been here ever since." The idea of not doing what Mr. Washington wanted him to do, or even arguing the matter, was evidently incon- ceivable to this old man. He had always obeyed Mr. Washington just as he had obeyed the laws of nature by sleeping and eating. That is the kind of control which 9 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Booker Washington always exercised over his fellow-work- ers. He accepted their implicit obedience as naturally and simply as they gave it. As Mr. Page also points out in the introduction to "Up from Slavery," however humble Mr. Washington's origin may have been, what might be termed his intellectual pedigree was of the highest and finest. He may be called, in fact, the spiritual grandson of the great Dr. Mark Hop- kins of Williams College. Just as Samuel Armstrong was perhaps 1 the most receptive of Mark Hopkins' pupils, so Booker Washington became the most receptive pupil of Samuel Armstrong. As says Mr. Page: "To the for- mation of Mr. Washington's character, then, went the mis- sionary zeal of New England, influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern education, and the wide- reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong himself." In his autobiography Mr. Washington thus describes General Armstrong's influence and the impression he made upon him: "It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great characters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of General Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave plantation and the coal mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be permitted to come into direct contact with such a character as General Armstrong. I shall always re- member that the first time I went into his presence he made the impression upon me of being a perfect man; I was made to feel that there was something about him that 10 THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL was superhuman. It was my privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered Hampton till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in my estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, classrooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming I into daily contact with General Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. (This recalls President Garfield's definition of a university when he said, ' my idea of a university is a log with Mark Hopkins on one end and a boy on the other.') The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women. Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!" When the young man imbued with these ideas and fresh from these influences found himself responsible for the destinies of a studentless, teacherless, buildingless, and landless school it is significant how he went to work to supply these manifold deficiencies. First, he found a place in which to open the school — a dilapidated shanty church, the A. M. E. Zion Church for Negroes, in the town of Tuskegee. Next he went about the surrounding countryside, found out exactly under what conditions the people were living and what their needs were, and ad- vertised the school among the class of people whom he wanted to have attend it. After returning from these ex- ii BOOKER T. WASHINGTON periences he said: "I saw more clearly than ever the wis- dom of the system which General Armstrong had in- augurated at Hampton. To take the children of such people as I had been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book education, I felt would be almost a waste of time." Six weeks after the school was opened, on July 4, 1881, in the shanty Methodist Church with thirty students, Miss Olivia A. Davidson entered the school, the enrollment of which had already grown to fifty, as assistant teacher. She subsequently became Mrs. Washington. The school then had students, a teacher, and a building such as it was, but it had no land. It was succeeding in so far as teaching these eager and knowledge hungry young people what could be learned from books, but little more. Mr. Wash- ington found that about 85 per cent, of the Negroes of the Gulf States lived on the land and were dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood. Hence, he reasoned that it was of supreme importance to teach them how to live on the land to the best advantage. In order to teach the students how to live on the land the school itself must have land. About this time an old plantation near the town of Tuskegee came upon the market. The school had no money. Mr. Washington had no money, and the $2,000 a year from the State Treasury could be used only for the payment of teachers. Accordingly Mr. Washington per- sonally borrowed the $250, from a personal friend, necessary to secure title to the land, and moved the school from the shanty church to the comparative comfort of four aged 12 THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL cabins formerly used as the dining-room, kitchen, stable, and hen-house of the plantation. And as soon as they were established in their new quar- ters he organized the " chopping bee " already described and cleared some of the land so that it could be used for crops. He did not clear and plant this land to give his students agricultural training. He did it for the purpose that all land was originally cleared and planted — to get food. He, of course, realized that the educational content of this work was great — greater than any possible textbook ex- ercises in the classroom. He then and there began the long and difficult task of teaching his people that physical work, and particularly farm work, if rightly done was edu- cation, and that education was work. To secure the ac- ceptance of this truth by a race only recently emancipated from over two hundred years of unrequited toil — a race that had always regarded freedom from the necessity for work as an indication of superiority — was not a hopeful task. To them education was the antithesis of work. It was the magic elixir which emancipated all those fortunate enough to drink of it from the necessity for work. He also began to emphasize at this time his familiar dictum that learning to do the common things of life in an uncommon way was an essential part of real education. Probably the reverse of this dictum, namely, learning to do the uncommon things of life in a common way — would have more nearly corresponded to the popular conception of education among most Negroes and many whites. Mr. Washington later developed a brickyard where, *3 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON after a series of failures sufficient to convince any ordinary man of the hopelessness of the enterprise, they finally suc- ceeded in baking creditable bricks which were used by the students in the construction of buildings for the school. He did not start this brickyard for the purpose of vocational training any more than he started the farm for agricultural training. He started it because they needed bricks with which to build buildings in which to live, just as he started the farm to raise food upon which to live. He saw to it, however, that the brickyard was used as an instrument of education and was never allowed to degenerate into a mere brickyard and nothing more, just as he saw to it that the farm was used as a means of educa- tion and was not allowed to degenerate into a mere farm and nothing more. It was even more difficult to persuade the students that the hard, heavy, dirty work of the brickyard was education than it had been to persuade them that farm work was education. Mr. Washington wasted no time in arguing this point, however, but merely insisted that with- out bricks they could not put up proper buildings, and that without buildings they could not have such a school as they must have not only for themselves but for their race. So this originally landless, buildingless, studentless, and teacherless school came eventually to have all four of these obvious requisites, but it still lacked a fundamental re- quirement for the effective fulfillment of its purpose. It lacked a boarding department where the students might learn to live. In his tours among the people Mr. Wash- ington had found the great majority in the plantation dis- 14 THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL tricts living on fat pork and corn bread, and sleeping in one- room cabins. They planted nothing but cotton, bought their food at the nearest village or town market instead of raising it, and lived under conditions where the funda- mental laws of hygiene and decent social intercourse were both unknown and impossible of application. The young men and women from such homes must be taught how to live in houses with more than one room, how to keep their persons and their surroundings clean, how to sleep in a bed between sheets, how not only to raise but to prepare, serve, and eat a healthful variety of proper food at regular and stated intervals, to say nothing of a trade by which to maintain themselves both during their course and after graduation as well as the usual book learning of the ordi- nary school. Obviously they could not be taught these things unless they lived day and night on the school grounds instead of boarding about with people whose standards of living were very little if at all higher than those of their homes. Accordingly volunteers were called for, and the students made an excavation under their new brick building which was made into a basement kitchen and dining-room. As Mr. Washington says in "Up from Slavery," "We had nothing but the students and their ap- petites with which to begin a boarding department." As soon as this boarding department was established it be- came possible to influence directly the lives of the students during the entire twenty-four hours of the day. From then on each student was required to have and to use a tooth- brush. Mr. Washington has since remarked that, in his 15 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON opinion, the toothbrush is the most potent single instrument of civilization. Then, too, it was possible for him to begin to enforce this injunction taken from one of his now well- known Sunday night talks, "Make a study of the prepara- tion of food. See to it that a certain ceremony, a certain importance, be attached to the partaking of the food " This exhortation sounds so commonplace as to be scarcely noticed by the average reader, but just put yourself in the place of one of these boys or girls who came from a one- room cabin and realize what a profoundly revolutionary, even sensational, injunction it is! To the boy or girl who had snatched a morsel of food here, there, or anywhere when prompted by the gnawings of hunger, who had never sat down to a regular meal, who had never partaken of a meal placed upon a table with or without ceremony — imagine what it meant to such a boy or girl "to see to it that a certain ceremony, a certain importance, be attached to the partaking of the food " — not on special occasions but at each one of the three meals of each day! Finally it came about that this school which had started with a paltry $2,000 a year, a great need, and the in- vincible determination of one man, came to have land, buildings, teachers, students, and even a boarding de- partment. But in Mr. Washington's view there was still a great fundamental lack in their work. They were doing nothing directly to help those less fortunate than them- selves — those about them who could not come and enjoy the advantages of the school. Mr. Washington held that as soon as an individual got hold of anything as useful and 16 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON "His influence, like that of his school, was at first community wide, then county wide, then state wide, and finally nation wide THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL desirable as education he should take immediate means to hand it on to the greatest possible number of those who needed it. He had no patience with those persons who would climb the tree of knowledge and then pull the ladder up after them. He and his teachers then began to go out on Sundays and give the people homely talks on how to improve their living conditions. They encouraged the farmers to come to the school farm and learn how to grow a variety of crops to supplement the cotton crop which was their sole reliance. They relieved the distress of individual families. Mrs. Washington gathered together in an old loft the farmers' wives and daughters who were in the habit of loafing about the village of Tuskegee on Saturday afternoons and formed them into a woman's club for the improvement of the liv- ing conditions in their homes and communities. Mr. Washington and his teachers went right on to the farms and into the homes, and into the churches and the schools, and everywhere showed, for the most part by concrete object- lessons, how they could make their farms more productive, their homes more comfortable, their schools more useful, and their church services more inspiring. All this was done not with an idea of starting an extension department or a social service department, but merely because these people needed help, and Mr. Washington knew that both teachers and students would help themselves in helping them. Finally, chiefly through the efforts of Mrs. Wash- ington, a model country school was established in the district adjoining the Institute's property. This school is 17 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON a farm home where the young teacher and his wife, both graduates of Tuskegee, teach the boys and girls who come to them each day how to live on a farm — teach them by practice and object-lesson as well as by precept. They follow the ordinary country school curriculum, but that is a small and relatively unimportant part of what this school gives its pupils. Then, too, the teachers of Tuskegee early started campaigns looking to the extending of the school terms throughout Macon County and the adjoining coun- ties from three to five months, as was customary, to nine months. And this work of Tuskegee beyond its own borders grew as constantly in volume and extent as the work within its borders, so that Tuskegee soon became the vital force — the yeast that was raising the level of life and well-being throughout, first, the town and neighborhood of Tuskegee, then the County of Macon, then the surrounding counties and the State of Alabama; and finally, in conjunction with its mother, Hampton, and its children situated at strategic points throughout the South, the entire Negro people of the South, and indirectly the whole nation. And as the school grew, so grew the man whose life was its embodiment. It is impossible to think of Booker Washington and Tuskegee separately. Just as he typified Tuskegee, so Tuskegee typified him. Just as he made the school, so the school made him. His influence, like that of his school, was at first community wide, then county wide, then State wide, and finally nation wide. 18 CHAPTER TWO LEADER OF HIS RACE IN 1895, fourteen years after the founding of Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington was selected to represent his race at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. On this occasion he mounted the platform, to make the first address which any member of his race had ever made be- fore any representative body of Southern men and women, as an obscure but worthy young colored man who had com- mended himself to a few thinking persons by building up an excellent industrial school for his people. He came off that platform amid scenes of almost hysterical enthusiasm and was thenceforth proclaimed as the leader of his race, the Moses of his people, and one of America's great men. In this epoch-making speech Booker Washington had presented a solution of an apparently insoluble problem. He had offered a platform upon which, as Clark Howell said in the Atlanta Constitution, "both races, blacks and whites, could stand with full justice to each." In the course of the speech he told this story: "A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: 'Water, water; we die of thirst!' The answer from the 19 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON friendly vessel at once came back: 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' A second time the signal, 'Water, water, send us water!' ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered: 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' And a third and fourth signal for water was an- swered, 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the in- junction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River." He then appealed to his own people to "cast down their buckets where they were" by making friends with their white neighbors in every manly way, by training them- selves where they were in agriculture, in mechanics, in commerce, instead of trying to better their condition by migration. And finally to the Southern white people he appealed "to cast down their buckets where they were" by using and training the Negroes whom they knew rather than seeking to import foreign laborers whom they did not know. When he reached the crux and climax of the speech — the delicate matter of the relations between the races, socially — he held up his right hand with his fingers outstretched and said: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." At this remark the au- dience went wild ! Ladies stood on their chairs and waved their handkerchiefs, while men threw up their hats, danced, and catcalled. An old ante-bellum Negro, who had been sitting crosslegged in one of the aisles, wept tears of pride 20 LEADER OF HIS RACE and joy as he swayed from side to side. By this state- ment, with what had led up to it, Booker Washington cap- tured the allegiance of all really representative Southern whites, and by consistently adhering to this position he, in an ever-increasing degree, won and held their allegiance till the end. Frederick Douglass, the great leader of his race during the closing days of slavery, during the War and the Re- construction period, had died only a few months before. Everywhere, by leading whites, as well as blacks, Wash- ington was acclaimed as the successor of Douglass — the new leader of the Negro race. One of the first colored men so to acclaim him was Emmet J. Scott, who was then editing a Negro newspaper in Houston, Texas, and little realized that he was to become the most intimate associate of the new leader. In an editorial Mr. Scott said of this ad- dress: "Without resort to exaggeration, it is but simple justice to call the address great. It was great! Great, in that it exhibited the speaker's qualities of head and heart; great in that he could and did discriminately recognize con- ditions as they affect his people, and greater still in the absolute modesty, self-respect, and dignity with which he presented a platform upon which, as Clark Howell, of the Atlanta Constitution says: 'both races, blacks and whites, can stand with full justice to each.'" Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Booker Washington's leadership was that from that time on he never deviated one hair's breadth in word or deed from the platform laid down in this brief address. 21 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON It was not to be expected, however, that such a radically new note in Negro leadership could be struck without some discord. As was perfectly natural, some more or less prominent Negroes, whose mental processes followed the lines of cleavage between the races engendered by the em- bittering experiences of the Reconstruction period, looked with suspicion upon a Negro leader who had won the ap- probation of the South, of leading white citizens, press, and public. In the days of slavery it was a frequent custom on large plantations to use one of the slaves as a kind of stool pigeon to spy upon the others and report their misdeeds. Naturally such persons were hated and despised and looked upon as traitors to their race. Hence, it came about that the praise of a white man was apt to throw suspicion upon the racial loyalty of a black man. This habit of mind, like all mental habits, long survived the system and circum- stances which occasioned it. Therefore, it was inevitable that the fact that the white press throughout the South rang with his praises for days and weeks after the sen- sationally enthusiastic reception of his speech at the ex- position should not be accepted as a desirable endorsement of the new leader by at least a few of his own people. A more or less conspicuous colored preacher summed up this slight undertow of dissent when he said: "I want to pay my respects next to a colored man. He is a great man, too, but he isn't our Moses, as the white people are pleased to call him. I allude to Booker T. Washington. He has been with the white people so long that he has learned to throw sop with the rest. He made a speech at Atlanta the 22 LEADER OF HIS RACE other day, and the newspapers of all the large cities praised it and called it the greatest speech ever delivered by a colored man. When I heard that, I said: 'There must be something wrong with it, or the white people would not be praising it so.' I got the speech and read it. Then I said, 'Ah, here it is,' and I read his words, 'the colored people do not want social equality.' (This man's interpretation of this sentence in the speech, "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the en- joyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.") I tell you that is a lie. We do want social equality. Why, don't you want your manhood recognized? Then Mr. Washington said that our emanci- pation and enfranchisement were untimely and a mistake; that we were not ready for it. (Naturally, Mr. Washing- ton said no such thing.) What did he say that for but to tickle the palates of the white people? Oh, yes, he was shrewd. He will get many hundreds of dollars for his school by it." Let it not be thought that this attitude represented any large or important body of opinion among the Negroes. The great majority both of the leaders and the rank and file enthusiastically accepted both the new leader and his new kind of leadership. The small minority, however, holding the view of the preacher quoted, continued to cause Booker Washington some annoyance, which, although continuously lessening, persisted in some de- 23 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON gree throughout his life. This numerically small and individually unimportant element of the Negroes in America would hardly warrant even passing mention ex- cept that the always carping and sometimes bitter criti- cisms of these persons are apt to confuse the well-wishers of the race who do not understand the situation. The Negroes holding this point of view are sometimes pleased to refer to themselves as the Talented Tenth. They are largely city dwellers who have had more or less of what they term "higher education" — Latin, Greek, Theology, and the like. A number of these persons make all or a part of their living by publicly bewailing the wrongs and injustices of their race and demanding their redress by immediate means. Mr. Washington's emphasis upon the advantages of Negroes in America and the debt of gratitude which they owe to the whites, who have helped them to make more progress in fifty years than any other race ever made in a like period, is naturally very annoying to this type of person. In spite of their constant abuse of him Mr. Washington some years ago agreed to confer with the leaders of this faction to see if a program could not be devised through which all could work to- gether instead of at cross purposes. In spite of the fact that the chief exponent of this group opened the first meeting with a bitter attack upon Mr. Washington, such a program was adopted, to which, before the conferences were over, all duly and amicably agreed to adhere. Some of the more restless spirits among the leaders of the Talented Tenth soon, however, broke their pledges, repu- 24 LEADER OF HIS RACE diated the whole arrangement, and started in as before to denounce Mr. Washington and those who thought and acted with him. After the Atlanta speech Mr. Washington's task was a dual one. While the active head of his great and rapidly growing institution, he was also the generally accepted leader of his race. It is with his leadership of his race that we are concerned in this chapter. His duties in this capacity were vast and ill defined, and his responsibility exceedingly heavy. He said, himself, that when he first came to be talked of as the leader of his race he was somewhat at a loss to know what was expected of him in that capacity. His tasks in this direction, however, were thrust upon him so thick and fast that he had not long to remain in this state of mind. After the Atlanta speech he was in almost daily contact with what was befalling his people in all parts of the country and to some extent all over the world. Through his press clipping service, sup- plemented by myriads of letters and personal reports, practically every event of any significance to his race came to his notice. Whan he heard of rioting, lynching, or serious trouble in any