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Robert W. Woodruff
Library
EMORY UNIVERSITY
Special Collections & Archives
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
Booker t. Washington
IN THE PRESS
OF THE NATION
BY
JOHN R. HOGAN
For twenty years a teacher in the public
schools of Texas and Oklahoma; for six
years Professor of History and Political
Science in Oklahoma Colored Agricultural
and Normal Universiay, Langston, Okla¬
homa; Mayor of Langston.
Langston, Oklahoma
1917
Illllllllllllfllllfllllllllilllllllllllllllilllllll^^
lUIIIIIII!lllllllllll!ll1lllllllllllllllllll!llllllllllllllllllllllllllll!llll!lllllllllllll!llllllllllllllll!lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!ll![lll!ll>lllllllllll>lllllllllll!lllin!innill!UI!|illlllll!llll llll'l
ONE CANNOT HOLD ANOTHER DOWN
IN THE DITCH WITHOUT STAYING
DOWN IN THE DITCH WITH HIM;
IN HELPING THE MAN WHO IS DOWN
TO RISE, THE MAN WHO IS UP IS
FREEING HIMSELF FROM A BURDEN
THAT? WOULD ELSE DRAG HIM DOWN.
FOR THE MAN WHO IS DOWN THERE
IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO HOPE
FOR, ALWAYS SOMETHING TO BE
GAINED.
—BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
II1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1IIIH
PREFACE.
Having always been in full accord with Booker T.
Washington in his educational ideas and his great
work in race development, I was very much moved
when I received the news of his death. I felt that the
race had lost its greatest leader and the country one
of its strongest citizens.
That Booker T. Washington was truly great is
borne out in the fact that on the day of his death the
Press, both black and white, considered it worth while
to pay special tribute to his greatness. From which
fact I conceived the idea of gathering these very e'x-
c-ellent sayings from the Nation's Press and arranging
and compiling them in the form of a book to be
preserved.
In compiling this book from newspapers and maga¬
zine articles, I fully realize the fact that many books
have been written about Dr. Washington, some by
Washington himself, all of which are good books. This
book is not supposed to take the place of any of these
books, but to treat the otherwise old subjects from an
entirely new angle. All the other books have shown
him to us as individuals saw him. This book is in¬
tended to show him as the world saw him.
It is my earnest desire in compiling this book to
preserve to the youth of my race in book form, the
comment of the American Press on the greatest Negro
the race has yet produced; hoping that it will serve
as an inspiration to them to know that poverty and
black skins are not necessarily barriers to the highest
success.
In gathering the articles from which this book is
compiled an attempt was made to give each magazine
and newspaper credit for the article taken. If any
errors are made I will gladly correct them in my next
edition if you will be kind enough to point them out
to me. JOHN R. HOGAN
Langston, Okla., April 1, 1917.
FOREWORD.
The Negro in America—in fact in the world—is
one of the problems still to be solved. He is on
American soil through no fault of his own, and the road
he has traveled to his present social and economic place
in the life of this Republic has not been of his choosing.
The white man has heretofore been entirely responsible
for his destiny. Having passed through the shadow
of slavery and being now a citizen, endowed under law,
with equal rights and duties, it is the part of wisdom
on the part of the dominant race to help him achieve
the highest efficiency possible to his nature. A self-
dependable citizen is of highest value to his community
and the state and the least burden to either.
There has been a mistaken notion that education
of the Negro would endanger his economic usefulness
as a factor in Ameican industy. Yet, his higher effi¬
ciency, higher ethics, prove higher self-respect, and of
necessity, higher value to his white neighbor. It is the
ignorant Negro that is still a burden on the white man.
Wherever such are in a majority, the life of the com¬
munity, not only for the Negro but the white man, is
on a lower plane.
If the Negro is made to stand on his own feet he
will not bother his white neighbor. Being self-suffi¬
cient he will be self-respecting and will be content to
live his own life according to his own lights.
There comes a time in the history of a race when it
must seek to develop its own inner ideals. This period
has come to the American Negro. If it is to keep
within its own racial quality, it must hold its own men
and women as ideals to aspire to and not the borrowed
ideals of the Anglo-Saxon. The American Negro is
here to stay, as far as anyone has light to see, and is
multiplying. Not only for his own good but for the
white man's good, he should be made independent of
the white man as quickly as possible. Only greater
efficiency on his part can bring that independence.
And education for him will do the same thing it
has done for the white man—make him a more indus¬
trious, self-respecting citizen and therefore a lesser
burden to the community in which he lives and a more
valuable citizen to the state.
This book is intended to hold up a beacon to
the youth the work and accomplishments of the best
character the Afro-American has produced. It should
prove inspiring and stimulating, especially to the boys
and girls of the race. Booker T. Washington taught
that industrial education and economic independence
were the guarantees of the Negro's future. And they
are the best safety for the future of American history.
Industry produces wealth; wealth produces leisure;
leisure produces culture; culture produces pride of self,
and pride in self produces satisfaction in racial con¬
sanguinity. The book will inspire the Negro to aspire
to remain a Negro.
A FEW OF THE AUTHOR'S SELECTIONS.
A conceit of knowledge is the greatest enemy to knowledge
and the greatest argument of ignorance.
* *
Speak not well of yourself nor ill of others.
* * *
To render good for evil is God-like; to render good for good
is man-like; to render evil for evil is beast-like; to render evil
for good is devil-like.
* # *
Carry yourself submissively towards your superiors, friendly
toward your equals, condescendingly towards your inferiors,
generously towards your enemies and lovingly towards all.
* * *
If a man lives and dies a mere professor, it had been better
for him if he had never lived, and died a mere heathen.
* "f* -i-
If you forget God when you are young, God may forget you
when you are old.
* * *
Three things a youth should labor after, namely, to be sub¬
missive and watchful and cheerful.
* * *
Our opportunities are like our souls, very precious; but if
they are lost, they are irrecoverable.
* * *
God never fails them that wait for him, nor forsakes them
that work for him.
$ $ $
If we would stand, right must be our foundation, if we would
be safe, truth must be our sanctuary
^ ^ $
Do not contend for every trifle whether it be a matter of
right or opinion.
* * *
If others neglect their duty to you, be sure that you perform
yours to them.
* * *
Folly is the beginning of pride and shame shall be its end.
* * *
If we are good and then we are sad, it is because wre are not
better.
MAYOR HOG AN IN THE MUNICIPAL OFFICE AT LANGSTON.
EARLY CAREER OF BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON.
HIS BIRTH.
w ASHINGTO N'S earliest remembrances
went back to the period of slavery. He recall¬
ed that he was born near Hale's Ford, Franklin,
County, Va., either in 1858 or 1859, he was never
quite certain which year it was. The entrance
into the world of slave babies was not considered
worthy of recording in these days. The place of
his birth and early childhood was the old one-
room quarter house with a dirt floor, hard pack¬
ed by many feet and with a potato hole in the
middle of the room, where sweet potatoes were
kept throughout the winter. He and his mother
were chattels of a family named Burrows, but he
was little enough affected by the rigors of slav¬
ery and he used to say that his childhood was
happy in spite of wretched poverty and the
densest of ignorance. The fact that he was a
slave did not bother his childish mind until the
day his mother woke him up early by kneeling
Booker T. Washington
over him and his brother, John, and praying
very earnestly and sobbing while she prayed.
"Oh, Lord, save Massa Lincoln and his
armies so we can be free," she said over and
over, and the boy never forgot the incident. It
was the first happening in his career that made
him think.
MOVED TO MALDBN, W. VA.
Dr. Washington was born at a most oppor¬
tune time. His formative period was during the
country's upheaval—his beginning days of con¬
sciousness. When peace came he was a lad of
school age. It was then he was found with his
books attracting attention by his devotion to
them. At the close of the war his family moved
to Maiden, Kanawha County, West Virginia,
where he had the pleasure of attending the com¬
mon schools.
ATTENDS NIGHT SCHOOL.
It was not possible for the boy to put in all
of his time. He managed to put in some time at
night school, and finally, by promising to begin
work unusually early in the morning and keep at
it unusually late in the evenings, he was able to
attend a day school with some regularity.
In The Press Of The Nation
MOTHER DIES AND HE LIVES WITH GEN. RUFFNER.
His mother died a short while after going to
Maiden, after which time he was fortunate in se¬
curing a place to live with Mrs. General Ruffner,
of the same place. He was permitted to attend
school, working nights and morning. In 1872 it
was possible for him to enter the Hampton In¬
stitute at Hampton, Va.
THE NAME BOOKER.
Like a great one who preceded him, Fred¬
erick Douglass, he very early had a fondness for
books. It is even said that he was called Booker
because of his love for reading. And it is quite
likely that this is true because a book in a Negro
boy's hand at this time naturally would have at¬
tracted attention. Our Lincoln was as much dis¬
tinguished for his early desire for books as any¬
thing else, and on which fondness his future em¬
inence hanged.
GETTING THE REST OF HIS NAME.
According to his own account of it, he was
greatly embarrassed when the teacher asked
what his name was and he could not tell her. He
had only one name—Booker. But he was a quick
minded and resourceful lad and on the second
4
Booker T. Washington
clay, when the teacher again asked him to give
his full name, he said without hesitation:
"My name is Washington—Booker T. Wash¬
ington/'
He thought that while he was selecting a
name he might as well select a good one. The
"T," he explained, stood for Taliaferro, which
he had heard, was the name of his father.
GOING TO HAMPTON.
He was assisted at Hampton by his brother,
John H. Washington, and by friends who do¬
nated him small amounts of money from time to
time. When starting to Hampton he thought
that he had money enough to pay his traveling
expenses. Owing to his miscalculation he found
on reaching Richmond, Va., that his cash on
hand would not pay for a night's lodging and
pay the balance of his way to his destination.
He concluded to cut out the regular way of lodg¬
ing; he spent the night under the sidewalk. The
next day he found an odd job of work, which he
did, and thus enabling him to reach the goal of
his ambition. He was janitor one year during
his stay at Hampton. He graduated in 1875, af¬
ter which he taught for three years at Maiden.
In The Press Of The Nation
CONTINUES HIS STUDIES AT WAYLAND.
Mr. Washington continued his studies at
Wayland Seminary, Washington, D. C. While
at Wayland he was invited to become a teacher
at Hampton and there he remained for two
years until, in 1881, the citizens of Tuskegee,
Ala., appealed to Gen. S. C. Armstrong for an
institution along the lines of the school at Hamp¬
ton, an institution which would develop Negroes
into useful citizens, teach, them self-respect,
give them the ability to support themselves, stir
them with proper ambition.
SELECTED AS PRINCIPAL OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE.
Hundreds of persons were recommended
for the place as head of the new institute, many
of them much better known than Washington,
but he got the place. When he arrived at Tus¬
kegee he found there had been no land or build¬
ings provided—that there was nothing, in fact,
except the promise of the state of Alabama to
pay $2,000 annually toward the expenses of the
school. But Mr. Washington went to work with
immense pride, tremendous energy and op¬
timism that never flagged for an instant.
6
Booker T. Washington
HIS SMALL BEGINNING.
In 1881 he was asked to undertake the build¬
ing of what is now Tuskegee Institute. The en¬
terprise was fostered by Colonel Geo. W. Camp¬
bell, a former slave owner and Lewis Adams, a
former slave.
He began to teach in a small shanty, hav¬
ing one assistant only for the instruction of
thirty pupils and built the great Tuskegee In¬
stitute from the ground up, borrowing $250 from
an old Hampton teacher and buying an old
plantation for $500. From a stable and hen
house left by the war on the ground he made
recitation rooms and prepared to till the land
with student labor. How bitter was the school's
struggle is shown by the fact that an old Negro
mammy of the section contributed six eggs at
one time to its support. Shortly afterward an
old blind horse was presented to the school.
GETTING BEFORE THE PUBLIC.
Professor Washington was invited to be the
guest of the Unitarian Club of Boston in 1887,
he being the first colored man so honored. At
the Hotel Vendome, where the banquet was held,
there was so much manifest good pleasure at
In The Press Of The Nation
7
what he said that the members of the club pre¬
sented the school a valuable sawmill. However,
it was not until 1895, at the Atlanta Exposition,
that Professor Washington attracted general at¬
tention. He was remembered especially for his
utterance: "Let down your buckets where you
are." This speech was particularly happy in all
respects and at once marked the ascending of
the great Booker T. Washington of after years.
He was at once in demand as a speaker and
up until the time of his death he was solicited
from all parts of the country to appear before
various organizations. His institution became
the care of the people. They heard his plea and
they responded in spirit. From the beginning
in the little shanty, he reached out by the help of
the philanthropically inclined, until this day,
when, according to his last report, there were
nearly 100 buildings worth above a half million
dollars.
The report: "The school term for 1914-15
began September 8, 1914, with an enrollment in
excess of the enrollment of September, 1913. Ths
total enrollment of the year, however, as I have
said, is about the same as the enrollment for last
year, 907 boys and 630 girls, a total of 1,537 from
8
Booker T. Washington
32 states and territories. Ninety-six students
have also come from 19 foreign countries or
colonies of foreign countries. This number does
not include the 200 in the Children's House, our
practice school.
HIS MARRIED LIFE
Dr. Washington had been married three
times, his third wife surviving him. His first
wife was Fannie M. Smith, whom he married in
1882 and who died in 1884. She was a graduate
of Hampton, the wedding took place in Tus-
kegee. . In 1884 he married Oliva Davidson, a
teacher at the school. She died in 1889, and Dr.
Washington married Margaret J. Murray, grad¬
uate of Fisk University in 1893.
He leaves three children, two sons and a
daughter. His daughter, Portia, was born of
his first marriage; his two sons, Booker T. Jr.,
and Edward Davidson, of his second.
In The Press Of The Nation
9
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AS A LEADER.
ATLANTA EXPOSITION SPEECH IN 1895.
"ly/TR. President, Gentlemen of the Board of
* Directors and citizens:
One-third of the population of the South is
of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the
material, civil or moral welfare of this section
can disregard this element of our population
and reach the highest success. I but convey to
you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment
of the masses of my race, when I say that in no
way have the value and manhood of the Ameri¬
can Negro been more fittingly and generously
recognized, than by the managers of this mag¬
nificent exposition at every stage of its progress.
It is a recognition which will do more to cement
the friendship of the two races than any occur¬
ence since the dawn of our freedom.
Not only this, but the opportunity here af¬
forded will awaken among us a new era of in¬
dustrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced,
it is not strange that in the first years of our
10
Booker T. Washington
new life we began at the top instead of the bot¬
tom, that a seat in Congress or the state legis¬
lature was more sought than real estate or in¬
dustrial skill, that the political convention, or
stump speaking had more attraction than start¬
ing a dairy farm or a truck garden.
