Booker T. Washington Part 22

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Washington feeding his chickens with green stuffs raised in his own garden.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Washington in his onion patch.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Washington sorting in his lettuce bed.]

Every morning before breakfast when at home Mr. Washington would visit his chickens, pigs, and cows. He said of finding the newly laid eggs: "I like to find the new eggs each morning myself, and am selfish enough to permit no one else to do this in my place. As with growing plants, there is a sense of freshness and newness and restfulness in connection with the finding and handling of newly laid eggs that is delightful to me. Both the realization and the antic.i.p.ation are most pleasing. I begin the day by seeing how many eggs I can find or how many little chicks there are that are just beginning to creep through the sh.e.l.ls. I am deeply interested in the different kinds of fowls, and always grow a number of different breeds at my own home."

But none of the animals interested him and aroused his enthusiasm as did the pigs. He always kept on his own place some choice specimens of Berkshires and Poland Chinas at whose shrine he worshipped each morning. Also he always insisted that the swine herd of the Inst.i.tute be kept recruited up to full strength and in fact considerably beyond full strength in the opinion of the Agricultural Director who in vain protested that it was not profitable to keep so large a herd. It would be interesting to know whether the great economic importance of the pig to his race was at the bottom of Booker Washington's fondness for the animal.

After breakfast he mounted his horse and made a round of the Inst.i.tute farms, truck gardens, dormitories, and shops before going to his office and attacking his huge correspondence. This correspondence, both in its dimensions and catholicity, was typical of the man. His daily incoming mail amounted to between 125 and 150 letters. The outgoing ran to between 500 and 1,000 letters daily--in large part, of course, "campaign letters,"--as he called them, letters seeking to interest new friends in the work of the Inst.i.tute, and others keeping in touch with friends already interested, etc. His advice, opinion, or comments were sought on every conceivable subject both by serious and sensible men and women and by cranks of both races. Hundreds of the humbler people of his own race were constantly applying to him for information and advice as to whether it would be profitable to start this or that business venture, or whether or not it would be possible to establish a school in this or that community, and how they should set about it.

Booker Washington's sense of justice was unquenchable. While at Coden-on-the-Bay, near Mobile, Ala., in September, 1915, s.n.a.t.c.hing a few days of rest and recreation as a palliative for the insidious disease which was so soon to end his life, he was distressed by a newspaper report of the killing of a number of Haitians by United States Marines. He read the report in a Mobile paper late one afternoon on his return from a fishing trip. He went to bed but could not sleep. The misfortunes of the turbulent little black republic seethed through his mind. Early in the morning, while his companions were still sleeping, he awakened the inevitable stenographer and dictated an article counselling patience in dealing with the unfortunate little country. This article, dictated by a dying man on the impulse of the moment, briefly recites the history of Haiti from the period over a hundred years ago when the people of the island wrested their liberty from France under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, up to the present time. He then says in part:

"a.s.sociated Press dispatches a few days ago stated that forty or fifty Haitians had been killed on Haytian soil in one day by American marines and a number of marines wounded. To every black man in the United States this dispatch brought a feeling of disappointment and sorrow. While, as I have stated, the United States, under the circ.u.mstances, was compelled to take notice of conditions in Haiti and is being compelled to control matters, largely because of the fault of the Haitians, I had hoped that the United States would be patient in dealing with the Haitian Government and people. The United States has been patient with Germany. It has been patient in the Philippines. It has been exceedingly patient in dealing with Mexico. I hope this country will be equally patient and more than patient in dealing with Haiti--a weaker and more unfortunate country!

"I very much wish that it might have been possible for the United States to have taken a little more time in making known to the Haitians the purposes we have in mind in taking over the control of their custom houses and their governmental affairs. While everything that we intend to do, and have in mind to do, is perfectly plain to the officials of the United States, we must remember that all this is not perfectly plain to the Haitians. It would have been worth while, in my opinion, before attempting arbitrarily to force Haiti to sign the treaty put before its officials, to have spent a little time and a little patience in informing the Haitian people of the unselfish benevolence of our intentions. They, in time, would have understood why it is necessary to intervene in their affairs.

"Another reason, in my opinion, why patience may be manifested in this matter is that the treaty, even at the best, cannot be ratified by the United States Senate until it meets in regular session in December, unless the President calls it in special session earlier.

"I confess that while I am unschooled in such matters, since reading the treaty the Haitians have been told they must ratify, it seems to me rather harsh and precipitate; one cannot be surprised that the Haitians have hesitated to agree to all the conditions provided for in this treaty. No wonder they have hesitated when they have had so little time in which to understand it, when the ma.s.ses of the Haitian people know little or nothing of what the treaty contemplates.