community he sent a message of advice, encouragement, or warning to the leading Negroes of the locality and sometimes to the whites whom he knew to be interested in the welfare of the Negroes. When the trouble was sufficiently serious to warrant it he went in person to the scene. When he heard of a Negro winning a prize at a county fair, or being placed in some position of unusual trust and distinction, he wrote him a letter of con- 25 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON gratulation and learned the circumstances so that he might cite the incident by way of encouragement to others. After the riots in Atlanta, Georgia, some years ago, when infuriated white mobs foiled in their efforts to lynch a Negro murderer, burned, killed, and laid waste right and left in the Negro section of the town, Mr. Washington, who was in the North at the time, boarded the first train for the city, arrived just after the bloody scenes, gathered together his frightened people amid the smoking ruins of their homes, soothed, calmed, and cheered them. He then went to the leading city officials, secured from them a promise of succor for the stricken people and protection against further attack. Next he went to the Governor of the State, secured his sympathy and cooperation, and with him organized a conference of leading State and city officials and other representative men who there and then mapped out a program tending to prevent the recurrence of such race riots — a program which up to the present time has successfully fulfilled its purpose. It is characteristic of Mr. Washington's methods that he turned this disaster into an ultimate blessing for the very community that was afflicted. I Mr. Washington was the kind of leader who kept very close to the plain people. He knew their every-day lives, their weaknesses, their temptations. To use a slang phrase, he knew exactly what they "were up against" whether they lived in country or city. Within a com- paratively short period before his death he addressed two audiences as widely separated by distance and environ- 26 LEADER OF HIS RACE ment as the farmers gathered together for the first Negro Fair of southwestern Georgia at Albany, Georgia, and five thousand Negro residents of New York City assembled in the Harlem Casino. He told those Georgia farmers how much land they owned and to what extent it was mortgaged, how much land they leased, how much cotton they raised, and how much of other crops they raised, or, rather, did not raise; how many mules and hogs they owned, and how they could with profit increase their ownership in mules and hogs; he told them how many drug stores, grocery stores, and banks in the State and county were owned by Negroes; and then, switching from the general to the particular, he described the daily life of the ordinary, easy-going tenant farmer of the locality. He pictured what he saw when he came out of his unpainted house in the morning: that gate ofF the hinges, that broken window-pane with an old coat stuck into it, that cotton planted right up to the doors with no room left for a garden, and no garden; and, worse than all, the uncomfort- able knowledge of debts concealed from the hard-working wife and mother. Then he pictured what that same man's place might be and should become. It was once said of a certain eminent preacher that his logic was on fire. It might be said of Booker Washington that his statistics were on fire. He marshalled them in such a way that they were dynamic and stirring instead of static and paralyzing, as we all know them to our sorrow. It so happened that Mr. Washington had never before been in southwestern Georgia. After his speech one old farmer 27 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON was heard to say as he shook his head: "I don't understan* it! Booker T. Washington he ain't never ben here befb', yit he knows mo' 'bout dese parts an' mo' 'bout us den what eny of us knows ourselves." This old man did not know that one of Mr. Washington's most painstaking and efficient assistants, Mr. Monroe N. Work, the editor of the Negro Year Book, devoted much of his time to keeping his chief provided with this startlingly accurate information about his people in every section of the United States. On this occasion there were on the platform with Mr. Washington and the officials of the fair the Mayor of Albany and members of the City Council, while in the audience were several hundred whites on one side of the centre aisle and twice as many blacks on the other. And Mr. Washington would alternately address himself to his white and black audience. He would, for instance, turn to the white men and tell them that he had never known a particularly successful black man who could not trace his original success to the aid or encouragement he had re- ceived in one form or another from a white friend. He would tell them that without their assistance his race could never have made more progress in the last fifty years in this country than any similar group of people had ever made in a like period of time. After he had raised the white section of his audience to a high degree of self-congratula- tory complaisance he would suddenly shift the tenor of his remarks and ask them why they should mar this splendid record by discriminating against the weaker race in mat- ters of education, by destroying their confidence in the 28 LEADER OF HIS RACE justice of the courts through mob violence, and by the numerous small, mean ways in which race prejudice shows itself and retards and discourages the upward struggle of a weaker people. As he proceeded along these lines one could see the self-congratulatory expression fade from the faces of his white listeners. He would next turn to his own people and tell them of their phenomenal progress since emancipation and of the great and essential part they had played in the upbuilding of the South — left prostrate by the Civil War. One could see their eager, upturned faces glow with pride and self- satisfaction. But suddenly he would shift the tone of his comments and tell them how sadly those of them who were indolent and shiftless and unreliable and vicious were re- tarding the upward struggles of the industrious and self- respecting majority and how they were perpetuating the prejudice against the whole race. And as he pictured this seamy side of the situation one could see the glow of pride gradually wilt from the myriads of swarthy upturned faces. Hardly less successful than his use of statistics was his use of the much-abused funny story. He never told a story, however good, for its own sake. He told it only when it would most effectively drive home whatever point he happened to be making. In this same speech he was saying that a Negro who is lazy and unreliable and does nothing to accumulate property or improve his earning capacity deserves no consideration from whites or blacks and has no- right to say that the color line is drawn against 29 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON him. By way of illustration he told this story: "A shift- less Southern poor white asked a self-respecting old black man for three cents with which to pay his ferry fare across a river. The old black man replied: Ts sorry not to com- merdate yer, boss, but der fac' is dat a man what ain't got three cents is jest as bad off on one side ob der ribber as der udder.'" At another point in this speech he was telling his people not to be discouraged because their race has less to point to than other races in the way of past achievements. He said that after all it was the future that was of vital concern and not the past, and that the future was theirs to a peculiar degree because they were a young race. And to illustrate their situation he told of meeting old Aunt Caroline one evening striding along with a basket on her head. He said, "Where are you going, Aunt Caroline?" And she re- plied: "Lor' bless yer, Mister Washin'ton, I dun bin where I's er goin'." "And so," he concluded, "some of the races of the earth have dun bin where dey was er goin'!" but fortunately the Negro race was not among them. In making the point that, in spite of race prejudice, the handicaps to which his people were subjected in the South were after all superficial and did not interfere with their chance to work and earn a living, he told the experience of an old Negro who was accompanying him on one of his Southern educational tours. At a certain city they were obliged to wait several hours between trains, so this old man took advantage of the opportunity to stroll about and see the sights of the place. After a while he pulled out his 30 LEADER OF HIS RACE watch and found he had barely time to get back to the station before the train was due to leave. Accordingly he rushed to a hack stand and called out to the first driver he came to, who happened to be a white man : " Hurry up an' take me to the station, I's gotta get the 4:32 train!" To which the white hack driver replied: "I ain't never drove a nigger in my hack yit an' I ain't goin' ter begin now. You can git a nigger driver ter take ye down!" To this the old colored man replied with perfect good nature: "All right, my frien', we won't have no misunder- standing or trouble; I'll tell you how we'll settle it: you jest hop in on der back seat an' do der ridin' and I'll set in front an' do der drivin'." In this way they reached the station amicably and the old man caught his train. Like this old Negro, Mr. Washington always devoted his energies to catching the train, and it made little difference to him whether he sat on the front or the back seat. A few months later, to the five thousand people of his own race in the Harlem Casino in New York City, he de- scribed their daily lives, their problems, perplexities, and temptations in terms as homely, as picturesque, and as vivid as he used in talking to the Georgia farmers. He urged them, just as he did the farmers, to stop moving about and to settle down — "to stop staying here and there and everywhere and begin to live somewhere." He urged them to leave the little mechanical job of window washing, or what not, and go into business for themselves, even if they could only afford a few newspapers or peanuts to start with. He told of a certain New York street where he had 3i BOOKER T. WASHINGTON found all the people on one side of a row of push carts were selling something, while all the people on the other side were buying something. Those that were selling were white people, while those that were buying were colored people. That, he said, was a color line they had drawn themselves. He reminded them of the high cost of living, and by way of example he commented upon the expense of having to buy so many shoes. He said: "Up here you not only have to have good, expensive shoes, but you have to wear them all the time." And then he reminded them how back in the country down South, before they came to the city, they would buy a pair of shoes at Christmas and after Christmas put them away in the "chist " and not take them out again until "big meeting day," and then wear them only in the meeting and not walking to and from the church. And as he concluded with the words, "Under those conditions shoes last a long time," people all over the audience were chuckling and nudging and winking at one another as people will when characteristic incidents in their past lives are graphically recalled to them. Then he described the almost innumerable temptations to spend money which the city offers. Some of the store windows are so enticing that, as he said, "the dollars al- most jump out of your pockets as you go by on the side- walk." "Then you men working for rich men here in the city smell the smoke of so many twenty-five-cent cigars that after a while you feel as though you must smoke twenty-five-cent cigars. You don't stop to think that when the grandfathers of those very men first came from 32 LEADER OF HIS RACE the country a hundred years ago they smoked two-for-five cigars." Then he told of a family he had found living on the tenth story of an electric-lighted, steam-heated apart- ment house with elevator service, and this very family only two years before was living in a two-room cabin in the Yazoo Valley on the Mississippi bottoms. And he com- mented: "Now, that family's in danger. No people can change as much and as fast as that without great danger!" Next he touched on the high rents and said: "You mothers know that sooner or later you have to take in roomers to help pay that rent, and after a while you take in Tom, Dick, or Harry, or anybody who's got the money re- gardless of who or what they are, and you mothers know the danger that spells for your daughters." (At this point he was interrupted by a chorus of "amens" from women all over the great hall.) He continued: "Now, you take the 'old man' aside an' tell him straight, you're not going to have any more roomers hanging round your house — that he's got to hustle for a better job or go into some little business for himself, or move out into some little cottage in the country, or do something to get rid of those Tom, Dick, and Harry roomers." In short, in this speech Mr. Washington showed that he knew just as intimately the lives of his people in the flats of Greater New York as on the farms of southwestern Georgia. In spite of his grasp of details Mr. Washington never became so immersed in them as to lose sight of his ultimate goal, and conversely he never became so blinded by the 33 V BOOKER T. WASHINGTON vision of his ultimate goal as to overlook details. The solution of the so-called Negro problem in America, he felt, is to be found along these lines: As his people have more and more opportunity for training and become better and better trained they become more and more self-sufficient. They are developing their own carpenters, masons, black- smiths, farmers, merchants, and bankers as well as law- yers, teachers, preachers, and physicians. These trained people naturally, for the most part, serve their own race, and to them the members of the race naturally turn for the service that each is equipped to render. As they acquire wealth, education, and cultivation, the persons possessing these advantages naturally intermingle socially and build up a society from which the rough, ignorant, and uncouth of their own race are as inevitably excluded as are such persons from all polite social intercourse of whatever people. These Negroes of education and cultivation no more desire to force themselves into the society of the other race than do any persons of real education and cultivation desire to go where they are not wanted. As the race increases in wealth and culture it becomes more and more easy and natural for its successful members to satisfy their social desires and ambitions in their own society. Already in the centres of Negro prosperity and culture it would be almost, if not quite, as impossible for a white man to be received into the best Negro society as it would for a Negro to be received into the best white society. This growing independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leads 34 LEADER OF HIS RACE inevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segrega- tion based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from the artificial and arbitrary segrega- tion forced upon unwilling people by the laws of men. Under these conditions the disputes as to whether the best society of the blacks is inferior or superior to the best society of the whites becomes as academic and futile as would be similar contentions as to whether the best society of Constantinople is inferior or superior to that of Boston. While Negroes are more and more drawing apart from the whites into their own section of the city, town, or county they nevertheless find it a source of strength to live near the whites in order that they may have the benefit of their aid in those matters in which the older and stronger race excels. Nor is this an entirely one-sided advantage, as there are not a few matters in which the Negroes have natural advantages over the whites and hence may render them useful service. Thus the two races, socially sep- arated but economically interdependent, may to mutual advantage live side by side. Some persons claim that any such plan of race adjust- ment, while theoretically plausible and ideally desirable, is nevertheless practically impossible. They contend that no so radically different races have ever lived side by side in harmony and each aiding the other. However that may be, there remains the fact that such a harmonious and mutually helpful relationship between the two races does already exist in the town of Tuskegee, throughout Macon 35 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON County, and in many other of the more progressive lo- calities throughout the South to-day. And at the same time, the lynchings and riots and other manifestations of racial conflict are continuously if slowly growing less fre- quent. Whatever may be the relative strength of the two theories, the facts are lining up in support of the Booker Washington prophecy at the Atlanta Exposition when he said: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Washington came more and more to be regarded as the representative and spokesman of his race, and was invited to represent and speak for them at such national and international gatherings as the annual conventions of the National Negro Business League, of which he was the president and founder; the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man, held in Boston in 1897; the Presbyterian rally for Home Missions, at which President Grover Cleveland presided; the International Sunday-school Convention held in Chicago in 1914; the meeting of the National Educational Association in St. Louis in 1904; the Thanks- giving Peace Jubilee in the Chicago Auditorium at the close of thewarwith Spain in 1898, with President McKinley and his Cabinet in attendance; the Commencement exercises at Harvard in 1896, when President Eliot conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts; the International Con- ference on the Negro, held at Tuskegee in 191 2, with repre- sentatives present from Europe, Africa, the West Indies, 36 LEADER OF HIS RACE and South America, as well as all sections of the United States. Dartmouth College conferred his Doctorate upon him in 1901. At Harvard in 1896 President Eliot, with these words, conferred upon Mr. Washington the first honorary degree ever conferred by a great university upon an American Negro: "Teacher, wise helper of his race; good servant of God and country." In his speech delivered at the Alumni Dinner on the same day Mr. Washington brought this message to Harvard: "If through me, an humble repre- sentative, seven millions of my people in the South might be permitted to send a message to Harvard — Harvard that offered up on death's altar young Shaw, and Russell, and Lowell, and scores of others, that we might have a free and united country — that message would be: 'Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by the way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress!' " The next year at the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man held in Music Hall, Boston, which con- cluded with the unveiling of the monument of Robert Gould Shaw, Booker Washington in concluding his ad- dress turned to the one-armed color bearer of Colonel Shaw's regiment and said: "To you, to the scarred and 37 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON scattered remnants of the Fifty-fourth, who with empty sleeve and wanting leg have honored this occasion with your presence — to you, your commander is not dead. Though Boston erected no monument, and history re- corded no story, in you and the loyal race which you repre- sent Robert Gould Shaw will have a monument which time cannot wear away." In his speech at the Peace Jubilee exercises after the war with Spain, Mr. Washington said : "When you have gotten the full story of the heroic conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American War — heard it from the lips of Northern soldiers and Southern soldiers, from ex-abolitionist and ex- master — then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity to live for its country." And again in the same speech, after rehearsing the successes of American arms, he said: "We have succeeded in every conflict, ex- cept the effort to conquer ourselves in the blotting out of racial prejudices. . . . Until we thus conquer our- selves, I make no empty statement when I say that we shall have, especially in the Southern part of our country, a cancer gnawing at the heart of the Republic that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army without or within." Note this as the language of a man on a great national occasion who has been accused of a time-serving acquiescence in the injustices which his race suffers! In his address before the National Educational Associa- tion in St. Louis, in 1904, he made the following remarks which are typical of points he sought to emphasize when 38 LEADER OF HIS RACE addressing audiences of white people: "Let me free your minds, if I can, from possible fear and apprehension in two directions: the Negro in this country does not seek, as a race, to exercise political supremacy over the white man, nor is social intermingling with any race considered by the Negro to be one of the essentials to his progress. You may not know it, but my people are as proud of their racial identity as you are of yours, and in the degree that they become intelligent, racial pride increases. I was never prouder of the fact that I am classed as a Negro than I am to-day. ... I can point you to groups of my people in nearly every part of our country that in intelli- gence and high and unselfish purpose of their school and church life, and in the purity and sweetness of their home life and social intercourse, will compare favorably with the races of the earth. You can never lift any large section of people by continually calling attention to their weak points. A race, like a child in school, needs encourage- ment as well as chastisement." In his address before the annual session of 1914 of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mr. Washington made the following remarks which are typical of his points of chief emphasis in addressing his own people: "Let your success thoroughly eclipse your short- comings. We must give the world so much to think and talk about that relates to our constructive work in the direction of progress that people will forget and overlook our failures and shortcomings. . . . One big, definite fact in the di- rection of achievement and construction will go farther in 39 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON securing rights and removing prejudice than many printed pages of defense and explanation. . . . Let us in the future spend less time talking about the part of the city that we cannot live in, and more time in making that part of the city that we can live in beautiful and attrac- tive. It is characteristic of the kind of criticism to which Mr. Washington was subjected that a certain element of the Negro press violently denounced this comment as an in- direct endorsement of the legal segregation of Negroes. Probably the last article written by Mr. Washington for any publication was the one published posthumously by the New Republic, New York City, December 4, 191 5, en- titled, "My View of Segregation Laws," in which he stated in no uncertain terms his views on the segregation laws which were being passed in the South. In concluding his article, he said: "Summarizing the matter in the large, segregation is ill- advised because: 1. It is unjust. 2. It invites other unjust measures. 3. It will not be productive of good, because practically every thoughtful Negro resents its injustice and doubts its sincerity. Any race adjustment based on injustice finally defeats itself. The Civil War is the best illustration of what results where it is attempted to make wrong right or seem to be right. 4. It is unnecessary. 5. It is inconsistent. The Negro is segregated from his 40 LEADER OF HIS RACE white neighbor, but white business men are not prevented from doing business in Negro neighborhoods. 6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races. Wherever a form of segregation exists it will be found that it has been administered in such a way as to embitter the Negro and harm more or less the moral fibre of the white man. That the Negro does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it. "It seems to me that the reasons given above, if care- fully considered, should serve to prevent further passage of such segregation ordinances as have been adopted in Norfolk, Richmond, Louisville, Baltimore, and one or two cities in South Carolina. "Finally, as I have said in another place, as white and black learn daily to adjust, in a spirit of justice and fair play, these interests which are individual and racial, and to see and feel the importance of those fundamental in- terests which are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run, no individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the common good; for in the gain or loss of one race all the rest have" equal claim." In concluding his Muskogee speech he said: "If there are those who are inclined to be discouraged concerning racial conditions in this country we have but to turn our minds in the direction of the deplorable conditions in Europe, growing largely out of racial bitterness and fric- 41 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON tion. When we contrast what has taken place there with the peaceful manner in which black people and white people are living together in this country, notwithstanding now and then there are evidences of injustice and friction, which should always be condemned, we have the greatest cause for thanksgiving. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found so many white people living side by side with so many of dark skin in so much of peace and harmony as in the United States." This concluding observation was particularly character- istic of him. Somewhere, or somehow, he always turned to account all significant events for weal or woe from the most trivial personal happenings to the titanic world war. Like all great leaders, Booker Washington did the bulk of his work quietly in his own office and not on dramatic historic occasions before great audiences. He received every day, for instance, a huge and varied mail which re- quired not only industry to handle, but much judgment, patience, and tact to dispose of wisely and adequately. We will here mention and quote from a sheaf of letters taken at random from his files which partially illustrate the range of his interests and the variety of the calls which were constantly made upon him. A railroad official in Colorado asked his opinion on the question of separate schools for white and black children apropos of a movement to amend the State constitution so as to make possible such separate schools. In his reply Mr. Washington said: "As a rule, colored people in the Northern States are very much opposed to any plans for 42 LEADER OF HIS RACE separate schools, and I think their feelings in the matter deserve consideration. The real objection to separate schools, from their point of view, is that they do not like to feel that they are compelled to go to one school rather than the other. It seems as if it was taking away part of their freedom. This feeling is likely to be all the stronger where the matter is made a subject of public agitation. On the other hand, my experience is that if this matter is left to the discretion of the school officials it usually settles itself. As the colored people usually live pretty closely together, there will naturally be schools in which colored students are in the majority. In that case, the process of separation takes place naturally and without the necessity of changing the constitution. If you make it a con- stitutional question, the colored people are going to be op- posed to it. If you leave it simply an administrative question, which it really is, the matter will very likely set- tle itself." We next find a courteous reply to the letter of some poor crank who wanted to secure his backing for a preparation which he had concocted for taking the curl out of Negroes' hair. Then comes a letter to a man who wants to know whether it is true that the Negro race is dying out. To him Mr. Washington quoted the United States census figures for 1910, which indicate an increase of H-nj- per cent, in the Negro population for the decade. Next, we come upon a letter written to a man who is interested in an effort of the Freedman's Aid Society to raise a half a million dollars for Negro schools in the South. 43 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Since this letter so well describes an important phase of Booker Washington's leadership we give it almost in full. It was written in 191 3 and runs thus: "I think the most interesting work that Tuskegee has done in recent years is its work in rural schools in the country surrounding the Institute. During the last five or six years forty-seven school buildings have been erected in Macon County by colored people themselves. At the same time the school term has been lengthened in every part of the county from five to eight months. This work has been done under the direction of a supervising teacher working in connection with the extension department of the Institute. "Among other things that have been attempted to en- courage the people to improve their schools has been a model country school started in a community called Rising Star, a few miles from the Institute. The school at Rising Star is an example of the rural school that Tuskegee is seeking to promote. It consists of a five-room frame house in which the teachers— a Tuskegee graduate and his w if e _ not on ly teach, but live. All the rooms are used by the school children. In the kitchen they are taught to cook, in the dining-room to serve a meal, in the bedroom to make the beds. In the garden they are taught how to raise vegetables, poultry, pigs, and cows. They recite in the sitting-room or on the veranda, and their lessons all deal with matters of their own every-day life. ... In- stead of figuring how long it will take an express train to reach the moon if it travelled at the rate of forty miles an 44 LEADER OF HIS RACE hour, the pupils figure out how much corn can be raised on neighbor Smith's patch of land and how much farmer Jones' pig will bring when slaughtered. 'The pupils learn neatness and cleanliness by living in a decent home during their school hours. They carry the lesson home, and the result is seen in cleaner and better farmhouses. The model school has become the pattern on which the farmers and their wives are improving their homes. ..." Then comes a letter from a poor woman who wants him in the course of his travels to look up her husband who abandoned her some years before. For purposes of identi- fication she says: "This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve. ..." Even though Mr. Washing- ton did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a dis- loyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and suggested some means of tracing her recreant spouse. We come next upon a long letter written to a man who wishes to quote for publication in a magazine Booker Washington's opinion on the relation between crime and education. In the concluding paragraphs of his reply Mr. Washington says: "In nine cases out of ten the crimes which serve to unite and give an excuse for mob violence are committed by men who are without property, without homes, and without education except what they have picked up in the city slums, in prisons, or on the chain gang. The South is spending too much money in giving 45 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON the Negro this kind of education that makes criminals and not enough on the kind of schools that turn out farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Other things being equal, it is true not only in America, in the South, but throughout the world, that there is the least crime where there is the most education. This is true of the South and of the Negro, just the same as it is true of every other race. Par- ticularly is it true that the individuals who commit crimes of violence and crimes that are due to lack of self-control are individuals who are, for the most part, ignorant. The decrease in lynching in the Southern States is an index of the steady growth of the South in wealth, in industry, in education, and in individual liberty." Then comes a letter to an individual who desires to know what proportion of the American Negroes can read and write now, and what proportion could at the time of the Civil War. The reply again quotes the 1910 census to the effect that 69.5 per cent, can now read and write as com- pared with only 3 per cent, at the close of the war. The letter also points out that the rate of illiteracy among American Negroes is now lower than the rate for all the peoples of Russia, Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela, and al- most as low as that of Spain. There follows a sheaf of correspondence in which Mr. Washington agreed to speak at the unveiling of a tablet m Auburn, New York, to the memory of "Aunt Harriet" Tubman Davis, the black woman, squat of stature and seamed of face, who piloted three or four hundred slaves from the land of bondage to the land of freedom. While 46 LEADER OF HIS RACE there he also agreed to speak at Auburn prison in response to the special request of some of the prisoners. Then we find a courteous but firmly negative reply to a long-winded bore who writes a six-page letter urging Mr. Washington to secure the acceptance by the Negro race of a flag which he has designed as their racial flag. After this follows a group of letters which passed between him and the late Edgar Gardiner Murphy, author of "The Present South," "The Basis of Ascendency," and other important books. In one of these letters Mr. Washington agrees, as requested, to read the proofs of "The Basis of Ascendency," and in another he thus characteristically comments upon Mr. Murphy's fears that a pessimistic book on the status of the Negro written by a supposed authority (a colored man) would do wide-reaching harm: "Of course among a certain element it will have an in- fluence for harm, but human nature, as I observe it, is so constructed that it does not take kindly to a description of a failure. It is hard to get up enthusiasm in connection with a funeral procession. No man, in my opinion, could write a history of the Southern Confederacy that would be read generally because it failed. I am not saying, of course, that the Negro race is a failure. Mr. writes largely from that point of view, hence there is no rallying point for the general reader." In reply to a Western university professor who had asked his opinion of amalgamation as a solution of the race problem he wrote: "I have never looked upon amalgama- tion as offering a solution of the so-called race problem, and 47 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON I know very few Negroes who favor it or even think of it, for that matter. What those whom I have heard discuss the matter do object to are laws which enable the father to escape his responsibility, or prevent him from accepting and exercising it, when he has children by colored women. I think this answers your question, but since there seems to be some misunderstanding as to how colored people feel about this subject, I might say in explanation of what I have already said: The Negroes in America are, as you know, a mixed race. If that is an advantage we have it; if it is a disadvantage, it is still ours, and for the simple reason that the product of every sort of racial mixture between the black man and any other race is always a Negro and never a white man, Indian, or any other sort of man. "The Negro in America is denned by the census as a person who is classed as such in the community in which he or she resides. In other words, the Negro in this country is not so much of a particular color or particular racial stock as one who shares a particular condition. It is the fact that they all share in this condition which creates a cause of common sympathy and binds the members of the race together in spite of all differences." To an embarrassing question put by the society editor of some paper Mr. Washington replied by merely telling a funny story the application of which to the impertinent inquiry was obvious. In another letter he summed up his opinion of the much-mooted question of the franchise in these two sentences : "There is no reason why every Negro who is not fitted to vote should not be disfranchised. At 48 LEADER OF HIS RACE the same time, there is no good reason why every white man who is not fitted to vote should not also be disfranchised." From the foregoing correspondence it will be seen that one of Booker Washington's many roles was to act as a kind of plenipotentiary and interpreter between his people and the dominant race. For this part he was peculiarly fitted by his thorough understanding of and sympathy for each race. Theodore Roosevelt, immediately after taking the oath of office as President of the United States, in Buffalo after the death of President McKinley, wrote Mr. Washington the following note : [Copy] Executive Mansion Washington Buffalo, N. Y., Sept. 14, 1 90 1. My Dear Mr. Washington: I write you at once to say that to my deep regret my visit South must now be given up. When are you coming North ? I must see you as soon as possible. I want to talk over the question of possible ap- pointments in the South exactly on the lines of our last conversation together. I hope that my visit to Tuskegee is merely deferred for a short season. Faithfully yours, (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt. Booker T. Washington, Esq., Tuskegee, Alabama. 49 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON This deferred visit finally took place in 1905, not long after Colonel Roosevelt's triumphant election to the Presidency, when he came to Tuskegee accompanied by his secretary, William Loeb, Jr.; Federal Civil Service Commissioner, John McThenny; Collector of Revenue for the Birmingham District, J. O. Thompson; Judge Thomas G. Jones of Montgomery, and a fellow Rough Rider by the, name of Greeneway. In response to the above note Mr. Washington went to the White House and discussed with the President "possible future appointments in the South'' along the lines agreed upon between them in a conference which they had had at a time when it had seemed possible that Mr. Roose- velt might be given the Republican Presidential nomina- tion of 1900, that is, while Mr. Roosevelt was Governor of New York and a tentative candidate for the nomination. Upon his return to Tuskegee after this talk with Presi- dent Roosevelt, Mr. Washington found that the judge- ship for the Southern District of Alabama had just be- come vacant through the death of the incumbent, Judge Bruce. Here was an opportunity for the President to put into practice in striking fashion the policy they had discussed— namely, to appoint to Federal posts in the Southern States the best men available and to reward and recognize conspicuous merit among Southern Demo- crats and Southern Negroes as well as among Southern white Republicans. Being unable at the moment to return to Washington, he sent his secretary, Emmett J. Scott, with the following letter: So LEADER OF HIS RACE Tuskegee, Alabama, October 2, 190 1. President Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D. C. My Dear Mr. President: I send you the following information through my secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, whom you can trust implicitly. Judge Bruce, the Judge of the Middle District of Alabama, died yesterday. There is going to be a very hard scramble for his place. I saw ex-governor T. G. Jones yesterday, as I promised, and he is willing to accept the judgeship of the Middle District of Alabama. I am more convinced now than ever that he is the proper man for the place. He has until recently been president of the Alabama State Bar Association. He is a Gold Demo- crat, and is a clean, pure man in every respect. He stood up in the Constitutional Convention and elsewhere for a fair election law, opposed lynching, and he has been out- spoken for the education of both races. He is head and shoulders above any of the other persons who I think will apply for the position. Yours truly, Booker T. Washington. P. S. — I do not believe in all the South you could select a better man through whom to emphasize your idea of the character of a man to hold office than you can do through ex-governor Jones. [Copy] Mr. Scott described what occurred on his delivery of this letter in the following report to his chief: Washington, D. C, October 4, 190 1. My Dear Mr. Washington: I called to see the Presi- dent this morning. I found him all cordiality and brim- 5i BOOKER T. WASHINGTON ming over with good will for you. That pleased me much! He had received the telegram and had made an appoint- ment for me. He read your letter, inquired if I knew the contents, and then launched into a discussion of it. Wanted to know if Governor Jones supported Bryan in either campaign. I told him no. He wanted to know how I knew. I told him of the letter wherein he (Governor Jones) stated to you that he was without political am- bition because he had opposed Bryan, etc. Well, he said he wanted to hear from you direct as to whether he had or not, and asked me to write you to find out. I am now awaiting that wire so as to call again on him. As soon as I see him again I will wire you and write you as to what he says. He is going to appoint Governor Jones. That was made apparent. While I was waiting to see him Senator Chandler with the Spanish Claims Commission called. They saw him first. I heard the talk, however, which was mostly felicitation. Incidentally, however, Senator Chandler said that the Commission was afraid it would lose one of its members because of the vacancy in Alabama, referring to Hon. W. L. Chambers, who was present and who is a member of the Commission. The President laughed heartily. Said the Senator always sprung recommendations unexpectedly, and so forth and so forth. He did not inquire as to any of the others — the applicants — seemed interested only to find out about Governor Jones. . . . There were many correspon- dents there at the door, but I told them I was passing through to Buffalo, but had stopped over to invite the President to include Tuskegee in his itinerary when he goes South again. . . . Will write again when I see the President again. Yours sincerely, (Signed) Emmett J. Scott. 52 LEADER OF HIS RACE As soon as he had received Dr. Washington's telegram in reply, Mr. Scott went again to the White House and wrote thus of his second call: [Copy] Washington, D. C. f October 5, 1901. My Dear Mr. Washington : You have my telegram of to-day. I sent it as soon as I had seen the President. I had a three-hour wait to see him and it was tiresome, but I "camped with them." When admitted to the general reception room the President met me and was cordial and asked me to wait awhile, till he could dismiss two delegations, then he invited me into the office, or cabinet room, and read very carefully the telegram received from you last night — Friday night. His face was a study. He was greatly surprised to learn that the Governor voted for Bryan, and walked about considerably. At last he said, "Well, I guess I'll have to appoint him, but I am awfully sorry he voted for Bryan." He then asked me who Dr. Crum* is and I told him that he was a clean representative character, and that he was favorably con- sidered by Harrison for the Charleston postmastership, etc. He did not know him and asked me what place was referred to. You had not discussed it with me, but I told him you most likely referred to the place made vacant by the death of Webster. He then called Mr. Cortelyou, Secretary, into the office and asked him if he knew Cr um. He said he didn't but that he had heard of *This refers to a suggestion made by Mr. Washington in his telegram recom- mending the appointment of Dr. W. D. Crum, a colored physician, to a South Carolina vacancy, so that the President could thereby announce at the same time the appointment of a first-grade Southern white Democrat and a first- class colored man. S3 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON him and always favorably.. The President then asked Cortelyou what place a man named B. was being con- sidered for, and he said the place made vacant by Web- ster's death. He then turned to me and said that he was sorry, that he would certainly have considered the matter if he had had your word earlier. He asked me to tell you that if you wish Dr. Crum considered for any other place that he will be glad to have you communicate with him. I then asked him what I should tell you in the Governor Jones' matter, and he said: "Tell Mr. Washington without using my name that party will most likely be appointed — in fact I will appoint him — only don't make it that strong by wire." So I consider the matter closed. The colored brethren here are scared. They don't know what to expect, and the word has passed, they say, that you are the "Warwick" so far as they are concerned. I hope to find you well in Chicago. Sincerely yours, (Signed) Emmett J. Scott. This precedent-breaking appointment of a Southern Democrat by a Republican President, made primarily on the recommendation of Booker Washington and Grover Cleveland, was acclaimed with enthusiastic approval by all Democrats everywhere, and in fact there was no dissenting voice except from the office- holding Southern Republicans who naturally resented this encroachment upon what they regarded as their patronage rights. At first appreciation was almost universal of the efforts of the Negro leader in helping a Republican President to make this far-reaching change in 54 LEADER OF HIS RACE the Federal officeholding traditions of the South. Soon, however, some Southern newspapers began to question the wisdom of allowing a Negro to have even an advisory voice in political matters notwithstanding his advice had in this instance been so acceptable to the South. This criticism grew so insistent that Judge Jones found himself in an uncomfortable position because his appointment had been made, in large part, on the recommendation of a Negro. He tried to soften the situation by giving out a statement to the effect that his endorsement by representative white men would probably have assured his appointment even without the assistance of Booker Washington. Later, however, the Judge expressed to Mr. Scott privately, after listening with deep interest to the recital of all the incidents connected with his appointment, his apprecia- tion of what Booker Washington had done for him. Aside from this appointment, Booker Washington had a voice in many others, including those of Gen. R. D. Johnson as Receiver of Public Moneys at Birmingham, Colonel Thomas R. Roulhac as United States District Judge, and Judge Osceola Kyle of Alabama as United States District Attorney in the Panama Canal Zone. During the administrations of both Presidents Roosevelt and Taft hardly an office of consequence was conferred upon a Negro without first consulting Mr. Washington. He did not strive through his influence with Presidents Roosevelt and Taft to increase the number of Negro appointees, but rather to raise the personnel of Negro officeholders. During the period when his advice was 55 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON most constantly sought at the White House, Charles W. Anderson was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the Second District of New York City; J. C. Napier of Nashville, Tenn., became Register of the Treasury; William H. Lewis of Boston was appointed successively Assistant United States District Attorney and Assistant Attorney-General of the United States; Robert H. Terrell was given a Municipal Judgeship of the District of Colum- bia; Whitefield McKinlay was made Collector of the Port for the Georgetown District, District of Columbia; Dr. W. D. Crum was appointed Collector of Customs for the Port of Charleston, S. C; Ralph W. Tyler, Auditor for the Navy Department at Washington, D. C; James A. Cobb, Special Assistant U. S. Attorney in charge of the enforcement of the Pure Food Law for the District of Columbia, and Charles A. Cottrell, Collector of Internal Revenue for -the District of Hawaii at Honolulu. In all these notably excellent appointments Mr. Washington had a voice. In 1903, in commenting on a speech of Mr. Washing- ton's in which he had emphasized the importance of quality rather than quantity in Negro appointments, Presi- dent Roosevelt wrote him as follows: My Dear Mr. Washington: That is excellent; and you have put epigrammatically just what I am doing — that is, though I have rather reduced the quantity I have done my best to raise the quality of the Negro appointments. With high regard. Sincerely yours, Theodore Roosevelt. St CHAPTER THREE WASHINGTON: THE EDUCATOR THE Tuskegee Commencement exercises dramatize edu- cation. They enable plain men and women to visual- ize in the concrete that vague word which means so little to them in the abstract. More properly they idramatize the identity between real education and actual life. On the platform before the audience is a miniature engine to which steam has been piped, a minia- ture frame house in course of construction, and a piece of brick wall in process of erection. A young man in jump- ers comes onto the platform, starts the engine and blows the whistle, whereupon young men and women come hur- rying from all directions, and each turns to his or her ap- pointed task. A young carpenter completes the little house, a young mason finishes the laying of the brick wall, a young farmer leads forth a cow and milks her in full view of the audience, a sturdy blacksmith shoes a horse, and after this patient, educative animal has been shod he is turned over to a representative of the veterinary divi- sion to have his teeth filed. At the same time on the op- posite side of the platform one of the girl students is hav- ing a