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly
sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the
unfortunate vessel was seen the signal: "Water,
water, we die of thirst." The answer from the
friendly vessel suddenly came back: "Cast down
your buckets 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 buckets where you-are," and
a third and fourth signal for water was answer¬
ed: "Cast down your buckets where you are."
The captain of the distressed vessel at last, heed¬
ing the injunction cast down his bucket, and
it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from
the mouth of the Amazon river. To those of my
race who depend on bettering their condition in
a foreign land or who underestimate the impor¬
tance of cultivating friendly relations with the
Southern white man who is their next door
neighbor, I would say cast down your bucket
In The Press Op The Nation 11
where you are; cast it clown in making friends
in every manly way of the people of all races by
whom we are surrounded.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in
commerce, domestic service, and in the profess¬
ions. And in this connection it is well to bear
in mind, that whatever other sins the South may
be called to bear pure and simple, it is in the
South that the Negro is given a man's chance in
the commercial world and in nothing is the expo¬
sition more eloquent than in emphasizing his
chance. Our greatest danger is, that in the
great leap from slavery to freedom, we over¬
looked the fact that the masses of us are to live
by the productions of our hands, and fail to
keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion
as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor
and put brains and skill into the common oc¬
cupation of life; shall prosper in proportion as
we learn to draw the line between the superfical
and the substantial, the ornamental few games
of life and the useful. No race can prosper un¬
til it learns that there "is as much dignity in till¬
ing a field as in writing a poem. It is at the
bottom of life and not the top that we begin.
Nor should we permit our grievances to over¬
shadow our opportunities.
12
Booker T. Washington
To those of the white race who look to the
incoming of those of foreign birth and strange
tongue and habits for the prosperity of the
South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I
say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket
where you are." Cast it down among the 8,000,-
000 Negroes whose habits you know, whose love
and fidelty you have tested in days when to have
proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire¬
sides. Cast down your bucket among these
people who have without strikes and labor wars,
tilled your fields, cleared your forests, built your
railroads and cities and brought treasures from
the bowels of its earth and helped make possible
this magnificent representation of the progress
of aiding them as you are doing on these grounds
and to educate the head and heart, you will find
that they will buy your surplus land, make
blossom the waste places in your fields, and run
your factories. While doing this you can be
sure in the future, as you have been in the past,
that you and your families will be surrounded
by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding and
unresentful people the world has ever seen.
As we have proved our loyalty to you in
the past, in nursing your children, watching by
In The Press Of The Nation
13
the sick bed of your mothers and fathers and
often following them with tear dimmed eyes
to their graves, so in the future in our humble
way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that
no foreigner can approach ready to lay down
our lives if need be in defense of your
homes, thereby interlacing our industrial
commerce, civil and religious life with
yours in a way that shall make the in¬
terests of both races one. In all things that are
purely social we can be as separate as the fin¬
gers, yet as one hand in all things essential to
mutual progress. There is no defense or secur¬
ity for any of us except in the high intelligence
and development of all. If anywhere there are
efforts to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro,
let these efforts be turned into stimulating, en¬
couraging and making him the most useful and
intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested
will pay a thousand per cent interest. These
efforts will be twice blessed—blessing him that
gives and him that takes.
There is no escape from the law of man or
God, from the inevitable.
"The laws of changless justice bind
Oppressors with oppressed,
And close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to fate abreast."
14
Booker T. Washington
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid
you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull
against you the load downward. We shall con¬
stitute one-third and much more of the ignor¬
ance and crime of the South or one-third of its
intelligence and progress, we shall continue one-:
third to the business and industrial prosperity
of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body
of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding the
effort to advance the body politic.
Gentlemen of the Exposition: As we pre¬
sent to you our humble effort at an exhibition of
our progress, you must not expect very much;
starting thirty years ago with ownership here
and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and
chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources),
remember that the path that led from these to
inventions and production of agricultural imple¬
ments, buggies, steam engines, newspapers,
books, stationery, carving, paintings, the man¬
agement of drug stores and banks, has not been
trodden without contact with thorns and thistles.
While we take pride in our independent efforts
we do not for a moment forget that our part in
this exposition would fall far short of your ex¬
position, but for the constant help to our edu-
In The Press Of The Nation
15
eational life not only from the Southern states,
but especially from Northern philanthropists
who have made their gifts a constant stream of
blessing and encouragement. The wisest among
my race understand that the agitation of ques¬
tions of social equality is extremest folly, and
that the progress in the enjoyment of all the
privileges that will come to us, must be the re¬
sult of severe and constant struggle, rather than
of artifical forcing. No race that has anything
to contribute to the markets of the world is
long in any degree ostracised. It is important
and right that all privileges of the law be ours,
but it is vastly more important that we are pre¬
pared for the exercise of these privileges. The
opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just
now is worth infinitely more than the oppor¬
tunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.
In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in
thirty years has given us more hope and en¬
couragement, and nothing has drawn us so near
to you of the white race as that offered by this
exposition, and here bending, as it were, over
the altar that represents the struggles of your
race and mine, both starting practically empty
handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your
16
Booker T. Washington
efforts to work out the great intricate prob¬
lem which God has laid at the doors of the South
you shall have at all times the patient sympa¬
thetic help of my race, only let this be constantly
in mind, that while from representations in
these buildings of the product of field, of forest,
of mill, of factory, letters and art, much good
will come, yet far above and beyond material
benefit, will be the higher good, that let us pray
God will come, in a blotting out of sectional dif¬
ferences and social animosities and suspicions,
in a determination to_ administer absolute jus¬
tice, in a willing obedience among all classes to
the mandates of the law and a spirit that will
tolerate nothing but the highest equity in the
enforcement of the law. This coupled with our
material prosperity will bring into our beloved
South a new heaven and a new earth.
ADVICE TO HIS RACE.
"Let constructive progress be the dominant
note among us in every section of America. An
inch of progress is worth more than a yard of
fault-finding.
"Let us as a race teach the world that we
have learned the greatest lesson of calmness and
In The Press Of The Nation
17
self-control, that we are determined to be gov¬
erned by reason rather than feeling.
"Our victories in the past have come to us
through ability to be calm and patient,,, often
while enduring great wrong. This policy does
not mean cowardice, for no one respects a cow¬
ard. Prudence and self-control and the ability
to make sacrifices are often the indications of
the possessing of the highest degree of courage.
"Any child can cry and fret, but it requires
a full-grown man to create—to construct. Let
me implore you to teach the members of our race
everywhere that they must become in an in¬
creasing degree creators of their own careers.
"You say that you're black, that you have
no chance. Well,, make your chance. Cultivate
that dogged spirit of the white pioneer that has
changed this locality from a swamp to a resi¬
dential section.
"The colored people must now rectify a
mistake which they made after their emancipa¬
tion. They tried to start at the top; they bought
a carriage to ride in instead of a wagon to work
with. I am trying to teach my people that they
must begin at the bottom—at the soil, and work
Booker T. Washington
up, They must learn that they must follow the
growth of all nations. They must learn that
liberty is a conquest, not a bequest."
CREED CONCERNING HIS RACE.
"A race, like an individual, has got to have
a reputation. You can not keep back very long
a race that has a reputation for doing perfect
work in everything that it undertakes. And,
then, we have got to get a reputation for econ¬
omy. We must get a reputation for being so
skillful, so industrious that we will not leave any
job until it is near perfect as any one can make
it. Then we want to make a reputation for the
race for being honest—honest at all times and
in all circumstances. A few individuals here
and there have it, a few communities have it,
but the race as a mass must get it.
"Moreover, it's with a race, as it is with an
individual; it must respect itself if it would win
the respect of others. There must be a certain
amount of unity about a race, there must be a
great amount of pride about a race, there must
be a great deal of faith on the part of the race
itself. Let us think seriously and work ser-
In The Press Of The Nation
19
iously; then as a race, we shall be thought of
seriously, and therefore seriously respected."
Mr. Washington's creed concerning his
people may be well expressed in his own words,
spoken some years ago:
"We must teach our young people to save
their money. We must cease to have the repu¬
tation of a spending, shiftless, thriftless, pov¬
erty stricken race. It is vitally necessary for
the progress of the race that we become creators
of enterprises and not depend on the good will
and energy of other races."
20
Booker T. Washington
THE NEGRO AS A FARMER,
(By Booker T. Washington)
r\NE of the most striking facts that I have
^learned from a study of the bulletins of the
1910 census thus far issued has been the rapid
and continued increase in the number of negro
farmers in the Southern States. For example:
there has been an increase of 469,061, or 17.9
per cent., in the total number of farms and far¬
mers, white and colored, in the Southern States,
which shows that the South is far in advance
of the rest of the country, as far as concerns the
increase in the number of farms. In fact, fully
three-fourths of all the total increase in the
number of farms in the United States during
the past ten years is in the Southern States. In
the North Atlantic, what we used to call in the
old geographies the New England and Middle
Atlantic States, there has been a decrease of
almost four per cent, in the number of farms
during this period. In the North CentraFor
States of the Middle West, the increase amounts
In The Press Of The Nation
21
to only one per cent. There has been an increase
of fifty-two per cent, in the number of farms in
the Western States, but while the percentage of
increase in this part of the country is large, the
absolute increase in farms and farmers was only
126,336 against an increase of 469,061 in the
Southern States.
The point, however, which I wish to em¬
phasize is that, rapid as has been the increase in
total number of farms of both races in the South,
the number of negro farmers has increased pro¬
portionately more rapidly than the number of
white farmers. While the white farmers in fif¬
teen Southern States increased from 1,870,600 in
1900 to 2,191,805 in 1910, the negro farmers in¬
creased from 739,835 in 1900 to 887,691 in 1910,
making an increase of 17.0 per cent, for the
whites and 19.9 per cent, for the blacks.
No figures have been published showing the
relative increase, as between the white and
colored people, in the number of landowners, and
it does not follow, of course, that the number of
negro landowners has increased in the same
ratio as the number of negro farmers. In fact,
the statistics of land ownership in the Southern
States show that, not taking account of the dif-
22
Booker T. Washington
ferent races, the total number of landowners
has increased only about half as rapidly as the
total number of farmers. In what proportion
the 170,082 new landowners in the South are dis¬
tributed between the races, has not, so far as I
know, been definitely ascertained.
While the census figures show that, taking
the Southern States as a whole, the negro far¬
mers have increased more rapidly than the
white farmers, they also show that this increase
has not been evenly distributed throughout the
South. In some States, notably in Louisiana,
there has not only been no increase in the num¬
ber of negro farmers, but there has been a very
marked absolute decrease, a decrease of not less
than 3,350 negro farmers, during the ten years.
One of the interesting things brought out
by the comparison of the different States in this
table is the fact that, in the five States of Okla¬
homa, Texas, Virginia, Louisiana, and Flordia,
the number of white farmers has increased at
a more rapid rate than the number of negro far¬
mers. Five other States, West Virginia, Ken¬
tucky, Maryland, South Carolina, and Alabama
show the same rate of increase for both races.
In the five States, Tennessee, North Carolina,
In The Press Of The Nation
23
Mississippi, Georgia and Arkansas, in which
nearly half of the total negro population in the
South live, negro farmers have increased during
the past ten years more rapidly than the white
farmers, in proportion to the population of the
respective races of these States.
In Georgia and Mississippi the number of
negro farmers has increased both absolutely
and relatively more rapidly than the same class
of whites. In Georgia the number of negro far¬
mers has grown from 82,826 in 1900 to 122,341 in
1910, a gain of 39,515 in ten years. In the same
period the number of white farmers in Georgia
increased from 141,865 in 1900 to 168,158 in 1910,
a gain of 26,293 in ten years.
In Mississippi, where negroes now represnt
fifty-six per cent, of the total population, the
number of negro farmers increased from 128,679
in 1900 to 164,430 in 1910, an increase of 35,751.
During the same period the number of white
farmers increased from 92,124 in 1900 to 109,390
in 1910, an increase of 17,266.
Whatever else this increase, of negro farmers
may mean, it certainly indicates that, in pro¬
portion to their numbers, and in spite of a cer¬
tain amount of negro emigration to the North
24
Booker T. Washington
and a considerable immigration of the white
population to the South, negroes are entering
in proportionately larger numbers into farming
in the South, and becoming more and more re¬
sponsible, either as owners or as tenants, for the
success or failure of agriculture.
I can, perhaps, give a better idea of the part
which negro farmers, as compared with white
farmers, are actually taking in the agriculture
of the South by comparing the statistics of far¬
mers with the statistics of population. The fol¬
lowing table shows the relative percentage of
the white and colored in the total population of
fifteen Southern States in 1900 and 1910, to¬
gether with the percentage of white and colored
farmers for the same periods.
TABLE SHOWING PERCENTAGE OF NEGRO AND WHITE FAR¬
MERS COMPARED WITH POPULATION OF EACH.
1900 1910
Per Cent, of Total. Per Cent of Total.
Population Farmers Population Farmers.
White Colored White Colored White Colored Whiie Colored
Alabama 54.8 45.2 58.0 42.0 57.5 42.5 5S.0 42.0
Arkansas 72.0 28.0 74.0 26.0 71.8 28.2 70.0 30.0
Florida 56.3 43.7 67.0 33.0 58.9 41.1 70.0 30.0
Georgia 53.3 46.7 63.0 37.0 54.9 45.1 58.0 42.0
Kentucky 86.7 13.3 95.0 5.0 88.6 11.4 96.0 4.0
Louisiana 52.8 47.2 50.0 50.0 56.8 43.2 54.0 46.0
Maryland 80.2 19.8 87.0 13.0 82.1 17.9 87.0 13.0
Mississippi 41.3 5S.7 42.0 58.0 43.7 56.3 40.0 60.0
North Carolina. 66.7 33.3 70.0 24.0 68.4 31.6 74.0 26.0
Oklahoma 84.8 15.2 S8.0 12.0 87.2 12.8 89.0 11.0
South Carolina. 41.6 58.4 45.0 55.0 44.8 55.2 45.0 55.0
Tennessee 76.2 23.8 85.0 15.0 78.3 21.7 84.0 16.0
Texas 79.6 20.4 81.0 19.0 82.3 17.7 83.0 17.0
Virginia 64.3 35.7 73.0 27.0 67.4 32.6 74.0 26.0
West Virginia.. 95.5 4.5 99.0 1.0 94.7 5.3 yy.O 1,0
In The Press Op The Nation
25
This table shows that while the white popu¬
lation has grown more rapidly than the colored
population in all but two of the fifteen Southern
States mentioned, namely West Virginia and
Arkansas, the number of white farmers has
grown more rapidly than the negro farmers in
only five, namely: Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia,
Louisiana, and Flordia. In the States of Okla¬
homa, Texas and Florida there has been a very
considerable immigration of farmers from the
Northern States. In Virginia there has been a
very considerable decrease in the negro, as com¬
pared with the white population. At the same
time, the decrease in the number of negroes as
compared with the white farmers has been only
one per cent.