"The way matters are now going, there is likely to be bitterness and war. The United States, in the end, will conquer, will control, will have its way, but it is one thing to conquer a people through love, through unselfish interest in their welfare, and another thing to conquer them through the bullet, through the shotgun. Shooting civilization into the Haitians on their own soil will be an amazing spectacle. Sending marines as diplomats and Mauser bullets as messengers of destruction breed riot and anarchy, and are likely to leave a legacy of age-long hatreds and regrets.

"I also hope the United States will not pursue a mere negative policy in Haiti, that is, a policy of controlling the customs and what-not, without going further in progressive, constructive directions. In a word, the United States now has an opportunity to do a big piece of fine work for Haiti in the way of education, something the island has never had. I hope some way will be provided by which a portion of the revenues will be used in giving the people a thorough, up-to-date system of common school, agricultural, and industrial education. Here is an excellent opportunity for some of the young colored men and women of the United States who have been educated in the best methods of education in this country to go to Haiti and help their fellows.

Here is an opportunity for some of the most promising Haitian boys and girls to be sent to schools in the United States. Here is an opportunity for us to use our influence and power in giving the Haitians something they have never had, and that is education, real education. At least 95 per cent. of the people, as I have said, are unlettered and ignorant so far as books are concerned."

Booker Washington's self-control was never more needed than on an occasion at Tuskegee described by T. Thomas Fortune, the Negro author and publicist. A Confederate veteran who had lost an arm fighting for the Confederacy and who had served for a number of years in Congress was on the program to speak at a Tuskegee meeting. This Confederate veteran had a great liking for Mr. Washington and believed in his ideas on the importance of industrial education for the colored people. Mr. Fortune says:

"John C. Dancy, a colored man, at that time Collector of Customs at Wilmington, N.C., was to speak first, the Confederate veteran second, and I was to follow the latter. Mr. Dancy is an unusually bright and eloquent man. Mr. Dancy paid a glowing tribute to the New England men and women who had built up the educational interest among the colored people after the war, of which Hampton and Tuskegee Inst.i.tutes are lasting monuments. Mr. Dancy had plenty of applause from the great concourse of countrymen, but his address made the white speaker furious. When the former Congressman was called upon to speak he showed plainly that he was agitated out of his self-restraint.

Without any introductory remarks whatever, he said, as I remember it:

"'I have written this address for you,' waving it at the audience, 'but I will not deliver it. I want to give you n.i.g.g.e.rs a few words of plain talk and advice. No such address as you have just listened to is going to do you any good; it's going to spoil you. You had better not listen to such speeches. You might just as well understand that this is a white man's country, as far as the South is concerned, and we are going to make you keep your place. Understand that. I have nothing more to say to you.'

"The audience was taken back as much by the bluntness of the remarks as if they had been doused with cold water. Indignation was everywhere visible on the countenances of the people. But Mr. Washington appeared unruffled. On the contrary, his heavy jaw was hard set and his eyes danced in a merry measure. It was a time to keep one's temper and wits, and he did so, as usual. Without betraying any feeling in the matter, and when everybody expected him to announce the next speaker, he said:

"'Ladies and Gentlemen: I am sure you will agree with me that we have had enough eloquence for one occasion. We shall listen to the next speaker at another occasion, when we are not so f.a.gged out. We will now rise, sing the doxology, and be dismissed.'

"The audience did so, but it was the most funereal proceeding I had ever witnessed upon such an occasion. Mr. Washington's imperturbable good nature alone saved the day."

Some time after President Roosevelt had begun to consult Booker Washington on practically all his appointments and policies which particularly affected the relations between the races, and after several Southern white men had been given Federal appointments on Mr.

Washington's recommendation, the bitterness against him grew so intense, especially among the "Talented Tenth" element of the Northern Negroes, that he decided to meet a group of their leaders face to face, and have it out. Accordingly, through Mr. Fortune, he arranged to meet a number of these men at a dinner at Young's Hotel in Boston.

Mr. Fortune thus describes what took place:

"At the proper time, when the coffee and cigars were served, I arose and told the diners that Dr. Washington had desired to meet them at the banquet table and at the proper time to have each one of them express freely his opinion of the race question, and how best the race could be served in the delicate crisis through which it was then pa.s.sing. Each of the speakers launched into a tirade against Dr.

Washington and his policies and methods, many of them in lofty flights of speech they had learned at Harvard University. The atmosphere was dense with discontent and denunciation.