dress fitted by one of her classmates who is a dress- maker. She at length walks proudly from the platform 57 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON in her completed new gown, while the young dressmaker looks anxiously after her to make sure that it "hangs right behind." Other girls are doing washing and ironing with the drudgery removed in accordance with advanced Tus- kegee methods. Still others are hard at work on hats, mats, and dresses, while boys from the tailoring depart- ment sit crosslegged working on suits and uniforms. In the background are arranged the finest specimens which scientific agriculture has produced on the farm and me- chanical skill has turned out in the shops. The pumpkin, potatoes, corn, cotton, and other agricultural products predominate, because agriculture is the chief industry at Tuskegee just as it is among the Negro people of the South. This form of commencement exercise is one of Booker Washington's contributions to education which has been widely copied by schools for whites as well as blacks. That it appeals to his own people is eloquently attested by the people themselves who come in ever-greater numbers as the commencement days recur. At three o'clock in the morning of this great day vehicles of every description, each loaded to capacity with men, women, and children, begin to roll in in an unbroken line which sometimes ex- tends along the road for three miles. Some of the teachers at times objected to turning a large area of the Insti- tute grounds into a hitching-post station for the horses and mules of this great multitude, but to all such objec- tions Mr. Washington replied, "This place belongs to the people and not to us." Less than a third of these eight 58 THE EDUCATOR to nine thousand people are able to crowd into the chapel to see the actual graduation exercises, but all can see the graduation procession as it marches through the grounds to the chapel and all are shown through the shops and over the farm and through the special agricultural exhibits, and even through the offices, including that of the prin- cipal. It is significant of the respect in which the people hold the Institute, and in which they held Booker Wash- ington, that in all these years there has never been on these occasions a single instance of drunkenness or disorderly conduct. In his annual report to the trustees for 1914 Mr. Wash- ington said of these commencement exercises: "One of the problems that constantly confronts us is that of making the school of real service to these people on this one day when they come in such large numbers. For many of them it is the one day in the year when they go to school, and we ought to find a way to make the day of additional value to them. I very much hope that in the near future we shall find it possible to erect some kind of a large pa- vilion which shall serve the purpose of letting these thou- sands see something of our exercises and be helped by them. ,, The philosophy symbolized by such graduation exer- cises as we have described may best be shown by quoting Mr. Washington's own words in an article entitled, "In- dustrial Education and the Public Schools," which was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Polit- ical and Social Science for September of the year 1913. In this article Mr. Washington says: "If I were asked 59 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON what I believe to be the greatest advance which Negro education has made since emancipation I should say that it has been in two directions: first, the change which has taken place among the masses of the Negro people as to what education really is; and, second, the change that has taken place among the masses of the white people in the South toward Negro education itself. "I can perhaps make clear what I mean by a little ex- planation: the Negro learned in slavery to work but he did not learn to respect labor. On the contrary, the Negro was constantly taught, directly and indirectly during slavery times, that labor was a curse. It was the curse of Canaan, he was told, that condemned the black man to be for all time the slave and servant of the white man. It was the curse of Canaan that made him for all time 1 a hewer of wood and drawer of water.' The consequence of this teaching was that, when emancipation came, the Negro thought freedom must, in some way, mean freedom from labor. "The Negro had also gained in slavery some general notions in regard to education. He observed that the people who had education for the most part belonged to the aristocracy, to the master class, while the people who had little or no education were usually of the class known as 'poor whites.' In this way education became asso- ciated in his mind with leisure, with luxury, and freedom from the drudgery of work with the hands. . . . "In order to make it possible to put Negro education on a sound and rational basis it has been necessary to 60 THE EDUCATOR change the opinion of the masses of the Negro people in regard to education and labor. It has been necessary to make them see that education, which did not, directly or indirectly, connect itself with the practical daily interests of daily life could hardly be called education. It has been necessary to make the masses of the Negroes see and realize the necessity and importance of applying what they learned in school to the common and ordinary things of life; to see that education, far from being a means of escaping labor, is a means of raising up and dignifying labor and thus indirectly a means of raising up and dig- nifying the common and ordinary man. It has been necessary to teach the masses of the people that the way to build up a race is to begin at the bottom and not at the top, to lift the man furthest down, and thus raise the whole structure of society above him. On the other hand, it has been necessary to demonstrate to the white man in the South that education does not 'spoil' the Negro, as it has been so often predicted that it would. It was necessary to make him actually see that education makes the Negro not an idler or spendthrift, but a more industrious, thrifty, law-abiding, and useful citizen than he otherwise would be." The commencement exercises which we have described are one of the numerous means evolved by Booker Washing- ton to guide the masses of his own people, as well as the Southern whites, to a true conception of the value and meaning of real education for the Negro. The correlation between the work of farm, shop, and 61 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON classroom, first applied by General Armstrong at Hamp- ton, was developed on an even larger scale by his one-time student, Booker Washington. The students at Tuskegee are divided into two groups: the day students who work in the classroom half the week and the other half on the farm and in the shops, and the night students who work all day on the farm or in the shops and then attend school at night. The day school students pay a small fee in cash toward their expenses, while the night school students not only pay no fee but by good and diligent work gradually accumulate a credit at the school bank which, when it becomes sufficiently large, enables them to become day school students. In fact, the great major- ity of the day students have thus fought their way in from the night school. But all students of both groups thus receive in the course of a week a fairly even balance between theory and practice. In a corner of each of the shops, in which are carried on the forty or more different trades, is a blackboard on which are worked out the actual problems which arise in the course of the work. After school hours one always finds in the shops a certain number of the teachers from the Academic Department looking up problems for their classes for the next day. A physics teacher may be found in the blacksmithing shop digging up problems about the tractive strength of wires and the expansion and contrac- tion of metals under heat and cold. A teacher of chem- istry may be found in the kitchen of the cooking school unearthing problems relating to the chemistry of food for 62 THE EDUCATOR her class the next day. If, on the other hand, you go into a classroom you will find the shop is brought into the class- room just as the classroom has been brought into the shop. For instance, in a certain English class the topic assigned for papers was "a model house" instead of "bravery" or "the increase of crime in cities," or "the landing of the Pilgrims." The boys of the class had pre- pared papers on the architecture and construction of a model house, while the girls' papers were devoted to its interior decoration and furnishing. One of the girls described a meal for six which she had actually prepared and the six had actually consumed. The meal cost seventy-five cents. The discussion and criticism which followed each paper had all the zest which vitally prac- tical and near-at-hand questions always arouse. When the Department of Superintendence of the Na- tional Educational Association met in Atlanta, Ga., in 1904, many of the delegates, after adjournment, visited the Tuskegee Institute. Among these delegates was Prof. Paul Monroe of the Department of History and Princi- ples of Education of the Teachers' College of Columbia University. In recording his impressions of his visit, Professor Monroe says: "My interest in Tuskegee and a few similar institutions is founded on the fact that here I find illustrated the two most marked tendencies which are being formulated in the most advanced educational thought, but are being worked out slowly and with great difficulty. These tendencies are: first, the endeavor to draw the subject matter of education, or the 'stuff' of 63 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON schoolroom work, directly from the life of the pupils; and second, to relate the outcome of education to life's activi- ties, occupations, and duties of the pupil in such a way that the connection is made directly and immediately between schoolroom work and the other activities of the person being educated. This is the ideal at Tuskegee, and, to a much greater extent than in any other institution I know of, the practice; so that the institution is working along not only the lines of practical endeavor, but of the most advanced educational thought. To such an extent is this true that Tuskegee and Hampton are of quite as great in- terest to the student of education on account of the illumi- nation they are giving to educational theory as they are to those interested practically in the elevation of the Negro people and in the solution of a serious social problem. May I give just one illustration of a concrete nature com- ing under my observation while at the school, that will in- dicate the difference between the work of the school and that which was typical under old conditions, or is yet typical where the newer ideas, as so well grasped by Mr. Washington, are not accepted? In a class in English composition two boys, among others, had placed their written work upon the board, one having written upon 'Honor' in the most stilted language, with various historical references which meant nothing to himself or to his classmates — the whole paragraph evidently being drawn from some outside source; the other wrote upon 'My Trade — Blacksmithing' — and told in a simple and direct way of his day's work, the nature of the general 64 THE EDUCATOR course of training, and the use he expected to make of his training when completed. No better contrast could be found between the old ideas of formal language work, dominated by books and cast into forms not understood or at least not natural to the youth, and the newer ideas of simplicity, directness, and forcefulness in presenting the account of one's own experience. Not only was this con- trast an illustration of the ideal of the entire education offered at Tuskegee in opposition to that of the old, formal, 'literary' education as imposed upon the colored race, but it gave in a nutshell a concept of the new education. This one experience drawn from the life of the boy and related directly to his life's duration and circumstances was educa- tion in the truest sense; the other was not save as Mr. Washington made it so in its failure. . . ." Among the delegates was also Mr. A. L. Rafter, the Assistant Superintendent of Schools of Boston, who in speaking at Tuskegee said: "What Tuskegee is doing for you we are going to take on home to the North. You are doing what we are talking about." In general, these fore- most educational experts of the dominant race looked to Booker Washington and Tuskegee for leadership instead of expecting him or his school to follow them. Booker Washington not only practised at Tuskegee this close relation between school life and real life — and it is being continued now that he is gone — but preached it whenever and wherever opportunity offered. Some years ago, in addressing himself to those of his own students who expected to become teachers, he said on this subject among 65 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON other things: ". . . colored parents depend upon seeing the results of education in ways not true of the white parent. It is important that the colored teacher on this account give special attention to bringing school life into closer touch with real life. Any education is to my mind 'high' which enables the individual to do the very best work for the people by whom he is surrounded. Any edu- cation is 'low' which does not make for character and effective service. "The average teacher in the public schools is very likely to yield to the temptation of thinking that he is educating an individual when he is teaching him to reason out ex- amples in arithmetic, to prove propositions in geometry, and to recite pages of history. He conceives this to be the end of education. Herein is the sad deficiency in many teachers who are not able to use history, arithmetic, and ge- ometry as means to an end. They get the idea that the student who has mastered a certain number of pages in a textbook is educated, forgetting that textbooks are at best but tools, and in many cases ineffective tools, for the development of man. "The average parent cannot appreciate how many ex- amples Johnny has worked out that day, how many questions in history he has answered; but when he says, 'Mother, I cannot go back to that school until all the but- tons are sewed on my coat,' the parent will at once become conscious of school influence in the home. This will be the best kind of advertisement. The button propaganda tends to make the teacher a power in the community. A 66 THE EDUCATOR few lessons in applied chemistry will not be amiss. Take grease spots, for example. The teacher who with tact can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of the home."* The idea that education is a matter of personal habits of cleanliness, industry, integrity, and right conduct while of course not original with Booker Washington was perhaps further developed and more effectively emphasized by him than by any other American education. Just as Matthew Arnold insisted that religion was a matter of conduct rather than forms and dogmas so Booker Washington held that education is a matter of character and not forms. He concluded one of his Sunday night talks to his students with these words: "I want every Tuskegee student as he finds his place in the surging industrial life about him to give heed to the things which are 'honest and just and pure and of good report,' for these things make for char- acter, which is the only thing worth fighting for. In another of these talks he said: "A student should not be satisfied with himself until he has grown to the point where, when simply sweeping a room, he can go into the corners and crevices and remove the hidden trash which, although it should be left, would not be seen. It is not very hard to find people who will thoroughly clean a room which is going to be occupied, or wash a dish which is to be ♦From "Putting the Most Into Life," by Booker T. Washington. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers. 67 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON handled by strangers; but it is hard to find a person who will do a thing right when the eyes of the world are not likely to look upon what has been done. The cleaning of rooms and the washing of dishes have much to do with forming characters."* This recalls Booker Washington's own experience when as a ragged and penniless youth he applied for admission to Hampton and was given a room to sweep by way of an entrance examination. Indeed, one of Booker Washing- ton's greatest sources of strength as a teacher lay in the fact that his own life not only illustrated the truth of his assertions, but illustrated it in a striking and dramatic manner. His life was, in fact, an epitome of the hardships, struggles, and triumphs of the successful members of his race from the days of slavery to the present time. A great believer in the power of example he lived a life which gave him that power in its highest degree. Because of his in- herent modesty and good taste he never referred to him- self or his achievements as examples to be emulated, and this merely further enhanced their power. In concluding another Sunday night talk he said: "As a • /race we are inclined, I fear, to make too much of the day of judgment. We have the idea that in some far-ofF period there is going to be a great and final day of judgment, when every individual will be called up, and all his bad deeds will be read out before him and all his good deeds made known. I believe that every day is a day of judgment, that we reap *" Sowing and Reaping," by Booker T. Washington. L. C. Page & Co., Boston, Publishers. 68 THE EDUCATOR our rewards daily, and that whenever we sin we are pun- ished by mental and physical anxiety and by a weakened character that separates us from God. Every day is, I take it, a day of judgment, and as we learn God's laws and grow into His likeness we shall find our reward in this world in a life of usefulness and honor. To do this is to have found the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of char- acter and righteousness and peace."* To quote once more from these Sunday night talks, in another he said: "There is, then, opportunity for the colored people to enrich the material life of their adopted country by doing what their hands find to do, minor duties though they be, so well that nobody of any race can do them better. This is the aim that the Tuskegee student should keep steadily before him. If he remembers that all service, however lowly, is true service, an important step will have been taken in the solution of what we term 'the race problem.'" As is shown by these quotations Booker Washington used these Sunday night talks to crystalize, interpret, and summarize the meaning and significance of the kind of education which Tuskegee gives. He, the supreme head of the institution, reserved to himself this supremely im- portant task. The heads of the manifold trades are naturally and properly concerned primarily with turning raw boys and girls into good workmen and workwomen. The academic teachers in the school are similarly inter- *From "Putting the Most Into Life," by Booker T. Washington. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers. 69 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON ested in helping them as students to secure a mastery of their several subjects. The military commandants are concerned with their ability to drill, march, carry them- selves properly, and take proper care of their persons and rooms. The physician is interested in their physical health and the chaplain in their religious training. Im- portant as are all these phases of Tuskegee's training and closely as he watched each Mr. Washington realized that they might all be well done and yet Tuskegee fail in its supreme purpose: namely, the making of manly men and womanly women out of raw boys and girls. As he said in one of the passages quoted, "character is the only thing worth fighting for." Now, while the forming of character is the aim, and in some appreciable degree the achievement, of every worth-while educational institution, it is to a peculiar degree the aim and the achievement of Tuskegee. The ten million Negroes in the United States need trained leaders of their own race more than they need anything else. Whatever else they should or should not have these leaders must have character. Since Tuskegee is the largest of the educational institutions for Negroes, with the man at its head who was commonly recognized as the leader of leaders in his race, naturally the heaviest responsi- bility in the training of these leaders fell, and will continue to fall, upon Tuskegee. Consequently the task at Tuske- gee is not so much to educate so many thousands of young men and women as to train as many leaders for the Negro people as can possibly be done and done well within a given space of time. These Tuskegee graduates lead by 70 THE EDUCATOR the power of example and not by agitation. One runs a farm and achieves so much more success than his neigh- bors, through his better methods, that they gradually adopt these methods and with his help apply them to their own conditions. Another teaches a country school and does it so much better than the average country school teacher that his or her school comes to be regarded as a model to be emulated by the other schools of the locality. When a Tuskegee girl marries and settles in a community she keeps her house so much cleaner and in every way more attractive than the rank and file of her neighbors that gradually her house and her methods of housekeeping be- come the standard for the neighborhood. There is, how- ever, nothing of the " holier than thou " or the complaisant about the true Tuskegee graduate and neither is there anything monopolistic. They have had the idea of service thoroughly drilled into their consciousness — the idea that their advantages of education are, as it were, a trust which they are to administer for the benefit of those who have not had such advantages. Now such leaders as these must not only be provided if the so-called race problem is to be solved, but they must be provided speedily. In every community in which the black people are ignorant and vicious and without trained leaders among themselves they are likely at any time to come into conflict with the dominant race, and every such conflict engenders bitterness on both sides and makes just so much more difficult the final solution of the race prob- lem. This is why Booker Washington labored so in- 7i BOOKER* T. WASHINGTON cessantly to increase the quantity of Tuskegee's output as well as to maintain the quality. He brought Tus- kegee to the point where it reached through all its courses including its summer courses, short courses, and extension courses, more than 4,000 people in a single year, not counting the well-nigh innumerable hosts he counseled with on his State educational tours. In short, Booker Washington's task at Tuskegee was not only to turn out good leaders for his people, but to turn them out whole- sale and as fast as possible. He was, as it were, running a race with the powers of ignorance, poverty, and vice. This in part accounted for the sense of terrific pressure which one felt at Tuskegee, particularly when he was present and personally driving forward his great educational machine. This also may have accounted for the seeming lack of finesse in small matters which occasionally annoyed critical visitors who did not understand that the great in- stitution was racing under the spur of its indomitable master, and that just as in any race all but essentials must be thrown aside. Long before the University of Wisconsin had, through its extension courses, extended its opportunities in greater or less degree to the citizens of the entire State, Booker Wash- ington, through similar means, had extended the advan- tages of Tuskegee throughout Macon County in particular and the State of Alabama and neighboring States in general. The extension work of Tuskegee began in a small way over twenty years ago. It preceded even the work of the demonstration agents of the United States Department 72 THE EDUCATOR of Agriculture. There was first only one man who in his spare time went out among the farming people and tried to arouse enthusiasm for better methods of farming, better schools, and better homes. He was followed by a com- mittee of three members of the Tuskegee faculty, which committee still directs the work. One of the first efforts of this committee was to get the farmers to adopt deep plowing. There was not a two-horse plow to be found. There was a strong prejudice against deep plowing which was thus expressed by a Negro preacher farmer whom one of the committee tried to persuade: "We don't want deep plowing. You're fixin' for us to have no soil. If we plow deep it will all wash away and in a year or two we will have to clear new ground." Not long after this a member of the committee with a two-horse plow was practising what he had been preaching when a white planter who was pass- ing stopped and