In Louisiana, where there seems to have
been an absolute loss of 3,550 of Negro farmers,
conditions are not so easily explained. The
white population of Louisana has grown to
some extent by immigration, and there has been
a very considerable emigration from Louisana
to Arkansas and Oklahoma, and this has tended
to alter the ratio of the white and colored popu¬
lation, but does not wholly account for the de¬
crease in farmers, as there has been no corres-
26
Booker T. Washington
ponding decrease in the rate of increase in the
negro population. The figures seem to indicate,
therefore, that negro emigration from Louisiana
westward has come almost wholly from the
country districts. An explanation suggested is
that the boll weevil has discouraged negro far¬
mers in that part of the country. The boll weevil
has not had the same effect eleswhere, however,
so that I am disposed to attribute the decrease
to local causes which are not yet wholly ex¬
plained.
The census of 1910, show, then, that there
has been a proportionately larger increase in
the negro than in the white farmers in the South-
em States. I do not intend to suggest that this
fact by itself is of any great importance. The
real significance of this increase in the number
and proportion of negro farmers is that it has
gone along with an enormous development of
Southern agriculture as a whole.
There has been, for example, an increase of
$4,034,483,000 in the total values of farm lands
and buildings during the last ten years, and an
increase of $112,284,000 in the value of farm
machinery. The South is spending $74,324,000
more for farm labor and $46,145,000 more for
In The Press Of The Nation 27
fertilizers in 1910 than it did in 1900. While
there has been.a very large decrease in the farm
acreage in the South, due principally to the fact
that hundreds of thousands of acres of moun¬
tain, timber, and swamp land, reported as farms,
in 1900 and used to some extent for grazing
purposes, were not reported as farms in 1910. At
the same time there has been an increase of
^4,058,000 acres in the amount of improved land,
and an average decrease of from fifteen to
thirty acres in the size of farms. The decrease
has been fifteen acres for farms in the South
Atlantic, and thirty acres for farms in the South
Central States. Both of these facts indicate a
more intensive and higher type of farming; in¬
dicate, in short, that farmers were putting more
labor and more intelligence into the cultivation
of the soil in 1910 than they did in 1900.
There has been a larger increase in value of
farm lands and a larger increase in expenditures
for labor and for fertilizers in the Southern
States than in any other part of the country,
except the Western States. If one compares the
different geographical divisions, as to the in¬
crease in land values, it appears that in the
North Atlantic States there has been an increase
28
Booker T. Washington
of 27 per cent, in the value of farming lands and
buildings; in the North Central States this in¬
crease has been 114 per cent; in the South At¬
lantic the increase has been 105 per cent.; in the
South Central, 133 per cent., and in the West
193 per cent.
The value of an acre of farm land has in¬
creased 32 per cent, in the North Atlantic; 99
per cent, in the North Central; 110 per cent, in
the South Atlantic; 152 per cent, in the South
Central; 157 per cent, in the Western States.
Not only has this great advance been made
in the South, where the negro has a proportion¬
ately larger share in agriculture than he had a
decade ago, but if we compare the Southern
States in which the number of negroes is pro¬
portioned large with those States in which it
is proportionately small, it will be seen that
there has been on the wThole just as much pro¬
gress, if not more, where the proportion of
negro farmers was large as where it was small.
The following table shows the percentages of
increase in the average value per acre of land
in the different Southern States. In these tables,
the first seven States are arranged in the order
of the percentage of negro farmers, and the last
In The Press Of The Nation
29
eight in the order of the percentage of white
farmers,
PERCENTAGE OF NEGRO AND WHITE FARMERS IN SEVEN
STATES HAVING HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF NEGRO FAR¬
MERS WITH AVERAGE INCREASE IN LAND PER ACRE IN
EACH STATE.
Per Cent. Per Cent. Per Cent. Increase
State. Negro White In Value of Land
Farmers. Farmers Per Acre.
Mississippi 60 40 115
South Carolina 55 45 172
Louisiana 4G 54 78
Georgia 42 58 156
Alabama 42 58 112
Arkansas 30 70 118
Florida 30 70 141
PERCENTAGE OF NEGRO AND WHITE FAMRERS IN EIGHT
STATES HAVING HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF WHITE FAR¬
MERS WITH AVERAGE INCREASE IN LAND PER ACRE IN
EACH STATE.
Per Cent. Per Cent. Per Cent. Increase
State. Negro White In Value of Land
Farmers. Farmers Per Acre.
West Virginia 01 99 67
Kentucky 05 95 65
Oklahoma 11 89 245
Maryland 13 87 41
Tennessee 16 84 84
Texas 17 83 204
Virginia 26 74 100
North Carolina 26 74 138
From all these figures, it would seem to be
apparent that, in spite of all that is said to the
contrary, the negro in the South is beginning to
heed the advice of those who have told him to
stick to the farm. It does not follow from this,
oo
Booker T. Washington
however, that negro farmers are sticking fast
on the land on which they were planted years
ago. On the contrary, the census figures show
that there is a very considerable movement of
the negro population to the new territory, where
there is opportunity to better their condition, as
in the case of the negro population in Oklahoma,
which has grown 147 per cent, in the past ten
years. But. on the whole, the negro is sticking
to the soil.
At the same time these figures prove, it
would appear, that the negro is able and willing
to improve in his methods of farming. It is
evident that all this advance in land values
could not have taken place in spite of the negro.
He must have had, as he had always had, his
share during this time, in the ^vork of building
up the farming industry in the South, and, con¬
sidering the little education he has had in agri¬
culture and the limitations owing to his lack of
general education that prevented his taking ad¬
vantage of the opportunities for improvement
that are offered to farmers in other parts of the
country, it must be admitted that he has done
well.
In The Press Of The Nation
31
THE MOSES OF HIS RACE.
(By Dr A. M. Townsend, A. M.)
"There is no escape—man drags man down,
or lifts man up." B. T. W.
TT ERE we have the essential thought of one
A who could lead his kind through the Wild¬
erness of Chaos into the Valley of Hope.. Man
can, if he will, drag man down, or, if he might
choose to, lift man up. This philosophy is the
central power in the elevation of the individual
or the race or the nation. The one who knows
that it is inherent to man to elevate himself by
elevating others has struck the keynote of hu¬
man success. It matters not what wealth a man
may gather together, it matters not what joys
may be his, it matters not how long he lives, if
his gathering of wealth, if his joys, and if his
days have not been to the advantage of others,
then he cannot be the true leader, not the suc¬
cessful man. Let us see if Booker Taliaferro
Washington will answer to the qualities herein
outlined as the ones which tell the real man.
32
Booker T. Washington
It is commended to your attention, to note
that if one of early training, by environment, or
by birth is set off on the Right Path, then his
success is not so much of personal merit. When
one is to this manner born, then some of the
qualities which insure a safe journey may be
missing and still the traveler will reach the shore
of Safety. How different it is with one who
must choose his own way, who must furnish his
own power, and must break loose from all of
his associations. This was the case with Mr.
Washington.
Born in either 1858 or 1859 on a slave plan¬
tation near Hale's Ford, Virginia, he was named
Booker. Washington he afterward took and
Taliaferro was added as certain knowledge of
his paternity was furnished. At work in a salt
furnace his knowledge of letters was had from
stencils which were used to brand the heads of
the barrels. Later he was engaged in a coal
mine. He wished to learn. The lettering on the
barrel-heads had whetted his appetite. A similar
story is told of the great Lincoln.
Next we hear from him at Hampton In¬
stitute in his native State working his way
through by giving labor in return. In three
Mr. Washington at Time of Taking His Degree at
Harvard.
In The Press Of The Nation
33
years he was through the school. Two years
were spent as teacher in this place which, to him,
was the colored man's heaven—the paradise
where he might come into his own,"if he exhibit¬
ed the energy and industry to carry him along.
We all know of how he arrived at Hampton,
weak, hungry, and destitute, and how his rag¬
ged condition excited suspicion when he applied
for entrance; of the tests which were to be
the criterions of his fitness to enter, and how
they were accomplished by him in a satisfactory
manner. When he had done them the teacher
remarked, "I think you will do well in this
school." And he did.
From all this we take it that preparation
for the ideals he had in view must have been
uppermost in his mind. He followed the lanes
of education with unflagging industry.
We now come to the period where he was
enabled to show his capacity for good; where
it was to be determined if his preparation was
of the right kind, and if his fidelity to an ideal
would stand the acid test. Booker T. Washing¬
ton was selected in 1881 to head an institution
founded at Tuskegee, Ala. Arriving there he
found that no buildings or land had been provid-
34
Booker T. Washington
ed for the purpose. The State of Alabama had
promised to pay annually $2,000 toward the ex¬
penses of the school.
His time had come. It was for him to go
ahead and make good, or to confess that he did
not have the stamina to lead and to fight hard¬
ships and discouragements. So he hit out to
prove his mettle. He secured a shanty, enrolled
thirty pupils, provided one assistant, and there
planted the seed of Tuskegee. Today it has
property worth $2,000,000, fifty buildings, and
three thousand acres of land, with an annual
enrollment for the school of from 1,500 to 2,000
Negro boys and girls, and men and women. It
stands as a monument of untiring energy, un¬
selfish devotion, and loyalty to his ideals—the
ideals of Booker T„ Washington, the Moses of
his people.
This institute has an endowment of almost
$2,000,000. Also nearly $150,000 yearly, which
the endowments do not meet, was the wTork of
this man. These great sums were raised for
the improvement of his race. We get here the
first answer to our question. This money,
though he may have benefited from it to a lim¬
ited extent, was for the multitude of his kind.
In The Press Of The Nation
35
Those who are without .money may enter. Thus
we see the reason his name is honored.
If occasion gave him cause to rejoice he did
not rejoice alone. His love for his own was well
matured. He forgot himself when the interests
of those he loved were at stake. The thousands
of colored men and women distributed through¬
out the South who were developed into real men
and foemen rejoiced with him. Now they mourn
his loss. The pall of Nov. 14, 1915, still hangs
over them. ,
As we survey the incidents connected with
this great man's life—his heroic action, which
makes us marvel, and mystifies us—as we revel
in the stories of his achievements, we are over¬
come with unbounded admiration for his genius
and almost superhuman power of will. It
teaches us that determination is three-fourths
of the battle.
The foregoing intimates that his was no
baby work. Those connected with colleges know
that it is no mean task to raise an endowment of
nearly $2,000,000. But, like Moses who led
Israel, he was misunderstood by his own people.
Some called him a traitor to the Negro race.
This was because they thought that the top
36
Booker T. Washington
rung of the ladder was to be reached in a single
jump. He knew better. He believed in leading
—not forcing—his way into the future. Hot¬
heads want to get everywhere without effort.
This man knew that the salvation of his breth¬
ren was in being able to show by industry,
morality, and seriousness that they were fitted
for citizenship and the higher duties of life. The
crowd pulling in every direction was herded
and classified. Their duty as well as their rights
were pointed out. He struck the rock with his
staff and cleanliness gushed forth; respect for
property rights of others was inculcated, and
self-help sprang into the Negro's being. He
knew what was good for his race and insisted
that they abide by his directions. Those who
are acquainted with the Negro of the South can
see the difference between those who came un¬
der his influence and those who did not. The
higher ideals of the colored man were inspired
and pointed out by Booker T. Washington, the
Moses of his race, who also has taught the world
that "There is no escape—man drags man down,
or lifts man up."
In The Press Of The Nation
37
A SANE LEADER.
(By D. Hinden Ramsey)
rpHE Southern people have ordinarily been
distrustful of those whom the Negro has ele¬
vated to positions of leadership. Too often those
leaders have been private-spirited men who
have used their power to serve private aims
and ambitions. This was painfully true of those
who rose out of the ranks of the Negro race
to places of power in the years immediately fol¬
lowing the close of the war.
And yet we mourn the death of Booker
Washington with a sincerity that was only
equaled by that of the race in whose service he
had spent his life. The white people yielded
unto him an admiration which no other Negro
leader has ever been able to secure or probably
ever will be able to secure; they felt that in his
death they had lost one who was working for
the progress of their section. This respect was
not unstinted. Washington won it through his
own conduct and character and despite the real
38
Booker T. Washington
desires of the Southern white man. And some¬
how or other I feel that this appreciation, which
had been denied Washington in his early years
came as the inspiration of the later years. Wash¬
ington never angled for this respect; he desired
it, but never shaped his policies so as to secure it
through a conciliatory attitude toward the
gnarled problems of race adjustment. It was
given as a tribute to his obvious sincerity of
purpose.
The great moving force in Washington's
life was the pride in his race and his consequent
passion to do everything in' his power to elevate
that race. As a corollary to this was the con¬
viction—a conviction that had been pressed up¬
on his open mind by long observation—that the
question presented itself to him in relation to
nature of things be worked out in the South. He
was nobly free from any desire to secure power
merely to subserve personal ambitions. Every
question presented inself to him in relation to
his ambitions for his people.
Some members of his race accused him of
being conciliatory, of praising the Southern
white man in order to obtain his support. They
especially disapproved of his failure to decry
In The Press Of The Nation
39
existing conditions and see the injustice in
Southern civilization as they saw it. They over¬
looked that great sense of charity in the man
which enabled him to differentiate between the
occasional and the habitual. Sometimes things
must have happened that hurt his feelings. Bit¬
ter words and haughty attitudes must at times
have wounded him. He showed his sense of
proportion by ignoring such incidents and by
realizing that a great leader has no time to
waste on any but the set. tendencies. He left
his case with the thinking class of the Southern
people and not with the demagogue who was
playing for political preferment. Washington
was capable of resentment and several times he
voiced this resentment in compelling eloquence.
But even then he spoke, not to vent personal
feelings, but to serve the interests of the race
whose spokesman he was.
There was a sanity about Washington's
leadership which after all is the sanity which
may be trusted to achieve permanent results
in Southern ra'ce relationships. He distracted
the attention of his people from the will-o'-wisps
which had been held out to them in Reconstruct¬
ion days. He preached to them the gospel of
40
Booker T. Washington
industrial training; he warned them against
prating for social equality; he advised them to
keep out of politics as a racial unit.
The most touching incident in his whole life,
to a Southerner happened in those last days
when he was stricken unto death in the North,
and asked to be taken South so that he might die
in the section where he was born and had lived
and labored. It calls to mind the last days of
Henry Grady, the most interesting figure that
has issued out of our Southern civilization since
the war. Mr. Grady journeyed to Boston to
defend his section in its attitude toward the
Negro from the impeachment which the Presi¬
dent of the United States had made. His doctor
had warned him against the trip, but Grady felt
that it would be treason for him to neglect this
opportunity to prove to the world that the South
was trying to deal with the Negro with patience
and justice. His speech was a masterful effort,
but the fears of the doctor were realized. When
Grady was told that he had made his last speech
he asked to be placed on a south-bound train
in order that he might die in the land of his
birth and affection. Among his last words were
In The Press Op The Nation
41
these; "Tell my mother that father died fighting
for the South and that I am proud to die speak¬
ing for the South."