"The climax was reached when William H. Lewis, the famous Harvard football coach, told Dr. Washington to go back South, and attend to his work of educating the Negro and 'leave to us the matters political affecting the race.' Every eye was upon Dr. Washington's face, but none of them could read anything in it; it was as inscrutable as a wooden Indian's. When every one of them had had his say, I called upon Dr. Washington to respond to the speakers who had unburdened themselves. Dr. Washington rose slowly, and with a slip of paper in his hand, said:

"'Gentlemen, I want to tell you about what we are doing at Tuskegee Inst.i.tute in the Black Belt of Alabama.'

"For more than a half-hour he told them of the needs and the work without once alluding to anything that had been said in heat and anger by those to whom he spoke. He held them close to him by his simple recital, with here and there a small blaze of eloquence, and then thanking them for the candor with which they had spoken, sat down.

They were all disappointed, as they expected that he would attempt to excuse himself for the things they had complained of."

At the time of Mr. Washington's death, the same William H. Lewis, who told him at this time to go back to the South and attend to his work and "leave to us the matters political affecting the race," said of him:

"Words, like tears, are vain and idle things to express the great anguish I feel at the untimely death of Booker Washington. He was my friend who understood me and believed in me. I did not always believe in him because I did not understand him. I first saw and heard him when a junior at Amherst in the early 90's, when he spoke at Old John Brown's church in Springfield, where I journeyed to hear him. I could not then appreciate his love for the Southern people and his gospel of work. I even doubted his loyalty to his race. When I came to Boston I joined in with his most violent and bitterest critics. The one thing that I am so thankful for is that I early saw the light and came to appreciate and understand the great work of Booker T. Washington.

"I have just finished reading an old letter from him, date, October 1, 1901, in which he said: 'The main point of this letter is to say I believe that both you and I are going to be in a position in the future to serve the race effectually, and while it is very probable that we shall always differ as to detailed methods of lifting up the race, it seems to me that if we agree in each doing our best to lift it up the main point will have been gained, and I am sure that in our anxiety to better the condition of the race there is no difference between us, and I shall be delighted to work in hearty cooperation with you.'

"Since then, I have known him intimately and well. He was unselfish and generous to a fault; he was modest yet masterful; he was quiet yet intense; his common sense and sagacity seemed uncanny, such was his knowledge of human nature. His was a great soul in which no bitterness or littleness could even find a lurking place. His was the great heart of Lincoln, with malice toward none and charity for all. He loved all men and all men loved him.

"My humble prayer is that his torch has lighted another among the dark millions of America, to lead the race onward and upward."

Booker Washington's insistence that the cla.s.srooms, shops, and farms were for the development of the students rather than the students for their development was well ill.u.s.trated by a remark he once made to Bishop William Lawrence of Ma.s.sachusetts when the Bishop was visiting the Inst.i.tute. In reply to Bishop Lawrence's question as to whether he had chosen the best available land for his agricultural work, he said, "No, sir, I chose pretty nearly the poorest land I could find. I chose land on which men would have to spend all their energies to bring out the life in the land. They work here under the hardest conditions.

When they go out to other lands--to their own lands, perhaps--they won't find any worse land to till. If they find any better land the difference will be all gain for them."

Perhaps more remarkable than any or all of his achievements was the fact that Booker Washington was a gentleman. It would be difficult to find a man who better conformed to the exacting yet illusive requirements of that term. He had not only the naturalness and the goodness of heart which are the fundamentals, but he had also the breeding and the polish which distinguish the finished gentleman from the "rough diamond." This fact about Booker Washington has been well described by Hamilton Wright Mabie in an article ent.i.tled: "Booker T.

Washington: Gentleman," in which he says in part:

"Booker Washington became one of the foremost men in America; he was heard on great occasions by great audiences with profound attention; he was a writer and speaker of National position, the founder of a college, and the organizing leader of a race in ideas and industry.

These were notable achievements; but there was another achievement which was in its way more notable. Without any advantages of birth or station or training, a member of an ostracized race, with the doors of social life closed in his face, Dr. Washington was a gentleman. I recall two ill.u.s.trations of this quality of nature, often lacking in men of great ability and usefulness. The first was in Stafford House, London, the residence of the Duke of Sutherland. The older Duke was the lifelong friend of Queen Victoria; and once, when she was going to Stafford House, she wrote the Duke that she was about to leave her uninteresting house for his beautiful palace. Nothing could be more stately than the great hall of Stafford House, with its two marble stairways ascending to the galleries above; and when the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, standing on the dais from which the stairs ascended, received her guests she reminded more than one of her guests of the splendid picture drawn by Edmund Burke of Marie Antoinette moving like a star through the palace of Versailles. On that evening Dr.