said: "See here, its none of my business of course, but you're new here and I don't want to see you fail. But if you plow your land deep like that you'll ruin it sure. I know. I've been here." After a time, however, the committee persuaded a few colored farmers to try deep plowing on a small scale as an experiment. One of the first of these was a poor man who had had the hardest kind of a struggle scraping a scant existence out of the soil for himself and his large family. He was desperate and agreed to try the new method. He got results the first year, moved on to better land and fol- lowed instructions. In a few years he bought 500 acres of land, gave each of his four sons 100 acres, and kept 100 acres 73 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON for himself. Since then father and sons alike have been prosperous and contented and have added to their holdings. In short, these Negro farmers were no more eager to be reformed and improved in their methods than are any- normal people. There is a shallow popular sentiment that unless people are eager for enlightenment and gratefully receive what is offered them they should be left unen- lightened. Booker Washington never shared this senti- ment. His agent reported that in response to their appeals for the raising of a better grade of cattle, hogs, and fowl the farmers replied that the stock they had was good enough. One of their favorite comments was, "When you eat an egg what difference does it make to you whether that egg was laid by a full-blooded fowl or a mongrel ? ,: Instead of being discouraged or disgusted by this attitude on the part of the people he merely regarded it as what was to be expected and set about devising means to over- come it. As always he placed his chief reliance upon the persuasive eloquence of the concrete. He decided to send blooded stock and properly raised products around among the farmers so that they might compare them with their inferior stock and products and see the difference with their own eyes. This plan was later carried out through the Jesup Wagon contributed by the late Morris K. Jesup of New York. This wagon was a peripatetic farmers' school. It took a concentrated essence of Tuskegees' agricultural department to the farmers who could not or would not come to Tuskegee. The wagon was drawn by a well-bred and well-fed mule. 74 THE EDUCATOR A good breed of ccw was tied behind. Several chickens of good breeds, well-developed ears of corn, stalks of cotton, bundles of oats and seeds, and garden products, which ought at the time to be growing in the locality, together with a proper plow, for deep plowing, were loaded upon the wagon. The driver would pull up before a farmhouse, deliver his message, and point out the strong points of his wagonload and would finally request a strip of ground for cultivation. This request granted he would harness the mule to the plow, break the ground deep, make his rows, plant his seeds, and move on to the next locality. With a carefully planned follow-up system he would return to each such plot for cultivation and harvest, and, most im- portant of all, to demonstrate the truths he had sought to impress upon the people by word of mouth. Where the first driver sent out was a general farmer, the second would be, let us say, a dairyman, the third a truck gardener, and finally a poultry raiser would go; usually a woman, since in the South women, for the most part, handle this phase of farming. These agents also distribute pamphlets prepared by the Agricultural Research Department of Tuskegee on such subjects as school gardening, twenty-one ways to cook cowpeas, improvement of rural schools, how to fight insect pests, cotton growing, etc. The constant emphasis upon practice by no means entails any neglect of theory. Besides this work there is each January for two weeks at Tuskegee the regular Farmers' Short Course. Many of the country schools adjourn for this period so that both teachers and pupils may attend. In this course not only 75 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON teachers and pupils, but fathers and mothers, sons and daughters sit side by side in the classrooms receiving instruction in stock raising, canning, poultry raising, and farming in all its branches. There are special courses for the women and girls in the care of children and in house- keeping. The following breezy announcement is taken from the prospectus of this course for the year 1914: " A creation of the farmer, by the farmers and for the farmer" "It meets the crying needs of thousands of our boys and girls, fathers and mothers. " It' s free to all — no examination nor entrance fee is required. "It started 7 years ago with 11 students; the second year we had 17, the third year we had 70, the fourth year we had 490, and last year we had nearly 2,000. It is the only thing of its kind for the betterment of the colored farmers. It lasts for only 12 days. It comes at a time when you would be celebrating Christmas.* In previous years the farmers have walked from 3 to 6 miles to attend; many have come on horseback, in wagons, and in buggies. You who live so that you cannot come in daily can secure board near the school for #2.50 per week. We expect 2,000 to 2,500 to enter this year." And then as a further stimulus to attend there comes: «« ' Prizes will be given as follows: ' A prize of #5 will be given to the person who makes the greatest progress on all subjects taught. *There is a custom among the colored people, inherited from the days of slavery, which is fortunately now drying out, to celebrate Christmas for a period of a week or ten days by stopping work and giving themselves over to a round of sprees. 76 THE EDUCATOR "A prize of $2 will be given to the person who is the best judge of livestock. "A prize of $1 will be given to the person who shows the best knowledge of the use and application of manures and fertilizers. And so on through a further list of one- dollar prizes for all the major activities of the Course." It will be noted that there is nothing stilted or academic about this announcement. Immediately following this Farmers' Short Course comes the Annual Farmers' Conference which holds its session in January of each year. To enforce the lessons in canning, stock raising, gardening, and all the other branches of farming, exhibits of the best products in each activity are displayed before the audience of farmers and their families, who number in all about 2,000. These exhibits are made and explained by the farmers themselves. The man, woman, or child who has produced the exhibit comes to the platform and explains in his or her own way just how it was done. In these explanations much human nature is thrown in. An amazingly energetic and capable woman had explained at one of these gatherings how she had paid off the mortgage on their farm by the proceeds from her eggs, her kitchen garden, and her preserving in her spare moments when she was not helping her husband in the cotton field, washing and dressing her six children, or cook- ing, mending, washing, and scrubbing for the household. In conclusion she said: "Now my ole man he's an' old-fashion farmer an' he don' kere fur dese modern notions, an' so I don't git no 77 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON help from him, an' that makes it hard for me 'cause it ain't nat'ral for der woman to lead. If I could only git him to move I'd be happier jest ter foller him." While these explanations are going on the farmers in the audience are naturally saying to themselves over and over again, "I could do that!" or "Why couldn't I do that?" One of Mr. Washington's chief aims was to increase the wants of his people and at the same time increase their ability to satisfy them. In other words, he believed in fermenting in their minds what might be termed an effec- tive discontent with their circumstances. With this pur- pose in view he addressed to them at these conferences such questions as the following: "What kind of house do you live in?" "Do you own that house?" "What kind of schoolhouse have you?" "Do you send your children to school regularly?" "How many months does your school run?" "Do you keep your teacher in the community?" "What kind of church have you?" "Where does your pastor live?" "Are your church, school, and home fences white- washed?" The farmers who were asked these questions would make an inward resolve that they would do what they could to put themselves in a position to answer the same questions more satisfactorily another year. Another feature of the work of Tuskegee beyond its own borders is that of the Rural School Extension Department. 78 THE EDUCATOR Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, one of the trustees of Tuskegee, has offered, through this department, during a stated period of time, to add #300 to every $300 the Ne- groes in rural communities of the South raise for the building of a new and modern schoolhouse. Under this plan ninety-two modern rural school buildings have al- ready been constructed. At the close of the time set Mr. Rosenwald will probably renew his offer for a further period. The social by-products of this campaign, in teaching the Negroes of these communities how to dis- regard their denominational and other feuds in working together for a high civic purpose of common advantage to all, and the friendly interest in Negro education awakened among their white neighbors, have been almost if not quite as important as the new schools themselves. There is also at Tuskegee a summer school for teachers in which last year were registered 437 teachers from fifteen Southern and several other States. Most of these teachers elect such practical subjects as canning, basket-making, broom-making, shuck and pine needlework or some form of manual training, as well as the teacher-training courses. One of these students, who was the supervisor of the Negro schools of an entire county, when she returned from her summer school work proceeded to vivify her dead schools by introducing the making of wash-boards, trash baskets, baskets made of weeping-willow, and pine needle work in its various forms. The registration soared at once, the indifferent Negro parents became interested, and before long the parents of white children complained 79 / BOOKER T. WASHINGTON to the county superintendent that the colored children were being taught more than their children. There is at the present time being developed at Tuskegee a unique experiment in the nature of what might be called a post-graduate school in real life for the graduates of the agricultural department. This consists in providing such graduates, who have no property of their own, with a forty-acre farm, on an 1,800-acre tract about nine miles from Tuskegee, known as Baldwin Farms, after the late Wm. H. Baldwin, Jr., who was one of the ablest and most devoted supporters and advisers of Booker Washington and Tuskegee. The land is held by the Tuskegee Farm and Improvement Company which is conducted on a business and not a charitable basis. The company sells the farms at an average price of $15 an acre, and purchasers who move directly on to the land are given ten years in which to pay for it, with the first payment at the end of the first year. If there is no house on the land the com- pany will put up a $300 house so planned as to permit the addition of rooms and improvements as rapidly as the purchaser is able to pay for them; the cost to be added to the initial cost of the land. When the graduate lacks the money and equipment necessary to plant, raise, and harvest crops, for this, too, the company will advance a reasonable sum, taking as security a mortgage on crops and equipment until the loan has been paid off. This mortgage bears interest at 8 per cent, while the interest on the mortgage on the land is not more than 6 per cent. Through cooperative effort within this colony it is pro- 80 THE EDUCATOR posed to develop such organizations as cooperative dairy, fruit growing, poultry, and live-stock associations and thus make it possible for the members of the colony to make not only a comfortable living but to lay by some- thing. They will, of course, have also the great advan- tage of the advice and guidance of the experts of the Institute. Formerly the penniless Negro youth, who graduated even most creditably from the agricultural department of Tuskegee, had before him nothing better than a greater or less number of years of monotonous drudgery as a mere farm or plantation laborer. Now, he may at once take up his own farm at Baldwin and begin immediately to apply all he has learned in carving out his own fortune and future. Thus did Booker Washington plan to carry the benefits of classroom instruction directly into the actual life problems of these graduates as well as bringing the problems of actual life into the classroom. However much Mr. Washington may have seemed to eliminate non-essentials in the pressure and haste of his wholesale educational task he never neglected essen- tials, but among essentials he included matters which might on the surface appear to be small and trifling. For instance, he insisted upon good table manners, and no boy or girl could spend any considerable time at Tuskegee without acquiring such manners. Instead of a trivial detail he regarded good table manners as an essential to self-respect and hence to the development of character. In short, he was engaged not so much in conducting a school as educating a race. 81 CHAPTER FOUR THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO BOOKER WASHINGTON was occasionally accused both by agitators in his own race and by a certain type of Northern white men who pose as the special champions of the "downtrodden" black man as en- couraging a policy of submission to injustice on the part of his people. He was, for example, charged with tame acquiescence in the practical disfranchisement of the Negro in a number of the Southern States. As a matter of fact, when these disfranchising measures were under consideration and before they were enacted, he in each case earnestly pleaded with the legislators that whatever restrictions in the use of the ballot they put upon the statute books should be applied with absolute impartiality to both races. This he urged in fairness to the white man as well as the black man. In an article entitled, "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?" published in the Century Magazine five years ago, Booker Washington said in illustrating the evil consequences of discrimination in the application of ballot regulations: "In a certain county of Virginia, where the county board had charge of registering those who were to be voters, a colored man, a graduate of Harvard 82 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO University, who had long been a resident of the county, a quiet, unassuming man, went before the board to register. He was refused on the ground that he was not intelligent enough to vote. Before this colored man left the room a white man came in who was so intoxicated that he could scarcely tell where he lived. This white man was registered, and by a board of intelligent white men who had taken an oath to deal justly in administering the law. "Will any one say that there is wisdom or statesman- ship in such a policy as that? In my opinion it is a fatal mistake to teach the young black man and the young white man that the dominance of the white race in the South rests upon any other basis than absolute justice to the weaker man. It is a mistake to cultivate in the mind of any individual or group of individuals the feeling and belief that their happiness rests upon the misery of some one else, or that their intelligence is measured by the ignorance of some one else; or their wealth by the poverty of some one else. I do not advocate that the Negro make politics or the holding of office an important thing in his life. I do urge, in the interest of fair play for everybody, that a Negro who prepares himself in prop- erty, in intelligence, and in character to cast a ballot, and desires to do so, should have the opportunity." While Booker Washington did not believe that political activities should play an important part among the Negroes as a whole he did believe that the exceptional Negro who was particularly qualified for holding public 83 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON office should be given the opportunity just as he believed in the higher academic education for the relatively- small minority capable of profiting by such an educa- tion. In concluding a letter in which he asks Booker Wash- ington to recommend a member of his race for a Federal office in Vicksburg, Miss., President Roosevelt said: "The question of the political importance of the colored man is really of no consequence. I do not care to con- sider it, and you must not consider it. Give me the very best colored man that you know of for the place, upon whose integrity and capacity we can surely rely." The man, T. V. McAlister, whom Mr. Washington "gave" the President for this office was of such character and reputation that the white citizens of Vicksburg actu- ally welcomed his appointment. Certainly neither Vicks- burg nor any other portion of Mississippi can be accused of over-enthusiasm for conferring civil and political privi- leges upon Negroes. Booker Washington's habit of never losing an oppor- tunity to advance constructively the interests of his people is well illustrated by the following letter to Presi- dent Roosevelt: [Personal] March 20, 1904. My Dear Mr. President: It has occurred to me that there are a number of ways in which the colored people of the United States could be of service in digging the 84 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO Panama Canal, and personally I should be glad to do anything in my power in getting them interested if deemed practicable. First: I think they can stand the climate better or as well as any other people from the United States. Second: I have thought that a reasonably satisfactory number of them might be useful as common, or skilled, laborers. Third: That in the Health Department our well- trained nurses and physicians might be found help- ful. Fourth: If the United States should assume any re- sponsibility as to education, that many efficient colored teachers from our industrial schools, and colleges, might prove of great benefit. And, then, besides the presence of these educated persons would, in my opinion, both by character and example, aid in influencing the morality of the darker-skinned people to be employed at the Isth- mus. I believe that these educated colored people could get closer to the masses than white men. Yours truly, Booker T. Washington. To President Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D. C. Nothing came of this suggestion except an acknowledg- ment and an assurance that the matter would be con- sidered. About two years ago, however, when Doctor Washington and Surgeon-General Gorgas met on a train the Surgeon-General said to Mr. Washington: "The 85 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON biggest man at the canal was the Negro," and he added that when they came to the dedication of the canal at its formal opening some Negro should have a place on the program. In recent years a certain section of the Republicans in the far Southern States have tried to free themselves of the reputation of being "nigger lovers" by vying with their Democratic rivals in seeking to deprive Negroes of civic and political rights. Republicans of this particular stripe are known colloquially as the "Lily Whites." In this connection the following correspondence is of interest. , [Copy] [Personal] White House, Washington, March 21, 1904. Dear Mr. Washington : By direction of the President I send you herewith for your private information a copy of letter from the President to Mr. , dated Febru- ary 24, 1904. Please return it to me when you have read it. Yours very truly, Wm. Loeb, Jr., Secretary to the President. Principal Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama. 86 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO This was the letter enclosed: [Copy] [Personal] White House , Washington, February 24, 1904. My Dear Mr. : I take it for granted that there is no intention of making the Louisiana delegation all white. I think it would be a mistake for my friends to take any such attitude in any state where there is a considerable Negro population. I think it is a great mistake from the standpoint of the whites; and in an organization composed of men whom I have especially favored it would put me in a false light. As you know, I feel as strongly as any one can that there must be nothing like "Negro domi- nation." On the other hand, I feel equally strongly that the Republicans must consistently favor those compara- tively few colored people who by character and intelli- gence show themselves entitled to such favor. To put a premium upon the possession of such qualities among the blacks is not only to benefit them, but to benefit the whites among whom they live. I very earnestly hope that the Louisiana Republicans whom I have so consistently favored will not by any action of theirs tend to put me in a false position in such a matter as this. With your entire approval, I have appointed one or two colored men entitled by character and standing to go to the National Con- vention. Sincerely yours, Theodore Roosevelt. In the year 1898 the success of the suffrage amendments in South Carolina and Mississippi in excluding from the 87 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON franchise more than nine-tenths of their Negro inhabitants inspired an agitation in Louisiana to cut off the Negro vote by similar means, and this agitation came to a head in the Constitutional Convention of that year. Mr. Washington, assisted by T. Thomas Fortune, the well- known Negro editor, and Mr. Scott, his secretary, pre- pared an open letter addressed to this convention which was taken to the convention by Mr. Scott and placed in the hands of the suffrage committee as well as the editors of the New Orleans Times-Democrat and the Picayune, the leading daily papers of the State. Extracts from the letter were sent out by the local representative of the Associated Press and widely published throughout the country. These New Orleans editors expressed to Mr. Scott their approval of the letter and their substantial agreement with its main features, and promised to publish it in full, which they not only did, but accompanied it by editorial re- views. This letter stated in part: "The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South that restriction be put upon the ballot. . . . With the sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to find a way out of the difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an ignorant white man to vote and withhold the same opportunity from an ignorant colored man, without injuring both men. . '. . Any law controlling the ballot, that is not abso- lutely just and fair to both races, will work more perma- nent injury to the whites than to the blacks. 83 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO "The Negro does not object to an educational or prop- erty test, but let the law be so clear that no one clothed with state authority will be tempted to perjure and de- grade himself by putting one interpretation upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the history of the South, and you will find that where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you will find to-day the lowest moral condition of both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an easy step to dishonesty with the white man's ballot, to the carrying of concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the murder of a white man and then to lynching. I entreat you not to pass such a law as will prove an eternal millstone about the neck of your children." Later in the same appeal he said: "I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot-box against the ignorant, that you open the schoolhouse. . . . Let the very best educational opportunities be provided for both races: and add to this the enactment of an election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same time providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they will be given the right of citizenship. Any other course will take from one half your citizens interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent producers and tax- payers — to become useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death." 