And Booker T. Washington was also a sol¬
dier in the great New South movement!
42
Booker T. Washington
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
(By Rev. W. S. Ellington, D. D.)
JJOOKER T. WASHINGTON was sent into
this world to do a great work. This he per¬
ceived early in his young manhood and resolved
to prepare himself at Hampton Institute. He
entered Hampton in the fall of 1.872 with only
fifty cents in his pocket. But was willing to work,
so he remained in school until he was graduated
with honor in 1875.
If a man's work is the best index of his
character, and the most correct measure of his
life, then Booker T. Washington is one'of the
greatest men of this century; or of any century.
He began his work at Tuskegee on the fourth
of July, 1881, in an old church and a little shanty
that was ready to fall down from decay. Today
Tuskegee is one of the greatest industrial
schools in the world. It is reaching the masses.
It is teaching the Negro to be a producer of
wealth as well as a consumer. It is encouraging
him to become a self-respecting, industrious.
In The Press Of The Nation
43
taxpaying American citizen. It is helping him
to find his place in the economic life of the New
South and to live on friendly terms with his
white neighbor. Tuskegee is to the Negro's in¬
dustrial life what the church is to his social and
religious life—a second emancipation. It has
been well said that if George Washington was
the father of his country, then Booker T. Wash¬
ington was the savior of his people. In his great
and many sided life my race can find a sug¬
gestion for the solution of all the problems
which vex us.
Booker T. Washington's practical common
sense was one of the most prominent traits of
his character. We have heard men who lay
greater claim to scholarship, "but we have never
heard a man whose practical common sense so
moved us and convinced us of his fitness to lead.
A noble leader like Washington was needed
just at the time that Providence gave him to us.
What shall be the status of the Negro's indus¬
trial life in the South? Shall he remain as
slavery left him. an ignorant burden-bearer that
must be continually scouraged to his task? Or
shall he be trained to work? With the abolition
of slavery went the necessity, if there ever was
44
Booker T. Washington
any, for ignorant labor. Today an ignorant
servant is a greater curse to labor than an ignor¬
ant voter in politics.
Booker T. Washington saw clearly that the
ignorant masses are the blind Samsons, pulling
away at the foundation of this republic, and
that if this country is to remain the home of
a free and happy people, the man in the ditch
must be taught to think and to save his earnings.
Booker T. Washington conceived the idea of
uniting the best white people of the North and
the South in the establishment and maintenance
of a great industrial school for the education of!
black boys and girls to help in making the South
the best place on earth for a struggling people.
Into this high purpose he put all the strength
and energy of his great soul, and he lived to see
the work of his hands blessed with abundant
success.
Booker Washington, born a slave and rock¬
ed in the cradle of poverty, has become the most
distinguished Negro in the world. He was en¬
tertained by Queen Victoria and was a guest in
the homes of the nobility of England and re¬
ceived degrees from the leading universities of
this country . He did more perhaps than any
In The Press Of The Nation
45
other man to teach people to believe in the dig¬
nity of the work of the hand. Through the influ¬
ence of Booker T. Washington's noble words and
deeds we have learned that our destiny as a
race must be fought out largely here in the
South and by our own efforts.
The Farmer's Conference which meets once
a year in Tuskegee is the work of his hand, the
child of his fertile brain. It is the most prac¬
tical and helpful gathering of Negro farmers in
the world. As a result, the Negro is getting an
unwrenchable claim upon the soil, especially in
the "Black Belt." He is tearing down the oJd
log hut with its chimney of sticks and is building
a comfortalble house for his family.
The Business Men's League started by
Booker T. Washington is teaching the Negro
business principles. Negro banks and insurance
companies, stores and factories attest to the wis¬
dom of his contention. He has done more to
teach us the power of co-operation and the value
of the dollar than any other single man.
Wherever he went he taught our people
self-respect and urged us to live on friendly
terms with the Southern white people. In his
notable speech at the opening of the Atlanta
46
Booker T. Washington
Exposition he said, "No man, either white or
black, Northern or Southern, shall drag mo
down so low as to make me hate the Southern
white man." In this we see the depth of his ap¬
preciation, the type of his wisdom, andthe beauty
of his love. A life so pregnant with good as his
cannot be destroyed by death. It has simply &et
to rise in a world more beautiful than this,
where it will shine forever.
In The Press Of The Nation
47
AN APOSTLE OF SERVICE.
(By Arthur W. Spaulding)
rpHE world seldom recognizes its greatest men.
-Mts standard of greatness is too superfical to
permit it. Force, brilliance, policy, it can ap¬
plaud, but human service is little set by. Yet
the greatest of men, the only divine Man, lias
defined greatness as the giving of service:
"Whosoever will be great among you shall be
your minister; and whosoever of you will be
the chief est shall be the servant of all." In the
annals of heaven there are. names written
brightest which never find mention on earth;
names, not of conquerors, of philosophers, of
statesmen, but names, like Abou ben Adhem's,—
"As one that loves his fellow men."
And sometimes it happens that the world,
dimly conscious of service given, awakes to see
and acknowledge in the servant also some of
these qualities it counts as of greatness. Such
an acknowledgement, has come with the death,
and to some extent during the life, of America's
48
Booker T. Washington
greatest apostle of service,, Booker T. Washing¬
ton. Sprung .from a race that was early sen¬
tenced to servitude,, he gained the vision and the
power to help transform that servitude into ser¬
vice. Taught by Armstrong, he saw in the iron
of the Negro'g broken shackles the material for
the plowshare, the scapel, and the pen. Let the
freedman take the blessing of knowldge and
skill that had come from his enforced toil, and
with it rise to the height of a willing laborer
for the good of others. In that he would be¬
come the greatest man.
Such a doctrine Booker Washington did not
merely copy from his teacher: he tested and
proved it in his own life; and from that per¬
sonal knowledge came his power as a leader. It
was, indeed, not merely from the time he found
Armstrong in Hampton, but from his earliest
life. The little, unfathered slave boy, born in
a floorless cabin, his bed of rags, his clothing, the
cruel tow shirt, often hungry ,always, perforce
neglected, yet found in his heart (was it by vo.ie.3
of his yearning mother, or by the touch of the
great Father?) that joy in serving others which
marked him a servant rather than a slave. The
attendant of his child mistress, toting her books
MR. WASHINGTON AND THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE
Among' These Men Are Found the Highest and Noblest Birth of the American White Race.
Charles W. Hare, Tuskegee, Ala.; Seth Low, Chairman, Member of Investment Committee,
?0 East 64th St., New York, N. Y.; W. W. Campbell, Vice Chairman, Tuskegee, Ala.; R. O.
Simpson, Furman, Ala.; Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Institute, Ala.; Warren Bogan.
Member of Investment Committee Tuskegee Institute, Ala.; A. J. Wilborn, Tuskegee, Ala.;
V. H. Tulant, 433 S. Ripley St., Montgomery, Ala.: William G. Wilcox, Member of Investment
Committee, 3 South William St., New York, N. Y.; Frank Trumbull, Member of Investment
Committee, 71 Broadway, New York, N. Y.; Charles E. Mason, Member of Investment Com¬
mittee, 30 State St., Boston, Mass.; Julius Rosenwald, Harvard St., and Homan Ave., Chicago,
111.; William M. Scott, 19th and Hamilton Sts., Philacie'phia, Pa.; E. J. Scott, B. T. U. Sect'y.
In The Press Of The Nation
49
to school; the mill boy, dreading yet dutifully
performing the difficult task of riding grist to
the mill; the house boy, with quick eyes, ready
hands, and open ears, worshiping his young mis¬
tresses and mourning with heartfelt sorrow over
the death in battle of "Mars' Billy,"—in these
glimpses of his earliest life we catch the same
sweet and patient spirit of devotion that so
marked the later man.
Then came the days of freedom, in the new
home among the West Virginia hills: the grilling
work in the salt furnaces and the coal mines,
the first glimmerings of lettered knowledge in
the blue-back spelling book and the stamped fig¬
ures of the boss packer, the eager efforts in
the night school, and finally the hardly won and
hurried hours of the day school. And at last,
Hampton.
Through it all runs the golden thread of the
purpose to help others—the hard-worked, unsel¬
fish, eager mother, the grasping stepfather, the
self-sacrificing brother, who even exceeded in
love; and afterwards the little children he had
left at home, and then the broader circle of his
race with whose needs he became acquainted,
and those red brothers from the plains to whom
in Hampton he became "house father."
50
Booker T. Washington
What wonder that Tuskegee, grown from
such a creed, should manifest the spirit and en¬
able the office of servant to the needs of man¬
kind? Who has said that Tuskegee is a monu¬
ment to Booker T. Washington, to the creative
genius of the black man? Tuskegee is not a
monument; Tuskegee is an heir. To it has been
transmitted a life, to it has been given a trust.
The life is the divine power of ministry, such as
God gives in the falling of the showers and the
shining of the sun, in the springing of the
grass and the fruitions of the earth for the bless¬
ings of man; that trust is the ideal and the per¬
formance of such ministry to the community,
the race, the church, and the world. Whoever
looks upon Tuskegee's plant with a dwarfing
content at a work completed, is building in his
own mind a tomb for Tuskegee. Whoever waves
a complacent hand toward the wide network of
Tuskegee's out-schools, with pride in a system
of brotherhood, fails of conception of its found¬
er. For it is not in the shells of halls and shops,
it is not in the power of organizations, that that
creative spirit trusts. The example of unselfish
devotion to others' needs, of learning that one
may help, of gaining that one may give, is the
In The Press Of The Nation
51
spirit of Washington, and the true meaning of
the work he leaves. Its history teaches this.
Thirty-five years ago Booker Washington
first saw Tuskegee. He came at call of white
and colored to establish a school for the Negro.
He found their expectations and his own ideals
but loosely joined. That first month he spent in
making a social survey. With a mule and a cart
he drove through the country, eating, sleeping,
and talking with the people, and making his own
conclusion of needs. The one-room cabin, stuffed
with boys and girls, and men and women, and
dogs, with room for a high-priced organ and
but one common table fork; the weedy yard and
garden patch, presided over by an ambitious
youth with a French'grammar; the noisy fervor
of the church house and the gross levity of the
home's morals.—these pointed out to him the
place of service that the school should fill.
So when the school opened that July in the
dilapidated church and shanty in the village,
its first thirty pupils, many of them distinguish¬
ed already as public school teachers, were as¬
tonishingly introduced to new ideals of educa¬
tion. And the new system was illustrated and
enforced, three months later, when an old and
52
Booker T. Washington
abandoned plantation near the town of Tuskegee
was bought for the home of the school. Two
cabins .a stable and a hen-house made homes and
a schoolroom. The sassafras and persimmon
that had possessed the land began to be rooted
out by hands at first reluctant, but growing ever
readier. The brick yard, below the hill triumphed
after three failures. Growing of crops and build¬
ing of homes went on with growing minds and
building of characters. And service to others
was the aim in all. In the community about
there was a bountiful field for labor. Out of the
poverty of Tuskegee's teachers and students
they gave food and clothing to the needy, they
spent holidays and vacations in gratuitous wood-
chopping and house-building, they transformed
Christmas week from a season of drunkenness
and carousal and crime into one of sobriety and
joy.
And so Tuskegee grew, with day school and
much labor for those who could pay a little of
their expenses, night school and more labor for
those who could pay none. Today with its six¬
teen hundred students, its twenty-five hundred
acres, its hundred buildings, and its forty trades,
Tuskegee is prepared for a more wide-spread
In The Press Of The Nation
53
mission, but never for a broader or deeper mess¬
age. If there shall continue to dwell within it
that spirit of giving as the Master gave, if it
hold the mind of Him who humbled himself and
took upon him the form of a servant, it will but
be maintaining the spirit and purpose with which
and for which it was founded. And if to the
wider audience to which the life of Booker T.
Washington speaks, if to the men and women
of his race for whose good he gave himself, if to
the choice spirits of that other race who can ap¬
preciate the value of a life of unselfish service,
of intermediation for harmony and good will and
cooperation, there may appeal the now silent
testimony of his well filled and unselfish life,
there will not have lived in vain this apostle of
service.
54
Booker T. Washington
PROF. ROBERT E. PARK OF UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO.
(Chicago Defender.)
"jV/T Y acquaintance with Booker T. Washington
dates back to August, 1904, when, as secre¬
tary of the Congo Reform Association, I sought
to interest him in the condition of the natives of
Congo Free State, during King Leopold of Bel¬
gium's domination of that country. At that time
there were few people in this country, either
among colored people or white people, who were
not profoundly indifferent to Africa and Afri¬
cans. Booker Washington was not one of them.
In fact, he was one of the first important men in
this country to lift his voice in behalf of the
Congo natives.
One of the striking facts about Dr. Wash¬
ington, as I remember him, was his profound in¬
terest and faith in the Negro race, not merely
in America, but in the world. This was shown
by the interest he took in the Liberian crisis; by
his recent effqrts in behalf of the Republic of
In The Press Of The Nation 55
Haiti; by his interest in preventing the exclusion
from this country of the Negro immigrants from
the West Indies; by the hearty welcome he has
always given to Negro students from Africa and
elsewhere outside of tris country, ard by his
efforts to establish a permanent international
conference on the Negro, following upon the
first international conference of this kind held
at Tuskegee, April, 1913.
I might mention in this connection $ fact
known but to two persons, that at the time of the
outbreak of the European war, arrangements
had been practically made by which Dr. Wash¬
ington would make an extended speaking trip
through Europe. It was part of his purpose on
this trip to stimulate interest among the Euro¬
pean peoples having colonies in Africa in this
permanent international conference to which I
referred. He hoped to gather together in this
way a body of interested and responsible per¬
sons from all parts of the world to give careful
consideration to the problems which had been
created by the comparatively recent penetration
of Africa by European peoples.
The time has not yet come to make an es¬
timate of the personal character of Dr. Wash-
56
Booker T. Washington
ington nor of the significance of his work to
members of his race, to the people of the United
States and to the world. I have merely referred
here to an aspect of his work the importance of
which was perhaps realized by but few persons
outside of the circle of his immediate friends.
What his work and his ambitions for his race
were in other directions is better known and ap¬
preciated.
What I have said will serve to call attention
to the fact that Booker Washington was a figure
of more than national proportions. His inter¬
ests extended as far as the interests of the race
to which he belonged. He was, in the literal
sense of that expression, a man of the world.