Washington was present. At one time in one of the rooms he happened to be talking with the d.u.c.h.ess and two other women of high rank, two of them women of great beauty and stateliness. There were some people present who were evidently very much impressed by their surroundings.

Booker Washington seemed to be absolutely unconscious of the splendor of the house in which he was, or of the society in which for the moment he found himself. Born in a hut without a door-sill, he was at ease in the most stately and beautiful private palace in London.

"On another occasion there was to be a Tuskegee meeting at Bar Harbor.

The Casino had been beautifully decorated for a dance the night before. The harbor was full of yachts, the tennis courts of fine-looking young men and women; it was a picture of luxury tempered with intelligence. Mr. Washington was looking out of the window.

Presently he turned to me and said, with a smile, 'And last Wednesday morning I was eating breakfast in a shanty in Alabama; there were five of us and we had one spoon!'"

At the time of his stay in London, during which this reception at Stafford House took place, he was given a luncheon by a group of distinguished men to which Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, was invited. In reply, Mr. Asquith sent this note:

_10 Downing Street, Whitehall, S.W._ _26th September, 1910._

DEAR SIR: I much regret that my engagements do not allow me to accept your invitation to be present at the luncheon which it is proposed to give in honor of Mr. Booker T.

Washington. I feel sure, however, that he will be welcomed with a cordiality which his persistent and successful labors in the cause of the education of the American Negro deserve, especially at the hands of English men, whose difficulties in many parts of the Empire have been helped toward a solution by the results of his work.

Yours faithfully,

[Signed] H.H. ASQUITH.

While at home, no matter how pressed and driven with work, Booker Washington s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour or so every day for hunting or riding.

This daily exercise became a fetich with him which he clung to with unreasonable obstinacy. He would frequently set off upon these hunts or rides in so exhausted a condition that obviously their only effect could be worse exhaustion. His intense admiration for Theodore Roosevelt probably had its influence, conscious or unconscious, in strengthening his devotion to violent outdoor exercise.

Whatever he was doing or wherever he was, his mind seemed constantly at work along constructive lines. At the most unexpected times and places he would suddenly call the inevitable stenographer and dictate some idea for an article or address or some plan for the improvement of Tuskegee or for the betterment of the whole race in this or that particular. He would sometimes reduce his immediate subordinates to the verge of despair by pouring out upon them in rapid succession constructive suggestions each one of which meant hours, days, and even weeks of time to work out, and then calling for the results of all before even one could be fairly put into effect. This tendency became particularly marked in his closing years when the consciousness of an immense amount of work to be done and a short and constantly lessening period in which to do it must have become an obsession and almost a nightmare to him.

He would sometimes wound the feelings of acquaintances and friends, particularly his teachers, by pa.s.sing them on the street and even looking at them without recognition. This naturally was not intentional, nor was it because his mind was wool-gathering, but merely because he was thinking out some idea with which the people and events immediately about him had for the moment no connection and were consequently totally obliterated from his consciousness.

Mr. Washington's strength of will and determination were never better shown than in the closing hours of his life. When he was told by his doctors at St. Luke's Hospital, New York, whither he had been taken by the New York trustees of the Inst.i.tute after his final collapse, that he had but a few hours to live, he insisted upon starting for home at once. His physicians expostulated and warned him that in his condition he could not reasonably expect to survive the journey. He insisted that he must go and be true to his oft-repeated a.s.sertion, "I was born in the South, I have lived and labored in the South, and I expect to die and be buried in the South." This remark, when sent out in the a.s.sociated Press dispatches announcing his death, touched the South as nothing else could have. No Negro was ever eulogized in the Southern press as he was. Long accounts of his career and death with sympathetic and appreciative editorial comments appeared in most of the Southern papers.

One of the doctors who was called in to attend him at the time he was taken to the hospital remarked that it was "uncanny to see a man up and about who ought by all the laws of nature to be dead." In this condition, then, he set out upon the long journey from New York to Tuskegee. When the party reached the Pennsylvania Station an invalid's chair was awaiting him, but he declined to use it, and leaning on the arms of his companions walked or rather tottered to his seat in the train. As soon as the train began to move Southward a slight invigoration of triumph seemed to come over him which increased as the journey continued, until at its close he seemed stronger than when he started. All along the way he would inquire at frequent intervals what point they had reached. The reaching and pa.s.sing of each important station such as Greensboro, Charlotte, and Atlanta he would seem to score up in his mind's eye as a new triumph. And when finally he reached Chehaw, the little station five miles from Tuskegee, he was fairly trembling with eager expectancy. As we have said, he reached Tuskegee apparently stronger than when he left New York and strong enough to enjoy the final triumph of his indomitable will over his overworked and weakened body. The next morning, November 14, 1915, he was dead.