89 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON The New Orleans Times-Democrat, in its editorial ac- companying the publication of this letter, said: "We have seen the corrupting influence in our politics and our elec- tions of making fraud an element of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we place in our new constitution." The same editorial further states that impartiality in the use of the ballot can be given Negro and white man not only "with the utmost safety," but "it would have a beneficial effect upon the politics of the State." In fact, the press of both North and South, both of the whites and the blacks, pub- lished this letter with practically unanimous editorial endorsement, but in spite of all this the leaders of the con- vention remained obdurate, the immediate object was lost, and Louisiana followed the example of Mississippi and South Carolina. No one realized, however, better than Booker Washington that the effort was by no means in vain. Owing to the general awakening of intelligent public opinion the convention leaders were forced into the position of driving through the discriminatory amend- ment not only in the face of the condemnation of the better element throughout the country but even with the dis- approval of the better and leading citizens of their own State. Shortly afterward members of the Georgia Legislature, seeking political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate against the Negroes of 90 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO Georgia by legislative enactment just as the Negroes of Louisiana had been discriminated against by a constitu- tional amendment. This time Mr. Washington went personally to Atlanta and appealed directly to a number of the members of the Legislature and to the editors of the leading papers in opposition to this bill. In an inter- view published in the Atlanta Constitution at the time he said: "I cannot think that there is any large number of white people in the South who are so ignorant or so poor that they cannot get education and property enough to enable them to stand the test by the side of the Negro in these respects. I do not believe that these white people want it continually advertised to the world that some special law must be passed by which they will seem to be given an unfair advantage over the Negro by reason of their ignorance or their poverty. It is unfair to blame the Negro for not preparing himself for citizenship by acquir- ing intelligence, and then when he does get education and property, to pass a law that can be so operated as to pre- vent him from being a citizen, even though he may be a large taxpayer. The Southern white people have reached the point where they can afford to be just and generous; where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to explain. It is an easy matter, requiring little thought, generosity or statesmanship to push a weak man down when he is struggling to get up. Any one can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmanship are shown in stimulating, en- couraging every individual in the body politic to make of 9i BOOKER T. WASHINGTON himself the most useful, intelligent, and patriotic citizen possible. Take from the Negro all incentive to make him- self and his children useful property-holding citizens, and can any one blame him for becoming a beast capable of committing any crime?" This time the immediate object was attained. The Atlanta Constitution and other leading Georgia papers indorsed Booker Washington's appeal and the Legislature voted down its anti-Negro members. Be it said to the credit of the Georgia Legislature that it has resisted several similar attempts to discriminate against the Negro citi- zens of the State, and it was not till 1908, ten years after the Louisiana law was passed, that Georgia finally passed a law disfranchising Negro voters. Booker Washington has been accused of not protesting against the lynching of Negroes. In the article published in the Century Magazine in 191 2, from which we have previously quoted, he said on this subject: "When he was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks say in a public speech that he knew of five cases during his admin- istration of innocent colored people having been lynched. If that many innocent people were known to the governor to have been lynched, it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom the governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of other states. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the colored persons lynched are inno- cent. . . . Not a few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their faces and committed 92 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO a crime, knowing that some Negro would be suspected and mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where Negroes have committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones have escaped and gone on committing more crimes. "Within the last twelve months there have been seventy- one cases of lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored people do not feel that innocence offers them security against lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends to give greater security to the criminal, white or black." Mr. Washington often pointed out how the lynching of blacks leads inevitably to the lynching of whites and how the lynching of guilty persons of either race inevitably leads to the lynching of innocent persons of both races. Let it not be supposed that Booker Washington con- fined his condemnation of lynching to the comparatively safe cover of the pages of an eminently respectable North- ern magazine. Some years ago when he was on a speaking trip in the State of Florida two depraved Negroes in Jack- sonville committed an atrocious murder. The crime aroused such intense race feeling that Mr. Washington's friends foresaw the likelihood of a lynching and, fearing for his safety, urged him to cancel his engagements in Jacksonville, where he was due to speak before white as well as black audiences within a few days. This he re- fused to do and insisted that because there was special racial friction it was especially necessary that he should 93 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON keep his engagements in the city. While he was driving to the hall where he was to address a white audience the automobile of one of his Negro escorts was stopped by a crowd of excited white men who angrily demanded that Booker Washington be handed over to them. When they found he was not in the car they allowed it to pass on without molesting the Negro occupant, who enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence and respect of both races in the city. What they would have done had they found Booker Washington one may only conjecture. At about the same time the Negro murderers were captured. The howls of the infuriated mob on its way to the jail to lynch the accused murderers could be heard in the distance from the hall where Mr. Washington spoke. Without referring in any way to the event which was taking place at the time Mr. Washington, to the alarm of his friends, launched into a fervid denunciation of lynching and ended with an earnest and eloquent appeal for better feeling between the races. Instead of his words breaking up the meeting in a storm of anger and rioting, this audience composed of Southern whites and colored people vigor- ously applauded his sentiments. Undoubtedly they were applauding not so much the views expressed as the cour- age shown in expressing them at that place and under those circumstances. A somewhat similar experience occurred on a recent speaking tour which he and a party were making through the State of Louisiana. He was accompanied by a com- pany of Negro leaders, including Major Moton of Hamp- 94 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO ton, who has since become his successor as Principal of Tuskegee Institute. They were in a portion of the State notorious for its lynchings of Negroes. No one who has ever seen Major Moton, or knows anything about him, would think of accusing him of timidity or cowardice. But when they went before a white audience in this par- ticular district he urged Mr. Washington as a matter of common prudence to "soft pedal" what he had to say about lynching. Just as in Jacksonville Mr. Washington did just the opposite, and made his denunciation particu- larly emphatic, and just as in Jacksonville there was the same applause and apparent approval of his views. Booker Washington also protested that in the matter of public education his people are not given a square deal in parts of the South, particularly in the country districts. He continually emphasized the relation between education and crime. Other things being equal the more and the better the education provided the less the number and seriousness of the crimes committed. Also he pointed out that the neglect of Negro school facilities injures the white citizens almost if not quite as much as the Negroes them- selves. And conversely that good school facilities for the colored children benefit the whites almost as much as the Negroes. He also insisted that quite aside from all moral and ethical considerations Negro education pays in dollars and cents. As illustrating the relation between Negro education and crime or rather lack of Negro education and crime he related this incident in an article entitled, "Black and White in the South" published in the Outlook of March 95 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 14, 1914: "A few weeks ago three of the most prominent white men in Mississippi were shot and killed by two colored boys. Investigation brought to light that the two boys were rough and crude, that they had never been to school, hence that they were densely ignorant. While no one had taught these boys the use of books, some one had taught them, as mere children, the use of cocaine and whiskey. In a mad fit, when their minds and bodies were filled with cheap whiskey and cocaine, these two ignorant boys created a 'reign of murder,' in the course of which three white men, four colored men, and one colored woman met death. As soon as the shooting was over a crazed mob shot the two boys full of bullet-holes and then burned their bodies in the public streets. "Now this is the kind of thing, more or less varied in form, that takes place too often in our country. Why? The answer is simple: it is dense ignorance on the part of the Negro and indifference arising out of a lack of knowl- edge of conditions on the part of the white people." He then pointed out that the last enumeration in Mississippi, where this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent, of the colored children had had no school- ing during the past year. That in Charleston County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro educa- tion, there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2; for the colored child $3.12; in Abbe- ville County #11.17 f° r tne white, 69 cents for the colored child. This 69 cents per capita expense was incurred by maintaining a one-room school for two and one-half 96 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO months, with a teacher paid at the rate of $15 a month. In another county the Negro school was in session but one month out of the twelve. Throughout the State, outside the cities and large towns, the school term for the colored children is from two to four months. Thus 200,000 colored children in South Carolina are given only three or four months of schooling a year. " Under these conditions it would require twenty-eight years for a child to complete the eight grades of the public school. . . . But South Carolina is by no means the only State that has these breeding spots for ignorance, crime, and filth which the nation will sooner or later have to reckon with." In the article in the Century Magazine from which quotations have already been made Mr. Washington cites this statement made by W. N. Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida, in explanation of an analysis of the sources of the school fund of the State: "A glance at the foregoing statistics in- dicates that the section of the State designated as 'Middle Florida' is considerably behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of Negro education, and a gen- eral discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause. The following figures are given to show that the education of the Negroes of Middle Florida does not cost, the white people of that section one cent. Without dis- cussing the American principle that it is the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that 97 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show- that the backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to the presence of the Negro, but that the presence of the Negro has been actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools." Mr. Sheats then shows that the cost of the Negro schools was #19,467, while the Negroes contributed to the school fund in direct taxes, together with their proper proportion of the indirect taxes, #23,984. He concludes : "If this is a fair calculation the schools for the Negroes are not only.no burden on the white citizens, but #4,525 for Negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted to the white schools." Mr. Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools at Wil- son, N. C, is quoted as demonstrating that had there been expended upon the Negro schools the Negro's proportion- ate share of the receipts from indirect taxes, as well as the direct taxes paid by them, #18,077 more in a given year would have been expended on colored schools in Virginia, #26,539 more in North Carolina, and #141,682 more in Georgia. These figures would seem to show that in these States at least the Negro schools are not only no burden upon the white taxpayers but that the colored people do not get back in school facilities the equivalent of all they themselves contribute in taxes. In the matter of passenger transportation facilities Booker Washington protested that injustice is done his people by most of the railroads of the South, not in provid- ing separate accommodations for blacks and whites, but in 98 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO furnishing the Negroes with inferior accommodations while charging them the same rates. This injustice causes, he believes, more resentment and bitterness among his people than all the other injustices to which they are sub- jected combined. The Negro or "Jim Crow" compart- ment is usually half of the baggage car which is usually inadequate for the traffic, badly lighted, badly ventilated, and dirty. The newsdealer of the train uses this coach and increases the congestion by spreading his wares over sev- eral seats. White men frequently enter this compartment to buy papers and almost always smoke in it, thus requiring the colored' women to ride in what is virtually a smoker. Aside from these matters the Negroes rarely have through cars and no sleeping, parlor, or buffet cars, and frequently no means of securing food on long journeys since many if not most of the station restaurants refuse to serve them. In the Century article Mr. Washington thus quoted the experience of a sensible and conservative Negro friend of his from Austin, Texas — a man of education and good reputation among both races in his native city: "At one time," he said, in describing some of his travelling ex- periences, "I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the keeper of the restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out of the window. He refused, and I had to travel a hundred miles farther before I could get a sand- wich. At another time I went to a station to purchase my ticket. I was there thirty minutes before the ticket office was opened. When it did finally open I at once appeared at the window. While the ticket agent served the white 99 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON people at one window, I remained waiting at the other until the train pulled out. I was compelled to jump aboard the train without my ticket and wire back to get my trunk expressed. Considering the temper of the people, the separate coach law may be the wisest plan for the South, but the statement that the two races have equal accommodations is all bosh. I pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair or a lavatory, and rarely a through car. I must crawl out at all times of night, and in all kinds of weather, in order to catch another dirty 'Jim Crow' coach to make my connections. I do not ask to ride with white people. I do ask for equal accommoda- tions for the same money." Booker Washington was of course obliged to travel in the South almost constantly and to a great extent at night. He nearly always travelled on a Pullman car, and so when not an interstate passenger usually "violated" the law of whatever State he happened to be passing through. The conductors, brakemen, and other trainmen, as a rule, treated him with great respect and consideration and often- times offered him a compartment in place of the berth wilich he had purchased. Pullman cars in the South are not as a rule open to mem- bers of the Negro race. It is only under more or less unusual conditions that a black man is able to secure Pull- man accommodations. Dr. Washington, however, was generally treated with marked consideration whenever he applied for Pullman car reservations. He was sometimes criticised, not only by members of his own race, but by the ioo THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO unthinking of the white race who accused him of thus seek- ing "social equality" with the white passengers. The work he was compelled to do, however, in con- stantly travelling from place to place, and dictating letters while travelling, made it necessary that he conserve his strength as much as possible. He never believed that he was defying Southern traditions in seeking the comfort essential to his work. Upon one occasion Dr. Washington went to Houston, Texas, and was invited by the Secretary of the Cotton Exchange, in the name of the Exchange, to speak to the members of the leading business organizations of Houston, upon the floor of the Cotton Exchange Bank. He was in- troduced by the secretary, who desired to give Dr. Wash- ington the opportunity to put before representative Southern white men the thoughts and ideas of a representa- tive colored man as to how the two races might live to- gether in the South on terms of mutual helpfulness. Such was the impression he made upon the whites that when Dr. Washington's secretary applied for Pullman accom- modations for him, returning East, they were not only un- grudgingly but even eagerly granted. In those days it was unheard of for a colored man to travel as a passenger in a Pullman car in Texas. The injustices mentioned and all others connected with railway passenger service for Negroes Booker Washington sought in characteristic fashion to mitigate by instituting, through the agency of the National Negro Business League, what are known as Railroad Days. On these days each 101 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON year colored patrons of railroads lay before the responsible officials the respects in which they believe they are un- fairly treated and request certain definite changes. Al- though started only a few years ago these Railroad Days have already accomplished a number of the improvements desired in various localities. As an aid to the committees appointed in the various communities Mr. Washington sent out a letter addressed to these committees which was published in the Negro papers. This letter advised that all protests on Railroad Days give: first, "a statement of present conditions," second, "a statement of conditions desired." There fol- lowed a sample detailed statement of the present conditions about which there is usually cause for complaint accom- panied by a similar statement of the conditions desired. It was then suggested that these specific recommenda- tions be followed by these general requests: "i. The same class and quality of accommodations for colored passengers as are provided for the most favored class of travellers. "2. Such regulations as will protect colored passengers from the rudeness and insults of employees of the railroad. "3. Some definite authority to whom these matters may be referred, where friction arises, and who will, in good faith, investigate and adjust them." The letter concluded with this advice: "All those who are going to act on the suggestions to make a united effort to bring about better railroad and other travelling facilities should not omit to remind our 102 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO people that they have a duty to perform as well as the railroads. "First, our people should try to keep themselves clean and presentable when travelling, and they should do their duty in trying to keep waiting-rooms and railroad coaches clean. "Second, it should be borne in mind that little or noth- ing will be accomplished by merely talking about white people who are in charge of railroads, etc. The only way to get any results is to go to the people and talk to them and not about them." Compare this definite, reasonable, and effective form of protest with the bitter, vague, and futile outcry against the "Jim Crow" car which is frequently heard. Booker Washington sent a marked copy of the Century Magazine containing the article, "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?" to the head of every railroad in the South calling attention to the portion relating to unfair treat- ment in passenger service for his people. In response he received letters which in almost every case were friendly and in many cases showed an active desire to cooperate in the improvement of the conditions complained of. Mr. Washington published extracts from these letters in the Negro press prior to his Railroad Day proposal in order to show that the railroad officials were for the most part at least willing to give a respectful hearing to the com- plaints of their Negro patrons if properly approached. President Stevens of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company wrote that he had had one hundred copies of the 103 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON article distributed among the officials and employees of his road. Mr. J. M. Parker, Receiver and General Mana- ger of the Arkansas, Louisiana & Gulf Railway Company, wrote: "I have your favor with enclosure ... I shall take pleasure in reading this article, and from glanc- ing through it I am inclined to think that the statement that the Negro is not getting a square deal in the way of transportation facilities is well founded." Mr. William J. Black, Passenger of the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fe Railway System, wrote in part: "You will, no doubt, be pleased to learn that the Santa Fe has already provided equipment for colored travel in conformity with the plan outlined in your article." From all or most of the South- ern railways came letters of the general tenor of those quoted, and thus was the way prepared for the successful inauguration of the Railroad Days. Constantly as he labored for the rights of his people he never sought to obtain for them any special privileges. Unlike most leaders of groups, classes, or races of people he never sought any exclusive or special advantages for his followers. He did not want the Negro to receive any favors by reason of his race any more than he wanted him to be discriminated against on that account. He wanted all human beings, Negroes among the rest, to receive their deserts as individuals regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, or any other consideration which has nothing to do with the individual's merits. One of his favorite figures was that "one cannot hold another in a ditch without himself staying in the ditch." There is not a single right 104 THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO for which he contended for his people which if won would not directly or indirectly benefit all other people. Were they in all the States admitted to the franchise on equal terms with white citizens what Mr. Washington termed the "encouragement of vice and ignorance among white citizens" would cease. Were the lynching of Negroes stopped the lynching of white men would also cease. Both the innocent black man and the innocent white man would feel a greater sense of security while the guilty black man as well as the guilty white man would be less secure. Were the Negroes given their full share of public education the whites would gain not only more reliable and intelligent Negro labor, but would be largely freed so far as Negroes are concerned from the menace of the crimes of violence which are com- mitted almost exclusively by ignorant persons. Finally, were Negro travellers given equal accommodations and treatment for equal rates on all the Southern railways the volume of Negro travel would more rapidly increase, thus increasing the prosperity of the railways and their share- holders which would in turn promote the prosperity of the entire South. True to his policy of always placing the emphasis upon those things which are encouraging instead of upon those things which are discouraging, Mr. Washington concluded the already much-quoted article, "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance ? with these observations : " Notwithstanding all the defects in our system of dealing with him, the Negro in this country owns more property, lives in better houses, io5 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON is in a larger measure encouraged in business, wears better clothes, eats better food, has more schoolhouses and churches, and more teachers and ministers, than any similar group of Negroes anywhere in the world." 