By this I do not mean to suggest that he was
lacking in local or national patriotism. In fact,
Dr. Washington was in some respects a jingo. I
never have known a man who was so thoroughly
American in his tastes and in his sentiments. I
had a fair chance to discover this when I travel¬
ed across Europe with him some few summers
ago. I might add that I never met a man who
was a better southerner. I think Dr. Washing¬
ton liked and understood every man, black and
white, that lived in the South. He recognized
In The Press Of The Nation
57
the failings of the black man, as he did those of
the white, but he understood them, and it was
his unwavering ambition to make them under¬
stand each s£her.
Dr. Washington had plenty of human pre¬
judices toward other peoples, of whom he knew
less, but he made it a part of his life work to
understand the two races living side by side in
the South, and he had realized more fully than
any man I know the truth of the old French
adage, that "to understand all is to forgive all."
Dr. Washington's faith in the black man and the
white as he knew them in the South was not, as
I used to think it must be, an affectation. Neither
was it assumed as a matter of policy. It was
based on knowledge and it was genuine. It was
this breath of sympathy and understanding, in
my opinion, which was the basis of Dr. Washing¬
ton's power. It was this which made his speeches,
particularly when they were directed to south¬
ern audiences, so human and so heart-searching.
Personally, I can perhaps best express my
own indebtedness to Dr. Washington by saying
that I have known, in the course of a fairly busy
life, a good many prominent men; I have also
studied in a good many schools, both here and in
58
Booker T. Washington
Europe, but I have never been in a school in
which I learned more about life than I did at
Tuskegee and I have never known a man who
has had a more profound influence upon my fun¬
damental views of life than Booker T. Wash¬
ington. I might add, in conclusion, that I have
never witnessed a more impressive scene than
that of Booker T. Washington standing, as I
saw him a few years ago, on the porch of the old
mansion in which he had been a slave, telling
in his simple and affecting way a little group
of white and colored people, some of whom had
known him there as a boy, the story of his ad¬
ventures in the big outside world since he had
left them some forty-five years before.
In The Press Of The Nation
59
WASHINGTON KNOWN LEADER.
(Chicago Defender.)
Booker T. Washington was the most widely
known man his race has ever produced in this
country and its foremost educator. Born of a
slave mother into slavery, the fortunes of his
life led him to the White House, a guest of a
President at luncheon; to be entertained and re¬
ceived by Queens and Princes abroad; to have
Harvard and Dartmouth Universities confer
degrees upon him a record of achievement and
ability which is generally considered never to
have been equalled by one of his race.
It is with the Tuskegee Normal and Indus¬
trial Institute that Dr. Washington is most gen¬
erally associated. From its foundation in 1881
until his death he had been it's principal; under
his management and leading, this school for
Negroes has grown from a shack in which
thirty pupils gathered for lessons, to one of the
'largest and most munificently equipped normal
educational institutions in this country, where
60
Booker T.. Washington
more than 1,500 negro boys and girls, young
men and women, annually receive instruction.
But Dr. Washington's work was not con¬
fined to the administration of one school. Its
importance, it is generally acknowledged, lay
in his national leadership of his race. Into
practically every State of the Union the Negro
educator went, giving advice to his people,
spreading his influence, dealing with their prob¬
lems whatever they were.
In The Press Of The Nation
61
WASHINGTON TRUSTED BY ROOSEVELT.
(Chicago Defender.)
And his leadership of the Negro people was
such that it won the approval of a large major¬
ity of the white people regardless of section.
The auchor of several widely read books, Dr.
Washington was also noted as a lecturer and as
a speaker of unusual eloquence and ability.
In 1904 he accepted a luncheon invitation
extended to him by Theodore Roosevelt, then
President. The incident revived for a time much
of the old bitterness between the North and the
South. The South, fearing the effect it might
have upon its colored people, severely criticised
President Roosevelt for extending such an in¬
vitation and Dr. Washington for accepting it.
The North rushed to the defense of both and
criticism of the South.
Included in the number of Dr. Washing¬
ton's close personal friends may be mentioned
Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft,
Oswald Garrison Villard, President Kelsey of
the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, An¬
drew Carnegie, Jacob Schiff, Hamilton Wright
62
Booker T. Washington
Mabie, Robert Shaw Minturn, Felix M. War¬
burg.
He was a man of charming personality and
address, a deep thinker and a splendid business
man. He was deeply interested in the advance¬
ment of the race along all lines of useful en¬
deavor. In nearly all of his public addresses he
would advise our pepole, especially the young
men and women, to save their money, get an
education, buy a home and go into business.
This advice has been heeded by thousands of
our people.
It was Dr. Washington's belief that the
race would win social and political advancement
only after it had achieved economic independ¬
ence and stability. He held that time was bet¬
ter spent in demonstrating the capacity of the
black man in those callings that are now open
to him than in seeking opportunities in fields
where every factor was opposed to him.
This policy brought Dr. Washington into
conflict with many other leaders of the race, but
he maintained it from the beginning of his work
at Tuskegee. He was not less concerned with
the progress of our people than were those
with whom he could not agree as to methods.
Their dispute was over the means to be used,
not the end to be sought.
In The Press Of The Nation
63
WASHINGTON AN AUTHOR.
(Chicago Defender.)
Although his duties and responsibilities
were heavy and seemed to become more impor¬
tant year after year, Dr. Washington found
time to do much writing. As an author his
books, like his public addresses were, are all
highly interesting and instructive- Among his
most important published works are "Sowing
and Reaping," 1900; "Up from Slavery, 1901;
"Future of the American Negro," 1899; "Char¬
acter Building/' 1902; "The Story of My Life
and Work," 1903; "Working With Hands,"
1904; "Tuskegee and Its People," 1905; "Putting
Most Into Life," 1906; "Life of Frederick
Douglass," 1907; "The Negro in Business,"
1907; "The Story of the Negro," 1909; "My Lar¬
ger Education," 1911; and "The Man Farthest
Down," 1912.
He had many close personal friends among
the white people as well as among the members
of his own race. Of the former may be mention-
64
Booker T. Washington
ed such men as Theodore Roosevelt, William
Howard Taft, Oswald Garrison Villard, Presi¬
dent Kelsey of the Title Guarantee and Trust
company. Andrew Carnegie, Jacob Schiff,
Hamilton Wright Mabie, Robert Shaw Minturn,
Felix M. Warburg, William Jay Schieffelin, Dr.
N. D. Hillis, Seth Low, Governor Whitman,
Julius Rosenwald and many others of like note
and fame.
Speaking of Dr. Washington's great use¬
fulness and the loss the race and nation sustain
in his death, we might mention the following
expressions by a few men who knew the de¬
ceased educator intimately for many years. Mr,
Seth Low, chairman of the trustee board of the
Tuskegee Institute, said:
"Measured by the value of his services to
our country, I think Dr. Booker T. Washington
one of the greatest Americans of his generation.
He had done more, I believe, than any other
one man to bring about good relations between
the whites and the blacks of the South, and as
the leader of his own race he had been with¬
out a peer.
In The Press Of The Nation
65
EXCERPTS FROM ADDRESS
(By Dr. W. H. Moses.)
rpHE Washington spirit is revealed in his work.
He was a man of faith.
He believed in himself, believed in the
people and believed in God. He had the spirit
to do things when there was seemingly nothing
with which to do; the spirit that does things;
moves mountains, plucks up trees and plants
them in the seas. It is the spirit that realizes
the things hoped for before they materialize; a
kind of internal proof of the things not seen.
It was the spirit that moved him to go out in
search of learning not knowing whither he went.
By faith he was sustained under the side¬
walk on the way to Hampton.
By faith he swept and dusted a room and
opened for himself the door to the house of
knowledge, and was honored by the greatest
University of his country.
By faith he built Tuskegee, and revolution¬
ized the educational system of his day and drew
66
Booker T. Washington
educators to him from the utmost parts of the
earth for practical ideas.
By faith he built up the Negro Business
League and overcame business ostracism.
By faith he taught master and slave who
hated work to love it.
By faith he demonstrated that Negroes can
be born and bred, and live manly lives in the
South and be honored by all sorts of southern
people.
By faith he became socially efficient and
self-satisfied, and made kings and princes as
anxious for his company as he was f^r theirs.
By faith he made it more popular to serve
than to rule; more honorable to help feed, clothe,
house, clean and comfort Negroes in the back¬
woods of Alabama than to hold office in Wash¬
ington.
He was a man of hope.
He was supremely an optimist of the first
order. He looked on the bright side of life.
When others were abusing the South and curs¬
ing the white race he was using them. If a
Negro's home was burned he pointed out hund¬
reds of Negro homes being built by white men.
When others were blaming the lack of equal
In The Press Of The Nation
67
protection for the races under the law, he was
telling Negroes to make friends with the sheriff
and know the county Judge and keep out of
court. When others were worrying that the
white race was selfish and unsocial, he was re¬
joicing at the jokes passed between the white
and colored men in the stores and everywhere
the races worked or met. When others were
talking how far the races were apart, he was
pointing out how some white woman was minis¬
tering to her black sick sister and her children.
Other persons saw one mean white person, he
saw a thousand good white people. Others wor¬
ried about their rights being abridged, he wor¬
ried about not being able to live up to his op¬
portunities and priviliges. Others worried
about playing with the white people, he rejoiced
that we could work for the white people. Others
worried about place and position in the world,
he was pointing out that agriculture was a fine
art and never would be crowded. His race was
disfranchised, but he never lost hope. The race
was jim-crowed and segregated but he never
lost hope in the South or the race. He never
joined the calamity howlers at any time. I have
never seen an unkind word in print about any
68
Booker T. Washington
one from him in all these years when men tried
his soul.
He seems to have been absolutely free from
all envy. He could rejoice in the greatness and
attainments of all men everywhere. He made no,
pretense to technical scholarship, and yet he
never showed the least envy toward people who
were regarded as scholars. He rejoiced in their
attainments.
He was never boastful. He was honored by
everybody for more than a quarter of a century,
and he always wore his honors with becoming
modesty, true and graceful dignity. He never
talked about what he did or what he had ac¬
complished except in the most modest terms,
never acted boastful always humbly and lowly.
Never was conceited. Indeed he desipsed a
sham and vain show. He literally laughed the
conceited Negro leaders out of public life; he
knew how to detect the unreal and vain as few
people knew. He made it unpoplar to be
smart for the sake of smartness.
He never behaved unbecomingly. He seem¬
ed to know just what to do at the right time
under all circumstances. He made less public
blunders than any big man I ever heard of. He
In The Press Of The Nation
69
moved among all sorts of people with all shades
of belief, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and hund¬
reds of different denominations of Protestants,
free thinkers and infidels, but he always be¬
haved becomingly; without ever compromising
himself or offending others.
He never reckoned up his wrongs. People
wronged him time after time but you never
heard him mention them. He seemed to have
had the happy faculty of forgetting what people
did to him.
He never rejoiced in evil; but always re¬
joiced that it was no wTorse than it was. In short,
Mr. Washington was one of the highest type of
a Christian man America has .produced.
He was temperate in the use of stimulants,
clean in conversation and life; not a swearing
man; not showy but devout and regular in re¬
ligious life. He was a devoted student of God's
word; a member in good and regular standing
in the Missionary i3aptist Church, was an un¬
licensed lay preacher, took peculiar delight in
leading devotions in the college chapel at Tus-
kegee, his greatest speeches were predicated
upon great Scriptural texts. His life was model ¬
ed after Jesus Christ.
70
Booker T. Washington
WASHINGTON SOLVES NEGRO PROBLEM
(Chicago Defender.)
"pROBABLY, no man of this generation has
done more to solve the so-called "Negro
"problem" than Dr. Washington. It is no empty
statement to say that there is no American of
the present day whose life wiU have a more far-
reaching influence on generations yet unborn
than will that of Booker T. Washington.
Into a complex racial and unsatisfactory
industrial situation from which men were look¬
ing for an outlet along the old paths of politics
and agitation Booker T. Washington came with
his great message of work and economic inde¬
pendence as the best solution of the Negro
problem from the standpoint of black and white
alike.
He lived to realize that the answer had come
to that cheerful and practical message. The
impetus to industrial education, to home buying
and home owning, to a self-sufficient indsutrial
status which the institution at Tuskegee sup-
In The Press Of The Nation
71
plied under his direction has produced most im¬
portant results.
Not only Negroes but white men in the
South heard Booker T. Washington with re¬
spect. It was a stirring proof of his genius and
insight into the root of things that he evolved a
program which appealed to both races. Both
realized that it was for the best interests of
both—that it made not only for racial harmony
but for general material progress.
Thirty-four years ago in a "little old shanty"
which a good townsman of Tuskegee loaned for
the accommodation of his first class of twenty
students, the wizard and apostle of industrial
education humbly began the work which after¬
ward grew to the colossal proportions of one
hundred and fifteen perfectly equipped build¬
ings, surrounded by thirty-five hundred acres
of cultivated land, and three thousand enrolled
students.
It was not merely upon these material mani¬
festations of success and prosperity that the
chief value of Tuskegee Institute rests. The
larger measure of the value was the effect that
the training which the great educator sought
to impress upon the Negro race everywhere.
72
Booker T. Washington
His central aim was to make Tuskegee Institute
a model of Hampton, where he himself had re¬
ceived his early education. In speaking to a
great white audience at Tremont temple in Bos¬
ton, Mass., recently he said:
- "In our industrial teaching we keep three
things in mind: First, that the student shall be
so educated that he shall be enabled to meet
conditions as they exist now, in the part of the
South where he lives—in a word, to be able to
do the thing which the world wants done; sec¬
ond, that every student who is graduated from
the school shall have enough skill, coupled with
intelligence and moral character to enable him
to make a living for himself and others; third,
to send every graduate out feeling and knowing
that labor is dignified and beautiful—to make
each one love labor instead of trying to escape it.
That this ideal was steadily kept in view by
the wizard of Tuskegee and deeply impressed
upon the student body at the institute is borne
out by the statistical fact that only six students
of the nearly twenty thousand graduates were
ever charged with and convicted of a penal of¬
fense. Mr. Washington was in the highest sense
"a doer and not sayer of the work." He turned
In The Press Of The Nation
73
resolutely away from the theories and with
equal resolution faced lesser actualities. He al¬
ways sought the upbuilding of his race not by
propaganda and assertion of "rights" but on the
sound, solid and simple basis of industrial edu¬
cation. He always insisted that equality in a
social sense would take care of itself, beliving
that once the Negro had become a sound econ¬
omic unit, living in thrifty households, compell¬
ing self-respect and carrying on successful busi¬
ness enterprises, all else desired would logically
follow.
The vision in the end comes pretty nearly
around the circle to meet the vision of the more
radical thinkers. After all, the solid, unroman-
tic things of life, like prosperity and efficiency
even within a limited field, are the materials
which build respect for men among other men.
