Booker T. Washington Part 1

Booker T. Washington.

by Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe.

FOREWORD

In the pa.s.sing 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 prepared by the two people in all America best fitted, by antecedents and by intimate acquaintance and a.s.sociation 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.

Princ.i.p.al Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Inst.i.tute.

_Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, Alabama,_ _August 1, 1916._

AUTHORS' PREFACE

This is not a biography in the ordinary sense. The exhaustive "Life and Letters of Booker T. Washington" remains 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 struggles 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 achievements at once accurate and readable, put in permanent form for the information of the public. He believed that such a record could best be furnished by his confidential a.s.sociate, working in collaboration with a trained and experienced 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. Washington'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.

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 education 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 T. Washington is due to the simple fact that here in America we are all in the end going up or down together; and therefore, in the long run, the man who makes a substantial contribution toward uplifting any part of the community has helped to uplift all of the community. Wherever 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 barbarism; 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 a.s.serting 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 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 consideration 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. Washington lived up to Micah's verse, "What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do Justice and love Mercy and walk humbly with thy G.o.d." 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 understanding of the shortcomings of those who failed to do him justice, and failed to do his race justice. He always understood 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 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 G.o.d.

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 combination was due to the fact that at the bottom his humility was really the outward expression, not of a servile att.i.tude toward any man, but of the spiritual fact that in very truth he walked humbly with his G.o.d.

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 nutsh.e.l.l 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 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 upon 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 cla.s.s.

No man, White or 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 himself, contained in the ma.s.s 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, shiftless Black Man who, when manipulated by the able and unscrupulous politician, Black or White, is so dreadful a menace to our political inst.i.tutions. 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 att.i.tude toward the Negro, should show this att.i.tude by their own acts within their own borders.

I profited very much by my a.s.sociation 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._

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 conceived 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 replied 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 pa.s.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 industrial school for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General Armstrong of Hampton Inst.i.tute a young colored man, Booker T. Washington, a recent graduate of and teacher at the Inst.i.tute, was called from there to take charge of this landless, buildingless, teacherless, and studentless inst.i.tution of learning.

This move turned out to be a fatal mistake in the political career of the colonel. The appellation of "n.i.g.g.e.r 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 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 a.s.sumed there was no religion. Some of them even went so far as to warn their congregations from the pulpit to keep away from this G.o.dless man and his G.o.dless 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 a.s.sumed that he was "spoiling the n.i.g.g.e.rs" by education. A youth with a high collar, loud necktie, checked suit, and patent-leather shoes, dangling a cane, smoking a cigarette, and loitering impudently 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 Inst.i.tute 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 s.p.a.cious and beautiful grounds of the Inst.i.tute. He was approaching middle age when he entered this original Tuskegee cla.s.s. The following is a paraphrase of his account 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 chopping 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 important.

"Now, in those days he used to go off every Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.dless 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.