106 CHAPTER FIVE MEETING RACE PREJUDICE ALTHOUGH intensely human and consumingly inter- ested in humanity — both in the mass and as individ- uals, whether of his own race or any other — Booker Washington thought and acted to an uncommon degree on the impersonal plane. This characteristic was per- haps most strikingly illustrated in his attitude toward race prejudice. When, many years ago, he had charge of the Indian students at Hampton, and had occasion to travel with them, he found they were free to occupy in the hotels any rooms they could pay for, whereas he must either go without or take a room in the servants' quarters. He regarded these experiences as interesting illustrations of the illogical nature of race prejudice. The occupants of these hotels did not resent mingling with members of a backward race whose skin happened to be red, but they did object to mingling on the same terms with members of another backward race whose skin happened to be black. It apparently never entered his head to regard this dis- crimination with bitterness or as a personal rebuff. One could not, however, make a greater mistake than to assume from this impersonal attitude that he condoned race prej- udice, or in any sense stood as an apologist for it. To 107 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON dispel any such idea one has only to recall his speech at the Peace Jubilee in Chicago after the Spanish War, from which we have already quoted, and in which he character- ized racial prejudice as "a cancer gnawing at the heart of the Republic, that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army without or within." Very early in his career Washington worked out for himself a perfectly definite line of conduct in the matter of social mingling with white people. In the South he scru- pulously observed the local customs and avoided offending the prejudices of the Southerners in so far as was possible without unduly handicapping his work. For instance, in his constant travelling throughout the South he not only violated their customs, but oftentimes their laws, in using sleeping cars, but this he was obliged to do because he could spare neither the time to travel by day nor the strength and energy to sit up all night. This particular Southern prejudice and the laws predicated upon it he was hence forced to violate, but he did so as a physical necessity to the accomplishment of his work and not in any sense as a defiance of custom or law. While in the South he ob- served Southern customs and bowed to Southern prejudices, but he declined to be bound by such customs, laws, and prejudices when in other parts of this country or the world. Except in the South he allowed himself whatever degree of social intercourse with the whites seemed best calculated to accomplish his immediate object and his ulti- mate aims. He never accepted purely social invitations from white persons. He always claimed that he could best 108 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE satisfy his social desires among his own people. He be- lieved that the question of so-called "social equality" be- tween the races was too academic and meaningless to be worthy of serious discussion. Probably he never made a more well-considered or il- luminating statement of his personal attitude toward social intercourse with the dominant race than in a letter to the late Edgar Gardiner Murphy, a Southerner "of light and leading," author of "The Present South," "The Basis of Ascendancy," and other notable books on the relations between the races. Mr. Murphy, as a South- erner, became alarmed at the attacks upon Booker Wash- ington by certain Southern newspapers and public men because of his appearance at so-called social functions in the North. Mr. Murphy, rightly regarding the reten- tion of the favorable opinion of representative Southern whites as essential to the success of Washington's work, very naturally feared any course of action which seemed to threaten the continuance of that favorable opinion. In response to a letter in which Mr. Murphy expressed these fears and asked for an opportunity to discuss the situation with him Mr. Washington replied as follows: [Personal] My Dear Sir: I have received your kind letter, for which I thank you very much. I was very much disap- pointed that I did not have an opportunity of meeting you, as I had planned the other day, so as not to be so hurried in talking with you as I usually am. I shall be very glad, however, the very first time I can find another scare hour 109 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON when in New York (Mr. Murphy was then living in New York City) to have you talk with me fully and frankly about the matters that are in your mind. However we may differ in our view regarding certain matters, there is no man in the country whose frankness, earnestness, and sincere disinterestedness I respect more than yours, and whatever you say always has great weight with me. Your letter emphasizes the tremendous difficulty of the work at the South. In most cases, and in most coun- tries where a large section of the people are down, and are to be helped up, those attempting to do the work have before them a straight, simple problem of elevating the unfortunate people without the entanglement of racial prejudice to be grappled with. I think I do not exag- gerate when I say that perhaps a third or half of the thought and energy of those engaged in the elevation of the colored people is given in the direction of trying to do the thing or not doing the thing which would enhance racial prejudice. This feature of the situation I believe very few people at the North or at the South appreciate. What is true of the Negro educator is true in a smaller degree of the white educator at the South. I am con- stantly trying, as best I can, to study the situation as it is right here on the ground, and I may be mistaken, but aside from the wild and demagogical talk on the part of a few I am unable to discover much or any change in the attitude of the best white people toward the best colored people. So far as my own individual experience and observation are concerned, I am treated about the same as I have always been. I was in Athens, Georgia, a few days ago, to deliver an address before the colored people at the State Fair, and the meeting was attended by the best class of whites and the best class of no MEETING RACE PREJUDICE colored people, who seemed to be pleased over what I said. Mr. Blank, a Southern Congressman, just now is making a good deal of noise, but you will recall that Mr. Blank spoke just as bitterly against me before Mr. Roosevelt became President as he has since. I do not want to permit myself to be misled, but I repeat that I cannot see or feel that any great alienation has taken place between the two classes of people that you refer to. For the sake of argument I want to grant for the moment a thing which I have never done before, even in a private letter, and which is very distasteful to me, and that is, that I am the leader of the colored people. Do you think it will ever be possible for one man to be set up as the leader of ten millions of people, meaning a population nearly twice as large as that of the Dominion of Canada and nearly equal to that of the Republic of Mexico, with- out the actions of that individual being carefully watched and commented upon, and what he does being exaggerated either in one direction or the other? Again, if I am the leader and therefore the mouthpiece for ten millions of colored people, is it possible for such a leader to avoid coming into contact with the representatives of the ruling classes of white people upon many occasions; and is it not to be expected that when questions that are racial and national and international in their character are to be discussed, that such a representative of the Negro race would be sought out both by individuals and by conventions? If, as you kindly suggest, I am the leader, I hardly see how such notoriety and prominence as will naturally come can be wholly or in any large degree avoided. Judging by some of the criticisms that have appeared recently, mainly from the class of people to whom I have in BOOKER T. WASHINGTON referred, it seems to me that some of the white people at the South are making an attempt to control my actions when I am in the North and in Europe. Heretofore, no man has been more careful to regard the feelings of the Southern people in actions and words than I have been, and this policy I shall continue to pursue, but I have never attempted to hide or to minimize the fact that when I am out of the South I do not conform to the same customs and rules that I do in the South. I say I have not attempted to hide it because everything that I have done in this respect was published four years ago in my book, "Up from Slavery," which has been read widely throughout the South, and I did not hear a word of adverse criticism passed upon what I had done. For fifteen years I have been doing at the North just what I have been doing during the past year. I have never attended a purely social function given by white people anywhere in the country. Nearly every week I receive invitations to weddings of rich people, but these I always refuse. Mrs. Washington almost never accom- panies me on any occasion where there can be the least sign of purely social intercourse. Whenever I meet white people in the North at their offices, in their parlors, or at their dinner tables, or at banquets, it is with me purely a matter of business, either in the interest of our institution or in the interest of my race; no other thought ever enters my mind. For me to say now, after fifteen years of creating interest in my race and in this institu- tion in that manner, that I must stop, would simply mean that I must cease to get money in a large measure for this institution. In meeting the people in this way I am simply doing what the head of practically every school, black and white, in the South is constantly doing. For purely social pleasure I have always found all my ambitions 112 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE satisfied among my own people, and you will find that in proportion as the colored race becomes educated and prosperous, in the same proportion is this true of all colored people. I said a minute ago that I had tried to be careful in regard to the feelings of the Southern people. It has been urged upon me time and time again to employ a number of white teachers at this institution. I have not done so and do not intend to do so, largely for the reason that they would be constantly mingling with each other at the table. For thirty years and more, in every one of our Southern States, white and colored people have sat down to the table three times a day nearly through- out the year, and I have heard very little criticism passed upon them. This kind of thing, however, at Tuskegee I have always tried to avoid so far as our regular teaching force is concerned. But I repeat, if I begin to yield in the performance of my duty when out of the South in one respect, I do not know where the end will be. It is very difficult for you, or any other person who is not in my place, to understand the difficulty and embarrassment that I am confronted with. You have no idea how many invitations of various kinds I am constantly refusing or trying to get away from because I want to avoid em- barrassing situations. For example, over a year ago Mr. S invited me to go to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, near Lenox, to deliver an address on General Armstrong's life and work. When I reached Stockbridge an hour or so before the time of delivering the address, I found that Mr. S , who had invited me, had also invited five or six other gentlemen to meet me at luncheon. The luncheon I knew nothing about until I reached the town. Under such circumstances I am at a loss to know how I could have avoided accepting the invitation. A few ii3 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON days afterward I filled a long-standing invitation to lecture at Amherst College. I reached the town a few hours before dinner and found that a number of people, includ- ing several college presidents, had been invited to meet me at dinner. Taking still another case: over a year ago I promised a colored club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that I would be their guest at a banquet in October. The banquet was held on the third of the month, and when I reached Cambridge I found that in addition to the mem- bers of the colored club, the Mayor of the city and a number of Harvard professors, including President Eliot, had been invited; and I could go on and state case after case. Of course, if I wanted to make a martyr of myself and draw especial attention to me and to the institution, I could easily do so by simply writing whenever I receive an invitation to a dinner or banquet that I could not accept on account of the color of my skin. Six years ago at the Peace Jubilee in Chicago, where I spoke at a meeting at which President McKinley was present, I took both luncheon and dinner in the same dining-room with President McKinley and was the guest of the same club that he was a guest of. There were Southern men present, and the fact that I was present and spoke was widely heralded throughout the South, and so far as I know not a word of adverse comment was made. For nearly fifteen years the addresses which I have been constantly making at dinners and banquets in the North have been published throughout the South, and no ad- verse comment has been made regarding my presence on these occasions. Practically all of the invitations to functions that are of even a semi-social character are urged upon me by Northern people, and very often after I have refused to accept invitations pressure is brought to bear on special 114 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE friends of mine in order to get me to accept. Notwith- standing all this, where I accept one invitation I refuse ten; in fact, you have no idea how many invitations to dinner I refuse while I am in the North. I not only do so for the reason that I do not care to excite undue criti- cism, but for the further reason that if I were to accept any large proportion of such invitations I would have little time left for my legitimate work. In many cases the invitations come from people who do not give money but simply want to secure a notoriety or satisfy curios- I have stated the case as I see it, and with a view of having you think over these matters by the time that we meet. [Signed] Booker T. Washington. There were two particularly notable occasions upon which Mr. Washington unwittingly stirred the prejudices of the South. The first was when in 1901 he dined with President Roosevelt and his family at the White House; the second, when four years later he dined with Mr. John Wanamaker and his daughter at a hotel in Saratoga, New York. The truth of his dining at the White House, of which so many imaginary versions have been given, was this: having received so many expressions of approval from all sections of the country on his appointment of ex-Governor Jones to a Federal judgeship in Alabama, which appoint- ment was made, as described in a previous chapter, on the recommendation of Booker Washington and Grover Cleveland, President Roosevelt asked him to come to the "5 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON White House and discuss with him some further appoint- ments and other matters of mutual interest. On arriving in Washington he went to the home of his friend, Whitefield McKinlay, a colored man with whom he usually stopped when in the Capital. The next morn- ing he went to the White House by appointment for an interview with the President. . Since they did not have time to finish their discussion, the President, in accordance with the course he had often followed with others under similar circumstances, invited Washington to come to din- ner so that they might finish their discussion in the even- ing without loss of time. In response to this oral invitation he went to the White House at the appointed time, dined with the President and his family and two other guests, and after dinner discussed with the President chiefly the character of in- dividual colored office holders or applicants for office and, as says Colonel Roosevelt, "the desirability in specific cases, notably in all offices having to do with the adminis- tration of justice, of getting high-minded and fearless white men into office — men whom we could be sure would affirmatively protect the law-abiding Negro's right to life, liberty, and property just exactly as they protected the rights of law-abiding white men." Also they discussed the public service of the South so far as the represent- atives of the Federal Administration were concerned — the subject upon which President Roosevelt had wished to con- sult him. The next day the bare fact that he had dined with the President was obscurely announced by the Wash- 116 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE ington papers as a routine item of White House news. Some days later, however, an enterprising correspondent for a Southern paper lifted this unpretentious item from oblivion and sent it to his paper to be blazoned forth in a front-page headline. For days and weeks thereafter the Southern press fairly shrieked with the news of this quiet dinner. The very papers which had most loudly praised the President for his appointment of a Southern Democrat to a Federal judgeship now execrated him for inviting to dine with him the man upon whose recom- mendation he had made this appointment. Mr. Washington was also roundly abused for his "pre- sumption" in daring to dine at the White House. This was a little illogical in view of the well-known fact that an invitation to the White House is a summons rather than an invitation in the ordinary sense. Neither President Roosevelt nor Mr. Washington issued any statements by way of explanation or apology. While it was, of course, farthest from the wishes of either to offend the sensibilities of the South, neither one — the many statements to the contrary, notwithstanding — ever indicated subsequently any regret or admitted that the incident was a mistake. During the furore over this incident both the President and Mr. Washington received many threats against their lives. The President had the Secret Service to protect him, while Mr. Washington had no such reliance. His co- workers surrounded him with such precautions as they could, and his secretary accumulated during this period enough threatening letters to fill a desk drawer. It was 117 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON not discovered until some years after that one of these threats had been followed by the visit to Tuskegee of a hired assassin. A strange Negro was hurt in jumping off the train before it reached the Tuskegee Institute station. There being no hospital for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee he was taken to the hospital of the Institute, where he was cared for and nursed for several weeks before he was able to leave. Mr. Washington was absent in the North during all of this time. Many months later this Negro confessed that he had come to Tuskegee in the pay of a group of white men in Louisiana for the pur- pose of assassinating Booker Washington. He said that he became so ashamed of himself while being cared for by the doctors and nurses employed by the very man he had come to murder that he left as soon as he was able to do so instead of waiting to carry out his purpose on the return of his victim, as he had originally planned to do. Booker Washington, with all his philosophy and ca- pacity for rising above the personal, was probably more deeply pained by this affair than any other in his whole career. His pain was, however, almost solely on Mr. Roosevelt's account. He felt keenly hurt and chagrined that Mr. Roosevelt, whom he so intensely admired, and who was doing so much, not only for his own race but for the whole South as he believed, should suffer all this abuse and even vilification on his account. President Roosevelt evidently realized something of how he felt, for in a letter to him written at this time he added this postscript: "By the way, don't worry about me; it will all come right in time, 118 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE and if I have helped by ever so little 'the ascent of man' I am more than satisfied." Probably no single public event ever gave Booker Washington greater pleasure than Colonel Roosevelt's triumphant election to the Presidency in 1904. The day after the election he wrote the President the following letter: [Personal] Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, November 10, 1904. My Dear Mr. President: I cannot find words in which to express my feeling regarding the tremendous outcome of Tuesday's election. I know that you feel the sacred and almost divine confidence imposed. In my opinion, no human being in America since Washington, perhaps, has been so honored and vindicated. The result shows that the great heart of the American people beats true and is in the direction of fair play for all, regardless of race or color. Nothing has ever occurred which has given me more faith in all races or shows more plainly that they will respond to high ideals when properly appealed to. I know that you will not misunderstand me when I say I share somewhat the feeling of triumph and added re- sponsibility that must animate your soul at the present time because of the personal abuse heaped upon you on account of myself. The great victory and vindication does not make me feel boastful or vainglorious, but, on the other hand, very humble, and gives me more faith in humanity and makes me more determined to work harder in the interest of all our people of both races regardless of race or color. I shall urge our people everywhere to mani- fest their gratitude by showing a spirit of meekness and 119 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON added usefulness. The election shows to what a great height you have already lifted the character of American citizenship. Before you leave the White House I am sure that the whole South will understand you and love you. God keep you and bless you. Yours most sincerely, [Signed] Booker T. Washington. To President Theodore Roosevelt, White House, Washington. President Roosevelt expressed great appreciation of this letter and said that Mr. Washington had taken the election in just the way he would have wished him to take it. About two years later Mr. Washington wrote President Roosevelt another letter which throws light upon the rela- tions between the two men as well as upon the illogicality of racial prejudice: Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, June 19, 1906. My Dear Mr. President: It will interest you to know that the Cox family, over whom such a disturbance was made in connection with the Indianola, Miss., post-office, have started a bank in that same town which direct and reliable information convinces me is in a prosperous condi- tion. The bank has the confidence of both races. It is a curious circumstance that while objection was made to this black family being at the head of the post-office no objec- tion is made to this black man being president of a bank in the same town. A letter just received from a reliable banker in Miss- issippi contains the following sentences: 120 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE "Now, with reference to Mr. W.W. Cox, of Indianola, Miss., I beg to advise that no man of color is as highly regarded and respected by the white people of his town and county as he. It is true that he organized and is k cashier of the Delta Penny Savings Bank, domiciled there. I visited Indianola during the spring of 1905 and was very much surprised to note the esteem in which he was held by the bankers and business men (white) of that place. He is a good, clean man and above the average in intelligence, and knows how to handle the typical Southern white man. In the last statement furnished by his bank to the State Auditor, his bank showed total resources of $46,000. He owns and lives in one of the best resident houses in In- dianola, regardless of race, and located in a part of the town where other colored men seem to be not desired. The whites adjacent to him seem to be his friends. He has a large plantation near the town, worth $35,000 or #40,000. He is a director in Mr. Pettiford's bank at Birmingham, Ala., and I think is vice-president of the same. He also owns stock in the bank of Mound Bayou." Yours very truly, [Signed] Booker T. Washington. To President Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D. C. In August, 1905, Booker Washington spoke one Sunday morning before a large audience in Saratoga Springs, N. Y. After his address Mr. John Wanamaker and his daughter were among those who came forward to greet him. They also invited him to dine with them at the United States Hotel that afternoon. Mr. Wanamaker had been particularly interested