It was this practical way, too, rather than
in the extreme intellectual way that Dr. Wash¬
ington opposed the race lynchings which have
so long disgraced the South and part of the
North, including even our own state of Illinois.
He did not start out by bitter denunciation of
these tragedies, as well he might. On the con¬
trary, he attacked them through the cool and
74
Booker T. Washington
impersonal presentation of facts. He gathered
statistics of lynchings from year to year. He
analyzed their causes. He was the first to bring
to the general knowledge of the country that
these killings were not due entirely or even in
the majority, to the one "unfbrgfvable crime"
in Dixie.
Dr. Washington did the common sense thing
that was nearest to hand. He did it as a coal
miner fn West Virginia when he first heard of
the Hampton Institute which General S. C. Arm¬
strong had had the true statesmanship to found
to develop the freed Negroes into agriculturists
and teachers. Washington walked all the way
to Hampton, worked his way through college as
janitor, and then, when he had completed his
education, turned the Hampton idea into the
Tuskegee Institute.
Much as Mr. Washington did to fulfill his
ideal, his work had really but just begun. The
efforts and struggles of Mr. Washington were
not, however, unattended by "jibes and jabs"
from a radical element of Negroes who have
lately criticised this famous leader as "compro¬
miser.'" They have without hesitancy let it be
known that the Tuskegee influence was not sup-
In The Press Of The Nation
75
porting as they thought it should the downright
demand for "social equality." This group of
critics belonged, white and colored, to that class
who might be said to be spiritual heirs of the
extreme abolitionist. The antagonism was
muffled' on account of the great personal popu¬
larity of Dr. Washington.
76
Booker T. Washington
TELLING POINTS IN WASHINTON'S
CAREER
(Fraternal Informer.)
Aside from Dr. Booker T. Washington's
work as president of the Tuskegee Institute he
was an active worker in numerous business,
civic, religious and educational societies and con¬
ferences for bettering the conditions in the
South and the country at large for both races.
About fifteen years ago, after giving the
Subject the closest consideration, he decided
that the next best move outside of the school at
Tuskegee was the formation of an organization
to be composed solely of business men. Accord¬
ingly he issued a call early in the summer of 1900
for a meeting for the purpose mentioned, to be
held in Boston in August, 1900. There was a
generous response to this call by men and
women engaged in business or who contem¬
plated doing so. The outcome of the meeting
was the organization of what is now known as
the National Negro Business League, the fif-
In The Press Of The Nation
77
teenth anniversary of which was celebrated at
Boston for three days the third week in August.
He was the founder and promoter of the
Farmers' Conference, held in January of each
year at the Tuskegee institute; founder of the
Workers' Conference, held annually at Tuskegee
and the promoter of many other agencies for
uplift among the people of the rural districts of
Macon county, Alabama.
He was a great organizer, financier, busi¬
ness man and leading educator. For his persis¬
tence in advocating industrial education as a
foundation for further advancement he was
often referred to as the apostle of industrial
education. His annual tours of one or more
states gave him an opportunity to see and know
personally the conditions among the members of
his race few other public men of his character
and standing have knowledge in any section of
the country. He made friends for the race at
home and abroad and died beloved by his fellow
citizens throughout the United States.
78
Booker T. Washington
RACE PRIDE.
ROBERT R. MOTION
The following address was delivered at the close of the an¬
nual meeting of the National Business League held in Boston
in August 1915. It is the significant tirbute of one recognized
Negro leader to another—his life long friend and associate.—
The Editors
T^R. Washington has asked me to take three
^minutes in summing up and saying the "last
word" at this meeting. But it is very difficult to
sum up within three minutes the feelings and
emotions which have passed through our hearts
and minds during the past three days. But let
me say this: I have been impressed, as I have
been at previous meetings of the National Busi¬
ness League, with the earnestness, the sim¬
plicity, and the sincerity of those who have par¬
ticipated in the program and who have labored
so hard for the success of this gathering. My
friends, the one thing this League has done more
than any other institution or effort organized
among us is this—it has introduced the Negro to
himself. And I want to thank, on behalf of this
In The Press Of The Nation
79
body as well as our entire race, that modest un¬
assuming man, whose wisdon, whose foresight,
and whose genius in organizing have made this
League possible; and I might add also that this
Business League embodies and carries out in a
magnificent way, the beautiful life, character,
aspirations, and conduct of our beloved and
honored president.
Dr. Washington, at Symphony Hall the
other night, spoke most fittingly of Mr. Emmett
J. Scott, Secretary of the League, whom we all
know and revere, and who, like our leader and
in absolute harmony with his plans and pur¬
poses, works so patiently, modestly, and so ef¬
ficiently for the good of this League, for the
good of humanity in general, and to the honor
and glory of God. And we know that no man
ever worked with a loftier motive for the up¬
lift of our people, with more earnestness, with
more patience, with more unselfishness, or with
more efficiency, than is true of him whom we all
delight to honor—Dr. Booker T. Washington.
His spirit, his purposes, and his ideals,
dominate this splendid organization which has
achieved so much in a practical way for Negro
advancement, and is helping us to win, in our
several communities, the respect, the encourage¬
ment, and the friendship of our white neighbors.
80
Booker T. Washington
RENTIESVILLE AND THE WASHINGTON
IDEA.
(By Post Master B. C. Franklin.)
T) ENTIESVILLE—like most colored com-
-^munities—is a veritable plant bed in which
to sow, propagate and grow luxuriantly the
Booker T. Washington idea of education for the
masses of Colored people.
What is that idea, and what have we here to
aid in support of same are questions that natur¬
ally arise—out of the foregoing statement.
Succinctly stated, the Washington idea is
this: Industrial education for the masses of the
Colored people is primarily and imperatively
necessary as a means of increasing their earning
capacity—thus laying deep, broad and stable
foundation upon which they can rear their sup¬
erstructure, unafraid and without any thought
of a future collapse of their building. Mr. Wash¬
ington argued—and successfully, too—that a
young and weak people—to become strong, re¬
spectable and a necessity to the growth and well-
In The Press Of The Nation
81
being of its parent or adopted country—must
learn to produce more than it consumes, to save
more than it spends and to have, at all times,
something that the other fellow needs. There¬
fore to be able to do these things it must be
given such training that the hands and head
will work together in perfect harmony and ac¬
cord to this common end. He taught to be
"smart" and not serviceable and useful was
mischievous and dangerous. Hence, life's work.
He was so sure that he was right in this until he
made it a rule in the early life of his institution
that no student would be allowed to attend or
graduate from the school without learning some
useful trade. With oneness of aim and single¬
ness of purpose—never before equaled—sel-
domly approached—he prosecuted this idea. We
will never be able to measure the results of this
great man's efforts in this direction, because of
their multiplicity of beneficent ramifications.
His endeavors in his chosen field have been a
leaven "that has leavened the whole lump" of
industrial life throughout the entire nation. By
his magic touch labor assumed a new meaning
and soil-tilling became a pleasant and dignified
occupation.
82
Booker T. Washington
Mr. Washington—like all great men—was
grossly misunderstood in certain quarters.
Thoughtless, garrulous critics accused him of be¬
ing opposed to higher education. So far is this
from being true that his wife is a college grad¬
uate from Fisk University and seventy-five per
cent of the faculty of his school are university
graduates. He argued and reasoned that "the
more brains people have the better should be
the results of the hands." And too, his critics,
with the flippancy of an innocent girl just enter¬
ing her 'teens, says he was opposed to Negro
suffrage. But nowhere is such a foolish state¬
ment verified in any of his many speeches, or
elsewhere. The truth is, he came upon the stage
—timed by an All Wise Providence—to initiate
a certain work. He simply did what he was pre¬
destined to do; no more and no less. This is
what all great characters have done.
I have digressed thus far not because Mr.
Washington needs any defense at my hands, or
from any one else's. He did not believe in being
on the defensive. His great message to his peo¬
ple was "Get off the defensive by doing some¬
thing great and good that will put the world to
wondering how you did it." His living presence,
In The Press Of The Nation
83
in that vast and growing army of Tuskegeeites
found competing successfully in every line of
commercial and economic endevaor, is his glor¬
ious and undying vindication.
What have we here in Rentiesville for the
successful prosecution (on a smaller scale, of
course) of Mr. Washington's idea?
To begin with, we have a splendid three
story school building, with six spacious rooms.
We have nearly four hundred children of school
age. The teaching can, I think, be so arranged
as to give the entire ground space—two rooms
—over to industrial work. Domestic science—
pastry, cooking and sewing—could be carried on
in one of these rooms and wood-work in the
other. The equipment for these purposes, mea¬
ger to begin with, would not be hard to secure.
One or two sewing machines, one cook stove, a
few cooking utensils, about two saws, two
squares, a plane, sand paper, hammers and a few
other things would suffice to begin the work.
These—most of them—could be paid for on the
installment plan, some of them would be con¬
tributed by both white and black people, by sup¬
pers and otherwise.
One who understands the spirit of the age
84
Booker T. Washington
and is thoroughly imbued with it would regard
it an easy task to get these things together. The
industrial renaissance—so happily and timely
begun by the lamented Washington—makes in¬
dustrial education very popular indeed,—and its
advocates soon strike a popular chord that vi¬
brates throughout the community m which it is
touched. It is popular because of its overwhelm ¬
ing necessity for the masses. The community
iairs, the experiment stations, the corn clubs and
similar things are but the logical and immediate
results of industrial education, concretely put.
Industrial education makes for the rational up¬
lift and social betterment of a people, and the
thoughtful men of all races stand for that.
Hence, the work of the Southern Sociological
Congress, the Rockerfeller Foundation and simi¬
lar organizations with limitless resources for
social betterment work among all races. Com¬
menting upon the life work of Dr. Booker T.
Washington a few days ago, the Houston
(Texas) Post said, among other things: "Those
who have studied the race problem as we choose
to call it, need not be told that the uplifting of
the Negro race in the South is a matter that
concerns the white people of the South quite as
In The Press Of The Nation
85
much as it concerns the Negroes. There is a
mutuality of interest that is unquestionable and
indissoluble. The two races are living side by
side in the South never to be separated and they
must rise or fall together. The Southern white
people are ultimately to have as their neighbors
many million black people, ignorant, immoral,
criminal, inefficient, filthy, diseased and hopeless
or they are going to have as their neighbors a
Negro race that is intelligent, virtuous, efficient,
honest, patriotic and friendly. Intelligent men
and women know that the South needs the
latter."
And so it is; every thoughtful white man in
the South today is viewing the matter in the
light of the estimable Post. The state Agricul¬
tural colleges of Oklahoma and Texas show that
the Post is correct.
Rentiesville has a highly intelligent and ap¬
preciative citizenship that never fails to respond
under the touch of a popular move, a move which
(its needs giving testimony) makes for its ma¬
terial and spiritual betterment. A recent, and
living evidence of this fact is found in the com¬
munity fair pulled off here this year, under the
auspices of the Local Negro Business League,
86
Booker T. Washington
working in conjunction with the Government
demonstrator for this county, Mr. Rounsvell.
Under the matchless leadership of Prof. F. P.
Brison, Pres. of the League, the people—our
people, just outdid themselves. Ours was the
best community fair held in the county, accord¬
ing to an article in the county paper written by
the demonstrator himself.
All the lands in and around the town are either
owned by Colored people or those who are
friends of the race, hence effiorts to secure a
small farm for the school, either by lease or pur¬
chase, is minimized.
Another great advantage is this; the school
could soon, under the law be raised to a full-
fledged high school. The law in this connection
is substantially as follows: "An independent dis¬
trict is one including a town district which main¬
tains a four-year high school fully accredited by
the State University." If this was done it is evi¬
dent that the poorest parents could give their
children sufficient training to be able to make it
alone and unaided, provided of course the in¬
dustrial feature was carried on. Full ninety
per cent of the people are unable to send their
children off to a school and if they had the
In The Press Of The Nation
87
equipment above referred to there would be no
need to send them elsewhere to learn enough to
make it in the world.
If this was advanced from a majority to an
independent school district we would be able to
easily secure educational aid from the Slater
Fund, which is only available in connection with
high school work. It would too give us more
substantial aid from the Jeanes Fund, which,
tardy and belated, made its advent in this county
last year. If Mr. Dillard saw that we were try¬
ing to do something he would— as he has fre-
quetly done elsewhere—show us some special
favors. And after having become known it would
not be long before we would be able to draw
from the nine other funds specially set aside for
Negro education in the South. The county sup¬
erintendents, as a rule, do not know of all this
money being available for certain classes of
Negro schools in the South. Most of them, at
least ours is, are vitally interested in properly
educating the Negro youths of the state, but
they have not had the time to find out such as I
have just pointed out, and by the time they do
find it out, they are ready, as a rule to go out
of office. Hence, it is up to the Colored teacher
88
Booker T. Washington
to point out this fact to them, keep them advised
and co-operate with them in securing all the fin¬
ancial assistance possible in the educational
work of the Colored children. Our county sup¬
erintendent, a genial, warm hearted, broad, ap¬
proachable gentleman is now doing all he can
to make the Jeanes Funds a success in the
county, and he would do the same by the other
funds. It is plain, there is no escaping the fact
—that our children will grow up dwarfs, pig¬
mies and incapables when, and where the color¬
ed teachers are mercernary, indifferent, time-
servers and sinecures, and without the larger
vision, so essential to the doing of real construct¬
ive work. The teachers whose hearts beat in
harmony with the educational spirit of the age;
those who are thoroughly conversant with the
educational needs and requirements of the mod¬
ern Negro youth, those who thoroughly under¬
stand that there can be no wise and judicious
self-direction, no real self help and no "racial
consciousness" in the absence of opportunities
to efficiently pursue gainful occupations—I say
these teachers will so direct and stimulate the
educational efforts as to produce the very condi¬
tion which will make for healthy and normal
In The Press Of The Nation
89
growth of the children, and finally of the race.
Educational efforts here, therefore, must, in the
future, be along industrial lines if the greatest
good is to be realized. Book knowledge, alone
for our people, will not suffice. I have in mind
now many with just such knowledge who are
today idle, and the few who have the industrial
training are almost as. bad because the masses
have not been sufficiently trained along
economic and commercial lines to support and
furnish employment to them, or to take the
worthy ones into a partnership.
90
Booker T. Washington
DR. WASHINGTON URGES CO-OPERATION
BETWEEN BUSINESS MEN AND
FARMERS.
HIS LAST PUBLIC LETTER.
By authority of the Executive Committee of
the National Negro Business League, I am writ¬
ing to urge the officers and members to take ac¬
tive steps at once to arrange "Get-together
Meetings" with the farmers of their states and
communities. By carefully working out plans
in advance for these meetings great interest can
be aroused throughout the surrounding rural
communities and, in my opinion, much good ac¬
complished. Notice should be sent to the far¬
mers telling them of the coming of Local League
members, and acquainting them with the pur¬
poses of the visit. It is a better plan to use
buggies, carriages or automobiles than railroads
as these conveyances will permit wider areas to
be covered and more people reached. The pro¬
gram of these tours might include calling on
In The Press Of The Nation
91
individual farmers, speaking in churches and
schoolhouses, and visiting small country stores.