in Booker Washington 121 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON and his work for many years. Mr. Washington accepted this invitation without the least thought of reawakening the clamor caused by the Roosevelt dinner. The dinner itself passed off quietly, pleasantly, and without particular event. It was not until he took up the papers at his little hotel in New York the next morning that he found that he had again stirred up a hornet's nest similar to that of four years before. The denunciation was if anything more violent; for, as many of his assailants said, he should have profited by the protests of four years before. In an edi- torial entitled, "Booker Washington's Saratoga Perform- ance" a Southern newspaper said: "Since the fateful day when Booker T. Washington sat down to the dinner table in the White House with President Roosevelt he has done many things to hurt the cause of which he is regarded as the foremost man. . . . Leaving out of the question the lack of delicacy and self-respect manifested by Wana- maker and his family, blame must rest upon Washington, because he knows how deep and impassable is the gulf between whites and blacks in the South when the social situation is involved. He deliberately flaunts all this in the face of the Southern people among whom he is living and among whom his work has to be carried on. He could have given no harder knock to his institution than he gave when he marched into that Saratoga dinner room with a white woman and her father." These sentiments were expressed editorially by another Southern paper: "Wanamaker is unworthy to shine the shoes of Booker Washington. He is not in Washington's 122 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE class. If the truly smart set of Saratoga was shocked that Booker should have been caught in this man's company and as his guest we are not surprised. But still Booker Washington could not eat dinner with the most ordinary white man in this section. He wouldn't dare intimate that he sought such social recognition among whites here"; and in conclusion this editorial said: "The South only pities the daughter that she should have allowed herself to be used by a father whose sensibilities and ideas of the proprieties are so dulled by his asinine qualities that he could not see the harm in it." This vituperation of Mr. Wanamaker, and the scoring him for his part in the affair even more than Washington, recalls an incident which Mr. Washington himself relates in his book entitled, "My Larger Education." When he was making a trip through Florida, a few weeks after his dinner with President Roosevelt, at a little station near Gainesville, "A white man got aboard the train," he says, "whose dress and manner indicated that he was from the class of small farmers in that part of the coun- try. He shook hands with me very cordially, and said: 'I am mighty glad to see you. I have heard about you and I have been wanting to meet you for a long while.' "I was naturally pleased at this cordial reception, but I was surprised when, after looking me over, he remarked: 'Say, you are a great man. You are the greatest man in this country.' I protested mildly, but he insisted, shaking his head 123 (c BOOKER T. WASHINGTON and repeating, 'Yes, sir, the greatest man in this country/ Finally I asked him what he had against President Roose- velt, telling him at the same time that, in my opinion, the President of the United States was the greatest man in the country. '"Huh! Roosevelt?' he replied, with considerable em- phasis in his voice, 'I used to think that Roosevelt was a great man until he ate dinner with you. That settled him for me.'" Mr. Washington goes on to say: "This remark of a Florida farmer is but one of the many experiences which have taught me something of the curious nature of this thing that we call prejudice — social prejudice, race preju- dice, and all the rest. I have come to the conclusion that these prejudices are something that it does not pay to dis- turb. It is best to 'let sleeping dogs lie.' All sections of the United States, like all other parts of the world, have their own peculiar customs and prejudices. For that reason it is the part of common sense to respect them. When one goes to European countries, or into the Far West, or into India or China, he meets certain customs and certain prejudices which he is bound to respect and, to a certain extent, comply with. The same holds good regarding conditions in the North and in the South. In the South it is not the custom for colored and white people to be entertained at the same hotel; it is not the custom for black and white children to attend the same school. In most parts of the North a different custom prevails. I have never stopped to question or quarrel with the customs 124 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE of the people in the part of the country in which I found myself." And so he acted in the case of the Wanamaker dinner. He accepted Mr. Wanamaker's invitation because he was in the North and his host was a Northerner. In so doing he felt that he was not violating any generally accepted custom or universally entertained prejudice of the part of the country in which he found himself. Had the in- conceivable occurred, and had a Southerner invited him to dine in the South, under conditions in all other respects identical, he would not have accepted. He would not have been willing to incur the resentment of the South even had his host been willing to defy local prejudices by in- viting him. On the other hand, he felt that the attitude of those who would seek to control him in matters of social custom when he was not in the South or among Southern- ers was unfair and unreasonable. An incident which occurred' while he was stopping at the English Hotel in Indianapolis in 1903 furnished copy for the more or less sensational press of the country. This hotel does not as a rule accept Negroes as guests, but Mr. Washington was always a welcome visitor there just as he was at many other hotels where less-favored members of his race were excluded. He never patronized this hotel or any other for the purpose of asserting his rights, but merely to obtain the comforts and the seclusion so essential to a man who always worked up to the limits of even his great strength and usually a little beyond such limits. It is, in- deed, quite possible that he might have lived longer had he 125 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON been free to stop at hotels in the South instead of under- going the constant wear and tear of being entertained in the private homes of the all-too-kind hosts of his own race. All public men and lecturers, in a large way of business, learn early in their careers that they must decline practi- cally all proffers of private hospitality if they are to pre- serve their health. On this occasion the white chambermaid assigned to ca"re for the room he occupied refused to perform her duties so far as his room was concerned on the ground, as she stated, that she "would not clean up after a nigger." For this re- fusal to do her work the management discharged her. The Springfield Republican of that date thus describes what followed: "A hotel at Houston, Texas, immediately offered her a place there, which she accepted, but as mat- ters are now going she is more likely to retire from the business as a grand lady living on an independent income. Her name is upon all tongues in the Southland, and the newspapers print long and complimentary accounts of her life and the one great deed that has made her famous. Citizens and communities vie with each other in con- tributing money. . . . Captain John W. Johnson of Sheffield, Ala., is organizing a general subscription fund from that and neighboring towns. A meeting at Houston, Texas, raised #500 for her in the name of a * self- respecting girl.' The Houston Chronicle is conducting another popular subscription. Contributions are coming into it from all parts of Texas. Citizens of New Orleans have raised $1,000. About twoscore Southern towns and 126 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE a dozen cities so far figure in the contributions. The move- ment extends to Indianapolis, where a gold watch has been contributed." The hysterical lauding of this " heroine " was subsequently wet blanketed by the discovery that she had cared for Mr. Washington's room for the first day or two of his stay without protest, and by the further dis- covery that her second or third husband had recently ob- tained a divorce from her. It is only fair to add that many of the leading citizens of the South strongly deprecated the sensational mag- nifying of this trivial incident by a certain section of the Southern press. Mr. Washington declined to make any comment for publication during or after this petty tumult. In spite of the three events described, and others of a like nature that might be mentioned, no Negro was ever so liked, respected, admired, and eulogized by the Southern whites as Booker Washington. The day following his great speech before the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in 1895 when he went out upon the streets of the city he was so besieged by white citizens from the highest to the lowest, who wanted to shake his hand and congratu- late him, that he was fairly driven in self-defense to remain indoors. Not many years after that it had become a com- monplace for him to be an honored guest on important public occasions throughout the South. On occasions too numerous even to note in passing he was welcomed, and introduced to great audiences, by Southern Governors, Mayors, and other high officials, as well as by eminent 127 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON private citizens. Such recognition came partly as a spontaneous tribute to the great work he was doing and partly because of his constantly reiterated assurance that the Negro was not seeking either political domination over the white man or social intercourse with him. He reasoned that the more Southern whites he could convince that his people were not seeking what is known as social equality or political dominance, the less race friction there would be. It has already been mentioned that at the opening of the first Negro agricultural fair in Albany, Georgia, in the fall of 1914, the Mayor of the city and several members of the City Council sat on the platform during the exercises and listened to his speech with most spontaneous and obvious approval. In this part of Georgia the Negroes outnum- ber the whites by at least six to one. The afternoon of the same day the Mayor invited Booker Washington and his party to come to the city hall and confer with himself, the other city officials, and a group of prominent private citi- zens on the relations between the races in that city and locality. At this conference there was a friendly, easy interchange of ideas interspersed with jokes and laughter, but all the time Mr. Washington was leading them step by step to see that by giving the Negroes proper educational opportunities they were helping themselves as well as the Negroes. Mr. Stowe, who was present at this con- ference, noticed to his surprise that some of the arguments advanced by Dr. Washington, which seemed to him to be almost worn-out truisms, although freshly and strongly ex- 128 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE pressed, were seized upon by his auditors as new and original ideas. When he made this observation to Mr. Washington after the meeting he said that several other Northerners had under similar circumstances made the same observation and then he added: "I only wish that it were possible for me to spend several months of each year talking with just such groups of representative Southern men. They are always responsive, eager to understand what we are driving at, and sympathetic when they do understand. The necessity for raising money has forced us to devote the bulk of our time to educating the Northern public to the needs of the situation to the neglect of our Southern white neighbors right here about us." It was an interesting illustration of the illogical workings of race prejudice that this man to whom the city fathers from the Mayor down gave up practically their entire day — this man to whom the city hall was thrown open and at whose feet sat the leading citizens as well as the officials of the city, could not have found shelter in any hotel in town. This man whom the officials and other leading citizens de- lighted to honor arrived at night on a Pullman sleeping car in violation of the law of the State; and, after all possible honor had been paid him, save allowing him to enter a hotel, departed the next night by a Pullman sleeper in violation of the law! This constant "law-breaker" was welcomed and in- troduced to audiences by Governor Blanchard of Louisi- ana at Shreveport, La.; by Governor Candler at Atlanta, 129 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Ga.; by Governor Donaghey at Little Rock, Ark.; by Governor McCorkle of West Virginia, and successively by Governors Jelks and O'Neil of his own State of Alabama. Still other Southern Governors spoke from the same plat- form with him at congresses, conventions, and meetings of various descriptions. Next to South Carolina and Georgia, perhaps no State in the Union has shown as much hostility to the progress of the Negro as Mississippi. In 1908, in response to the urgent appeals of Charles Banks, the Negro banker and dominating force of the Negro town of Mound Bayou, Mr. Washington agreed to make a tour through Mississippi such as he had made three years before through Arkansas and what were then Oklahoma and Indian Territories. At Jackson, Miss., the management of the State Fair Asso- ciation offered the local committee of Negroes the great Liberal Arts Building for Mr. Washington's address. In the audience were not less than five thousand persons, among them several hundred white citizens. Among the whites who sat on the platform were Governor Noel, Lieutenant-Governor Manship, Bishop Charles B. Gal- loway of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, Mr. Milsaps, the richest citizen of the State; the postmaster of Jackson, the United States Marshal, Hon. Edgar S. Wil- son, and a considerable number of other prominent white citizens. At Natchez, a few nights later, the audience literally filled every available space in the Grand Opera House and overflowed into the adjoining streets. This audience was 130 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE in many respects the most remarkable that the city had ever seen. The entire orchestra was given over to the white citizens of Natchez and Adams County, and still there was not room to accommodate them, for they were packed in the rear and stood three and four deep in the aisles. The colored people were crowded into the balcony and the galleries. When Booker Washington arose to speak, he was greeted by a perfect whirlwind of applause and cheering. He was visibly affected by the reception given him by whites as well as blacks. When he finished speaking a large delegation headed by the Mayor of the city made their way to the platform, wel- comed him to the city, thanked him for his address, and stated that his influence for good in the city and county could not be estimated. Mr. J. T. Harahan, of the Illinois Central Railroad, pro- vided the Pullman tourist car in which Mr. Washington and his party toured the State. It was estimated that from sixty to eighty thousand people saw and heard him during his seven days' trip. On the conclusion of the tour one paper said, "No more popular man ever came into the State, white or black, and no man ever spoke to larger audiences than he did. He is the only speaker who ever filled the Jackson, Miss., Coliseum." Only six months before his death Booker Washington made a similar tour through Louisiana. Louisiana has al- ways been reputed to be in the same category as Mississippi in opposing Negro progress. To some of his audiences Mr. Washington said that he and his party of twenty-five 131 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON colored men had felt before they started very much like the little girl who was about to go on a trip to Louisiana with her parents. The night before they started she said her prayer as usual: "Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." With a deep sigh she then added, "Good-bye, Lord, for two weeks. We are going down to Louisiana." In introducing Mr. Washington to a great audience in New Orleans, made up of both races, Mayor Berhman said, turning to Booker Washington: 'The work you are doing for the uplift of your people means untold good to the great State of Louisiana and to the whole country. Nowhere has your race greater opportunities than in Louisiana. If the people of the Negro race will follow your teachings, they will help materially to bring about a condition that will mean much for Louisiana, the South, and the nation. " At Shreveport former Governor N. C. Blanchard, in introducing Dr. Washington to an audience of over 10,000 white and colored citizens, said: "I am glad to see this goodly attendance of white people, representative white people at that, for his Honor, the Mayor, is here, and with him are members and officials of the city government and 132 MEETING RACE PREJUDICE other prominent citizens of our community. They are here to give encouragement to Mr. Washington, to hold up his hands, for they know that he is leading his people along right lines — lines tending to promote better feeling and better understanding between the two races. . . . "Our country needs to have white and black people, sober, honest, frugal, and thrifty. Booker T. Washington stands for these things. He advises and counsels and leads toward these goals. Hear him and heed his words." At the invitation of Superintendent Gwinn the colored school children of New Orleans were given a half-holiday to hear Dr. Washington. He addressed them in an arena seating more than five thousand people, which was given for the occasion by its white owner. To one of these Louisiana audiences Mr. Washington said: "Both races in the South suffer at the hands of public opinion by reason of the fact that the outside world hears of our difficulties, of crimes, mobs, and lynch- ings, but it does not hear of or know about the evidences of racial friendship and good-will which exist in the majority of communities in Louisiana and other Southern States where black and white people live together in such large numbers. Lynchings are widely reported by telegraph. The quiet, effective work of devoted white people in the South for Negro uplift is not generally or widely reported. The best white citizenship must take charge of the mob and not have the mob take charge of civilization. There is enough wisdom, patience, forbearance, and common 133 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON sense in the South for white people and black people to live together in peace for all time." In short, Booker Washington met race prejudice just as he did all other difficulties, as an obstacle to be sur- mounted rather than as an injustice to be railed at and de- nounced regardless of the consequences. 134 CHAPTER SIX GETTING CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE ONE secret of Booker Washington's leadership was that he always had his ear to the ground and his feet on the ground. Some one has said that "a practical ideal- ist is a man who keeps his feet on the ground even though his head is in the clouds-" Booker Washington was that kind of an idealist. He kept in constant and inti- mate touch with the masses of his people, particularly with those on the soil. Like the giant in the fable who doubled his strength every time he touched the ground, Booker Washington seemed to renew his strength every time he came in contact with the plain people of his race, particularly the farmers. No matter how pressed and driven by multifarious affairs, he could always find time for a rambling talk, apparently quite at random, with an old, uneducated, ante-bellum black farmer. Sometimes he would halt the entire business of a national convention in order to hear the comment of some simple but shrewd old character. He had a profound respect for the wisdom of simple people who lived at close grips with the realities of life. At the 1914 meeting of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee, Okla., a Mr. Jake , who had 135 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON started as an ignorant orphan boy, delighted Mr. Wash- ington's heart when he testified : "When I first started out I lived in a chicken house, 12 x 14 feet; now I own a ten- room residence, comfortably furnished, and in a settle- ment where we have a good school, a good church, and plenty of amusement, including ten children." After the laughter and applause had subsided Mr. Washington asked: "Do you think there is the same kind of an opening out here in Oklahoma for other and younger men of our race to do as you have done and to succeed equally as well?" To which Mr. Jake replied: ". . . I think I have succeeded with little or no education, and it stands to reason that some of the graduates from these industrial and agricultural schools ought to be able to do better than I have done." Which was, of course, just the answer Mr. Washington hoped he would make. Mr. Washington's instinct for keeping close to the plain people was perhaps best illustrated by his tours through the far Southern States for the improvement of the living conditions of his people, the tours to which allusion has several times been made. His insistence upon cleanliness, neatness, and paint became so well known that his ap- proach to a community frequently caused frantic cleaning up of yards, mending of gates, and painting of houses. These sudden converts to paint sometimes found out from which side the great man was to approach their house and painted only that side and the front. 136 GETTING CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE When he spoke to his people on these trips he had the faculty of becoming one of them. He described their daily lives in their own language. He told them how much land they owned, how much of it was mortgaged, how much and what they raised, and in fact every vital eco- nomic and social fact about their lives and the conditions about them. He praised them for what was creditable, censured and bantered them for what was bad, and told them what conditions should be and how they could make them so. He made these tours through Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Louisi- ana, and portions of Alabama and Georgia. Besides these State tours he would, whenever he could take the time, shoot out into the country surrounding Tuskegee Institute to encourage and promote the efforts of his neighbors of his own race. In July, 191 1, accompanied by some guests and members of his faculty, he made such a visit to Mt. Olive, a village on the east of Tuskegee. The party was first taken to the village church where they found a teeming congregation to greet them. Here Mr. Washington was introduced by the principal of the "Washington School" who said that since Mr. Washing- ton's visit eighteen months ago the colored people had purchased forty-one lots, built several new houses, white- washed or painted the old ones, and increased their gardens to such an extent that few, if any, had still to buy their vegetables. Mr. Washington opened his talk by saying: "It is an 137 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON inspiration simply to drive through and see your pleasant houses surrounded by flowers and gardens and all that goes to make life happy." He then appealed to the women to make their homes as attractive on the inside as the gardens had made them on the outside. He told them the best receipt for keeping the men and the children at home and out of mischief was to make the homes so at- tractive that they would not want to go away. Then, as always, before he closed he put in his warnings and in- junctions t® the derelict: "Paint your houses; if you can't paint them, whitewash them. Put the men to work in their spare hours repairing fences, gates, and windows. Get together in your church, as you have in your school- work, settle on a pastor and get him to live in your com- munity. Pay him in order that he may live here and become a part of your community." On another such trip through the southwestern part of Macon County, the county in which Tuskegee is located, he was once accompanied by Judge Robert H. Terrell, the Negro Judge of the District of Columbia; the Hon. White- field McKinlay, the Negro Collector of Customs for the District of Columbia; George L. Knox, owner and editor of the Indianapolis Freeman, a Negro newspaper; W. T. B. Williams, agent for the Anna T. Jeanes Fund and the Slater Board; Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones of the United States Census Bureau, and Lord Eustace Percy, one of the Secre- taries of the British Embassy at Washington. One can well imagine with what pride the simple black farmers of Macon County displayed their products and 138 Q. l . : - ' ■ . - :