By co-operating with the farmers in this
manner, greater confidence may be established
between producer and merchant, mutual buying
and sellig methods adopted, and the volume of
business of the merchants increased. Another
way to bring about results through the Negro
Business League work is for the Local Negro
Business Leagues in cities not too far distant to
have joint meetings. For instance the Local
League at Tuskegee, Alabama, has recently held
joint meetings with the Local Leagues at Mont¬
gomery, Opelika and Union Springs, Alabama.
As the result of these joint meetings more help¬
ful business and trade relationship has been es¬
tablished between the business men of these sev¬
eral communities.
I very much hope that the Local Leagues
will take hold of these matters for by so doing
they will help the farmers solve their problems,;
and at the same time increase the business of
the colored merchants.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,
President National Negro Business League,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, Nov. 1, 1915.
92
Booker T. Washington
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
LITERARY DIGEST.
"VT 0 man, white or black, has been so success-
^ ful as Booker T. Washington in interpreting
one race to another. This is the tribute paid the
distinguished negro educator by Mr. Oswald G.
Villard; and Seth Low, the chairman of the
trustees of Tuskegee Institute, express the be¬
lief that in the death of Dr. Washington, which
occurred on November 14, the country has lost
a great man and the negro race a great leader.
Considering that Dr. Washington began life as
a slave, Mr/ Low feels that one can not fail to
marvel at his achievements. The work that he
began must be carried on, declares Mr. Low, and
no evidence of its usefulness is so strong as the
career of the negro educator himself. General
Armstrong, the head of the Hampton Institute,
is reported to have said that if Hampton had
done nothing else than produce Booker Wash¬
ington it would have justified itself and all the
money it had cost. His case illustrates, says
In The Press Of The Nation
93
Mr. Villard further, that "there is in the negro
a storehouse of ability and talent which will
be of infinite worth to the Republic if it can be
brought forward.'7
Booker Washington was born in the slave-
quarters of a plantation at Hale's Ford, Frank¬
lin County, Va. He was never certain what was
the year of his birth, whether 1858 or 1859. His
earliest recollection, he says, was waking at
night to hear his mother's voice in prayer for
the success of the Union arms and the liberation
of her people. His mother named him Booker,
but Washington was a name he adopted later
in life, and the T., standing for Taliaferro, was
taken in compliance with information as to his
paternity. When the war ended his mother
moved to West Virginia and married, the boy
going to work in a salt furnace, where the sten¬
ciled letters on barrel-heads furnished his first
elements of education. From the salt-furnace
he turned to work in a coal mine, and there
heard of Hampton Institute, where negroes
might be educated. The New York Tribune
prints this chapter of his early story:
"Booker Washington had at last found cer¬
tain information regarding his 'paradise.' Here
04
Booker T. Washington
was a place where negro men and women might
receive education and pay for it out of their
labors in the fields and shops.
"With renewed hope, the young man con¬
tinued his work, scraping together and sav¬
ing every cent he could. At last, poorly nourish¬
ed and worse clacl, with a bare handful of pain¬
fully treasured change in his pocket, he turned
his face east, and started from the small ham¬
let in West Virginia for Hampton.
"Part of the time he walked, pausing on the
way to do any odd jobs offered him. Sometimes
he was given a lift a few miles along his road.
Rarely he traveled by steam. Yet when he
reached Richmond he was weak ,hungry, and
penniless. He slept that night with a pile of
sand for a bed and a wooden sidewalk overhead
as his only shelter. The next morning, unfed,
he haunted the docks until he obtained a job.
For a week he labored there, returning at night
to his sand-bed beneath the sidewalk. When he
judged he had enough money he set out again
for Hampton.
"He reached the institution, worn, ragged,
and tired, with fifty cents in his pocket. The
teacher to whom he applied for admission looked
In The Press Of The Nation
95
at him doubtfully and then set him to sweeping
a classroom.
" 'I swept that room out four times,' Dr.
Washington said in after years, 'and then I
dusted it a half-dozen times more. When the
teacher returned she went over the woodwork
with her handkerchief and then said to me, "I
think you will do well in this school." '
"With his ideal of an education within his
grasp the young negro did not stop in his large
dreams for the future. With the first steps in
his personal advancement came the broader con¬
ception of an advancement and improvement for
his race."
Not less romantic is his subsequent career,
as the New York Sun rehearses it:
After being graduated he returned to his
old home in Virginia and taught school for a
while before he continued his studies at Way-
land Seminary, Washington, D. C. While at
Wayland he was invited to become a teacher at
Hampton and there remained for two years un¬
til, in 1881, the citizens of Tuskegee, Ala., ap¬
pealed to Gen. S. C . Armstrong for an institut¬
ion along the lines of the school at Hampton, an
institution which would develop negroes into
96
Booker T. Washington
useful citizens, teach them self-respect, give
them ability to support themselves, stir them
with proper ambition.
"Hundreds of persons were recommended
for the place as head of the new institute, many
of them much better known than Washington,
but he got the place. When he arrived at Tus-
kegee he found there had been no land or build¬
ings provided—that there was nothing, in fact,
except the promise of the State of Alabama to
pay $2,000 annually toward the expenses of the
school. But Mr. Washington went to work with
immense pride, tremendous energy, and optim¬
ism that never fagged for an instant.
"He began to teach in a small shanty, hav¬
ing one assistant only for the instruction of
thirty pupils. From that time on the growth
of the institution was phenomenal. Mr. Wash¬
ington began to send from Tuskegee a new sort
of negro, a youth who was of competent mind
and hand, who had self-respect, who had
been taught to make an adequate living, who
wanted to be a good citizen.
"Persons all over the country became in¬
terested in Tuskegee and the man who was mak¬
ing it famous. Gifts flowed in. Extensions be-
In The Press Of The Nation
97
came possible. Now Tuskegee possesses prop¬
erty worth $2,000,000 or more, uses fifty build¬
ings, which are on 3,000 acres of land. Annually
from 1,500 to 2,000 young negro men and women
are taught-how to make their lives count the
most for themselves, for their race, and for their
country.
"Mr. Washington first became a national
character in 1894, when he spoke for the negro
on the opening day of the Atlanta Exposition.
Previously he had acquired more or less local
fame as an orator, but on this accasion he was
hailed as the successor of Frederick Douglass
as the leader of the negroes. Thereafter he was
in great demand as a public speaker and ap¬
peared before many of the best-known organi¬
zations in the country.
"He was called into consultation by Presi¬
dent McKinley in regard to matters affecting
the negro. President Roosevelt admired him
highly and frequently consulted him. President
Taft recognized the keenness of his judgment
and his sincerity of purpose. Harvard gave him
a degree in 1896 and other colleges conferred
degrees upon him subsequently.
In estimating the probable permanency of
98
Booker T. Washington
Dr. Washington's work, both The Times and The
Evening World point to the fact that he was
"not the standard-bearer of a united race. While
he was the educational leader of his people, h$
did not, as The Evening Post observes, "speak
out on the things which the intellectual men of
the race deemed of far greater moment than
bricks and mortar, industrial education, or
business leagues—the matter of their social and
political liberties." He was silent, we are told,
"in the face of many a crying wrong and bitter
injustice, and more and more colored men came
to resent it." In his public addresses, however,
he argued that by labor and thrift the negro
would gain property, and thus win respect and
position. The Trmes declares that "there was
a multitude among the more ignorant who were
quite unable to understand either his motives or
his methods, who thought him timid, or even
treacherous, to the race, as to some of whose
wrongs, he was, of set purpose and deliberately,
silent. It is obvious that this feeling among his
fellow negroes was always a serious and painful
element in the work that Washington had set
himself to do." He was even accused of selling
the ngero's birthright for a mess of pottage.
Upon which point The Evening Post observes:
In The Press Of The Nation
99
"However he may have erred, the sum total
of the good he did far outweighs the rest. To
realize how much he achieved, one has only to
try to picture the situation as it would have been
in the South today without him. True, he
preached the gospel the South wished to hear,
because it suggested menial labor, but it was
a great thing to those who knew the attitude
of the South toward any education for the negro
in ante-bellum and post-bellum days to win it
for any form of training that involved books.
Some one must lay the foundations, and in
preaching industry, thrift, the acquisition of
property, correctness of life and bearing, and
sticking to the farm, Dr. Washington preached
the doctrine most needed by the bulk of the
colored people; for it is upon that foundation
of orderliness and good citizenship that the su¬
perstructure must be built without which the
negro can not come into his own. Other leaders
there are to speak for higher ideals and higher
aims toward which the evolution must be cer¬
tain if our American democracy is to be a true
democracy, and more and more such leaders will
arise. But in this hour of a great loss to both
races it is to be hoped that Dr. Washington's
100
Booker T. Washington
death will recall to the nation's attention, as
did his life, that there are great talents to be
found among the negroes, as there are certain
to be great negro contributions to our literature,
our science, our drama, our music, our arts, if
only we can bring ourselves to strike from the
limbs of Lincoln's freedman the shackles of ig¬
norance, oppression, prejudice, and injustice
with which the race that vaunts itself superior,
stills fetters them."
In The Press Op The Nation
101
DR. FRISSELL'S TRIBUTE.
(By Dr. Hollis B. Frissell, Principal Hampton Institute.)
fJ^HERE has passed from earth today one of
the most remarkable characters of our time
—the most distinguished graduate of the Hamp¬
ton School—Dr. Booker T. Washington.
I hope you are all familiar with "Up from
Slavery." That story has gone around the
world and has been translated into seven or
eight different languages. It is perhaps the
most wonderful autobiography of our time.
I have read tonight the roll call of the
heroes of faith, (Hebrews, chapter eleven.) I
think that Booker Washington fairly belongs
among these heroes—heroes of faith.
Do you know what faith is? It is the sub¬
stance of things not seen. The unseen things
become real. It is said that some of these en¬
dured seeing Him as invisible. That was true
of Dr. Washington.
102
Booker T. Washington
You remember the story of his early life.
There was an unseen thing that he wanted. It
was called "education." He did not know much
what it was. He only felt that was the thing
he wanted. He heard of Hampton where he
could get an education by the work of his hands.
So he started from the coal mines of West Vir¬
ginia and made his way to Richmond. There
his money gave out. He slept under the side¬
walks and loaded vessels in order to come to
the Hampton School. He came here. His coat
was covered with dirt from his labor in Rich¬
mond. He was not a very hopeful looking boy.
It was questioned as to whether he ought to
be admitted. His faith, his belief; and his ear¬
nest desire to have an education, kept him here.
He had faith that another Hampton could
be started down at Tuskegee. The call came to
him, just as real as it came to Abraham, to go
down to the Black Belt of Alabama. He heard
the call and he went.
He was all the time seeing the invisible,
seeing the other Hampton off down there among
those poor, ignorant people of Alabama.
In The Press Op The Nation 103
You remember how he started his brick¬
yard. He had almost no money. He did not
know much about making bricks. He started
the first kiln and it did not go. He tore it down
and started a second. He tried to make that go
and it did not. The money was all gone. Then
he took his watch and pawned it. He started a
third kiln and the third kiln went. He was a
man of faith. That faith made him do contin¬
uously the work that he had before him.
His life has been an inspiration to us all.
As we have seen him going on and doing greater
and still greater things, it has been a help to you,
to me, and to all of us; especially to this Negro
race.
We cannot begin to understand how much
Booker Washington's life has meant to the
Negro race all over the world. That a man of
that race should have the faith to start a great
enterprise, like the Tuskegee School, and then
should have had the power and endurance, day
by day, week by week, month by month, year
by year to push it to the place where it has come,
has been a very great help to the Negro race and
104
Booker T. Washington
to all of us that have had to do with that race.
We rejoice and thank God for Booker Washing¬
ton and his work.
I came to Hampton and found Booker
Washington teaching "the plucky class." There
were some things he wanted to learn of me.
Over to the house in which I still live he came,
and I gave him lessons. I am gratified for the
opportunity I had to teach him.
We were dwelling in our Sunday School les¬
son this morning, before I knew he was gone,
on Booker Washington and the fact that he did
difficult things; that he did not choose the easy
things. We talked about Daniel and how he pur¬
posed in his heart. We talked about Booker
Washington and how he purposed in his mind
to do, not the easy things but the difficult things.
When he might have gone, to Washington—for
he had great ability at speaking while here—he
might have become a politician and led a life of
ease. He went, however, to the Black Belt.
Like Moses he thought of the recompense
of the reward.
In The Press Of The Nation
105
Booker Washington gave up the possibilities
of the city to go back to those who needed him
most. He took up the kind of education that
was most unpopular—industrial education.
People despised it. They called Hampton a "Lit¬
erary Penitentiary." They thought we were
trying to lead Colored, people back into slavery
because we were trying to teach them to live
better—to have better homes, and better lands,
and better schools.
Booker Washington went down to the Black
Belt and started an industrial school. He did the
difficult thing. "He that loseth his life shall save
it and he that saveth his life shall lose it."
There is a French word "abandon," which
I like. It is the idea of giving up all you have
and going into a hard task. General Armstrong
threw himself and all he had into his work at
Hampton. Booker Washington loved General
Armstrong and followed him. He, too, had
"abandon." He gave his life for his people.
With all that,, there was that wonderful
kindliness. It was said about Daniel that God
gave him favor with those people. God gave
Booker Washington favor because he was
kindly. He had all sorts of persecutions, even
106
Booker T. Washington
some from his own race. It never made him
bitter, harsh, or unkind. Through it all he was
loving and faithful and kindly. He won favor
with his own race and with white men, North
and South.
He uttered those great words which I so
often repeat: "No man ,either white or black,
from North or South, shall drag me down so low
as to make me hate him."
The story of Dr. Washington's life will al¬
ways be an inspiration here at Hampton. He
loved this place. He often came back to it. He
served it in every possible way during his life.
Again and again he spoke for it. He believed in
Hampton.
Now God has called him away from this
great work to which he gave his life, and so far
as he followed the Master, each one of you must
follow him.
In The Press Of The Nation
107
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
(By William Moore.)
The heavens are aglow with sombre light,
The music of the sea is sacl and low,
And full the grieving of our souls bestow
The anguish of a dawn that yet is night:
A master soul has sought the marvel flight
That ends in that dim way where waters flow
Through lands of holy beauty where the woe
Of pain is not and God knows black nor white.
The years alone will tell the story true
Of this great life, for they alone can tell
How deep the fervor of his love, how blue
The skies he saw, how clear the fervent well
Of his emotions lay, we only knew
How strong he strove and when the hero fell.
Chicago, Illinois, Nov. 14, 1915.
108
Booker T. Washington
THE GRIM REAPER SUMMONS OUR BE¬
LOVED PRINCIPAL.
Principal Booker T. Washington died here at
Tuskegee Institute, Sunday morning, November
14, at 4:45 o'clock. He had suffered a nervous
breakdown in New York City the week previous.
Realizing his condition, he determined to
make the long trip South so that he might bear
out his oft-repeated statement that "he had been
born in the South, had lived in the South, and
expected to die in the South." He reached here
attended by Mrs. Washington; Mr. Hunt, travel¬
ing stenographer, and Dr. Kenney, Saturday
midnight and quietly passed away four hours
later. He left New York Friday afternoon, Nov¬
ember 13, at four o'clock on the New York, At¬
lanta and New Orleans Limited train.
Principal Washington had been in failing
health for several months prior to his death,
but the efforts of the Trustees and Officers of
the Tuskegee Institute to persuade him to take
a needed vacation went unheeded. During the
In The Press Of The Nation 109
month of September he spent a week on the
Mobile Bay as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Clar¬
ence W. Allen, fishing and resting, and appeared
to be greatly strengthened by the outing. His
reserve force was not equal, however, to the in¬
creasing burdens of carrying on the work of
Tuskegee and helping to shoulder the burdens
of the race.
On the 23rd of October he left here to attend
the annual meeting of the American Missionary
Association which was held in conjunction with
the National Conference of Congregational
Churches in New Haven, Connecticut, and on
the evening of October 25th, spoke before this
meeting in Woolsey Hall, Yale University. This
was his last public appearance.
So marked was his decline and so frequent
the return of the nervous headaches which were
sapping his vitality, that Hon. Seth Low, Mr.
William G. Wilcox, and Mr. Frank Trumball,
prominent New York members of the Institute
Board of Trustees, finally persuaded him to go
to St. Luke Hospital, New York City, for
examination and treatment. In an interview
with newspaper reporters, Dr. W. A. Bastedo,
the expert selected by the Trustees, said he "was
110
Booker T. Washington
completely worn out, and in addition was suffer¬
ing from nervous exhaustion and arterio-
schlerosis."
As soon as the announcement of his death
had been telegraphed to the Associated Press,
telegrams began to pour into Tuskegee from
every section of the country—North, South,
East and West joining in one united tribute of
regret.
Arrangements were at once made for the
funeral services to be held Wednesday, Nov-
vember 17.
REMARKS OF SECRETARY SCOTT AT THE FUNERAL.
At the funeral the only words spoken, aside
from the officiating ministers, were the follow¬
ing remarks by Mr. Scott, Secretary, prefacing
the reading of Mr. Low's telegram, and Mr. Wil¬
cox's message from the Board of Trustees.
Mr. Scott said:
"In obedience to Mr. Washington's wishes,
.and in response to his specific request, we have
kept these exercises absolutely simple,—just as
he would have us keep them. We here have felt
that this day is a day too sacred to have even an
eulogy imposed upon it. We here have felt, as
In The Press Of The Nation
111
was said of Sir Christopher Wren, one of the
earliest and greatest of English architects: 'If
you would find his monument, look about you'—
at these buildings and grounds, at this out-pour¬
ing of love, this tribute of affection and respect.
"Literally, from the ends of the continent
there have come to cheer the wife and the child¬
ren and those of us who have labored here with
him, hundreds of messages testifying to a na¬
tion's loss, to the loss which has befallen a race.
"His wife, and Mr. Logan, Vice-Principal of
the institution, and others of us, have felt that
from the great sheaf of messages which have
come here, the one from the Chairman of the
Board of Trustees, Mr. Low, who is prevented
from being here today, should at least be read;
it is not our purpose to read one single other
one, aside from Mr. Low's; and then to have a
message from the Board of Trustees brought
by Mr. Willian G. Wilcox, of New York City,
who, with Dr. Schieffelin, has journeyed all the
long way from New York City to mourn with
us today."
HIS FAVORITE NEGRO FOLK SONGS SUNG.
The line of march formed in front of the
administration building, headed by the board of
112
Booker T. Washington
trustees, including William G. Wilcox of New
York City; W. W. Campbell and Charles W.
Hare, Tuskegee; A. P. Wilborn, William T.
Schieffel, New York; Belton Gilreath, Birming¬
ham, Ala.; Frank Trumbull, New York; Warren
Logan, Tuskegee Institute, and Victor H. Tu-
lane, Montgomery, Ala. The Trustees were fol¬
lowed by members of the faculty and the ex¬
ecutive council of the school and a number of
distinguished editors, educators and students.
The simple Episcopal burial service was read
and many old plantation songs, which Dr. Wash¬
ington loved so well, were sung. Thousands of
telegrams of condolence from all parts of the
country also were read.
Among those attending the funeral were
Charles Banks, Mound Bayou, Miss., first vice-
president of the National Negro Business
League; J. C. Napier, Nashville, chairman ex¬
ecutive committee National Business League;
Dr. R. H. Boyd, secretary National Baptist Pub¬
lishing Board, Nashville; Ira T. Bryant, secre¬
tary A. M. E. Sunday School Union, Nashville;
W. H. Hale, president A. I. Normal School of
Tennessee; Dr. James B. Dudley, president of
the N. C. A. & T. College, Greensboro, N. C.;
MR. WASHINGTON TAK1ING HIS MORNING RECREATION.
In The Press Of The Nation
113
Dr. Stephen H. Newman, president and George
Williams Cook, secretary Howard University,
Washington, D. C., and many other noted Negro
educators.
PRAYER BY DR. H. B. FRISSELL, PRIN¬
CIPAL OF THE HAMPTON INSTITUTE.
HP HANKS be to God who giveth us the victory.
Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in
all generations. Before the mountains were
brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the
earth or sun, even from everlasting to ever¬
lasting thou art God. Thou art our Father and
we Thy children. Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.
We thank thee that all things work together for
good to them that love God. We thank thee to¬
day for Christ our Master. That though he
was in the form of God, he humbled himself
and took upon him the form of a servant and
was made obedient until death, even the death
on the Cross. We thank thee for his life of ser¬
vice, that he went about doing good; that he
healed the sick, that he gave sight to the blind,
114
Booker T. Washington
that he made the lame to walk. And we thank
thee for all the saints who from their labors
rest, who have followed in his footsteps and
have done his work. We thank thee for thy ser¬
vant whom thous hast called home, for his life
of faith. That he endured as seeing him who is
invisible. That like thy servants of old who
chose to share ill treatment with the people of
God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for
a season. That he counted the reproach of
Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt. That he looked unto the recompense of
the reward. We thank thee for the life of love
that he lived, that no man, white or black, or
North or South, could drag him down so low
as to make him hate him. And that he taught
men everywhere to love one anpther. That he
preached the gospel of peace and good will. We
thank thee for his life of meekness, that his life
was one of humility; that he did not think of
himself more highly than he ought to think.
And we thank thee for the inheritance that
was his because of his meekness. We thank
thee that he did inherit the earth. For his loving
friends, for his devoted school. We thank thee
for his life of service; that he made blind men to
In The Press Of The Nation 115
see; that he, like his Master, made lame men to
walk; that he, too, brought liberty to the cap¬
tives. We thank thee for the thousands of bet¬
ter homes and farms that he made possible. We
thank thee for the thousands of purer and bet¬
ter lives which he helped to create. And now we
ask thy blessing on thy handmaiden to whom
thou hast sent this great affliction. We thank
thee that thou hast given to her these years of
service with him. We pray for the blessings
upon the sons and the daughter and the grand¬
children. We pray thee for the officers and co¬
workers in this great institution, and for the
pupils of the school, and for the thousands who
have gone out from this place who today mourn
the loss of a father and a friend. And now we
dedicate ourselves anew to the work to which
thy servant gave his life. Help us to realize
the high and holy calling that was his and is
ours. Help us that we may carry on the work
to which he gave his life. Support us all the
day long of this troublous life until the shadows
lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy
world is hushed and the fever of life is over
and our work is done, then in thy mercy grant
116
Booker T. Washington
us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace
last with Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
No more beautiful prayer has ever been
offered here than Dr. FrisselPs touching sup¬
plication for guidance in the hour of gloom
which envelopes the Tuskegee Institute com¬
munity.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON NO MORE,
fUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALA., Nov. 17.—
The funeral of Dr. Booker T. Washington
took place at Tuskegee, beginning promptly at
10 o'clock as announced. At the time of the be¬
ginning of the services, the large and spacious
auditorium had already been filled to overflow¬
ing and by the time the exercises were
well underway, fully seven thousand pepole
jammed every available standing place, window
corners inside and out. Outside nearby, upward
of three thousand more were on the ground to
be present at the funeral.
The exercises were in keeping with the life
and example of Dr. Washington, simple, un¬
ostentatious, solemn and most touching. Back
In The Press Of The Nation 117
of the casket there was a perfect sea of flowers,
the contribution of friends and of institutions
all over the United States.
The solemnity of the occasion was intensi¬
fied by the beautiful simplicity of the ceremony.
There was invocation; there was song. Then
words were spoken by Mr. William G. Wilcox, of
New York, treasurer of the Investment Com¬
mittee of Tuskegee Institute. There was no
other speaking. Then followed a beautiful
requiem from the Tuskegee chorus most touch-
ingly rendered. Then, there was short prayer
and without further notice the "casket was roll¬
ed from the auditorium to the left side of the
building outside where the body of the great
was interred. A3 the casket was being lowered
into the ground, the bugler of the Tuskegee
cadets sounded "taps" and the old men and
young, strong men and distinguished, all alike
were baptized in tears.
There were distinguished colored men from
all over the United States who had traveled to
be present at the funeral; from Boston, Chi¬
cago, Kansas City and Washington, D. C., and
large delegations from principal cities through¬
out the South came to see the last of the race's
118
Booker T. Washington
distinguished leader. Never before in the his¬
tory of the Negro race has there ever assembled
as many distinguished Negroes from all walks
of life on an occasion like this or any other oc¬
casion. Dr. Washington's entire family was
present. Children, and grandchildren, wife and
brothers and relatives were all there. The
Negroes from all over the country seemed to
have realized that their chiefest spokesman and
most remarkable man had fallen into endless
sleep.
Everywhere you could see under trees and
beside buildings old men and young, old women
and girls, wealthy and poor, learned and illiter¬
ates, all bowing their heads in a common sor¬
row and all shaken by a common, unutterable
grief. The scene beggars description, and the
distinguished leader was literally lowered into
the ground amid the heartaches and lamenta¬
tions of his entire people. It would seem that
Tuskegee has become the first love of the black
folk of the country. From every side you could
hear expressions from men in all walks of life
and from all sections of our country consecrat¬
ing themselves to the everlasting care and
thought and interest of Tuskegee Institute.
In The Press Of The Nation
.119
The words of Treasurer William G. Wil¬
cox, one of the wealthiest and most distinguish¬
ed men of New York City, were beautiful in
their simplicity and touched every heart. No
one else spoke. Mr. Wilcox was accompanied
on the trip from New York by Dr. William J.
Schieffelin. Mr. Wilcox spoke as follows:
"Dr. Schieffelin and I have come to you not
only to bring the heartfelt sympathy of our
board of trustees, which Mr. Low has so beauti¬
fully expressed in his telegram, not only to join
with you in this loving tribute "to a personal
friend, but to assure you of the absolute con¬
fidence of the trustees of the Institute in the
future of its growth and usefulness.
"This is no time for a eulogy of Dr. Wash¬
ington's life and work. The future will fairly
estimate its value and will gratefully accord
to him a high place among the truly great men
of our beloved country. You who have so
splendidly upheld his hands and without whose
loyal and unselfish co-operation his great work
never could have been accomplished, may well
feel a solemn pride in the public appreciation
which is even now voiced throughout the entire
land. But today our hearts are full of our own
120
Booker T. Washington
great loss, and as we clasp each other's hands
in sympathy, we wonder and perchance rebel
at the strange dispensation which has taken
from us our beloved leader, whom to our finite
eyes seemed so indispensable, and when we had
reasonably looked forward to another twenty
years of his wise and forceful leadership. We
are tempted-to say to ourselves, how is it pos¬
sible that the work should go on without him?
"Let us take courage and look to the future
with absolute confidence and faith. The great
work to which Dr. Washington devoted his life
is firmly established in the confidence of both
races. It can not go backward. It must and
shall go forward. In the forward march of civ¬
ilization it often happens that a great leader
arises and bearing the standard presses forward
with his enthusiastic followers, storming one
stronghold after another—ignorance and pre¬
judice and injustice; but when he fails and the
colors drop from his hands, even while his sor¬
rowing friends are hesitating and perhaps wav¬
ering, a new leader takes his place and carries
forward the triumphant banner to new achieve¬
ments and victories.
"In the providence of God we must believe
In The Press Of The Nation
121
that Dr. Washington's great work was finished
and that in His infinite wisdom, the time had
come when the inspiration of Dr. Washington's
death and the increased responsibilities which
must now be felt so keenly by all of us who are
left behind, may do more for the progress of his
high ideals than many added years on his per¬
sonal work and leadership could have accomp¬
lished.
"Let us take heart and press forward, there¬
fore with fresh courage and enthusiasm and
with a high resolve to prove worthy of the great
trust which now falls upon our shoulders. In
the work before us, the cause is everything; the
individual is nothing. There is no room for per¬
sonal ambition, jealousy or factional difference.
The crisis demands, as never before, unselfish,
disinterested and loyal co-operation. The
trustees will not fail you and they know you
will not fail them, and together we shall carry
forward the great work for the institute and for
the entire colored race. This new bond of sym¬
pathy will draw the two races together more
closely than ever before. With his simplicity of
nature, modesty and humility, few could care
less than Dr. Washington for any mere personal
122
Booker T. Washington
monument or memorial. With his enthusiasm
and confidence and pride in the progress of his
people, few could care more than he for a mem¬
orial expressed in increased devotion and loyal¬
ty to his great cause. If we would show our ap¬
preciation of his life and honor his memory as
he himself would wish, we shall make his death
the occasion for renewed consecration to the
high ideals of which his life was such an ex¬
ample and in which his memory will be such an
inspiration. This new bond of sympathy will
draw the two races more closely together than
ever before and friends of both races will re¬
double their interest and support."
In The Press Of The Nation
123
TELEGRAMS OF CONSOLATION.
WILLIAM H. TAFT, Former President of U. S.
New Haven, Conn.,
November 16,1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Please convey to the family of Booker T.
Washington my deep sympathy in their sorrow.
His death is, in what ought to be his prime, an
irretrievable loss to the nation. He was one of
the powerful forces for the proper settlement
of the race question that has appeared in his
generation. His loving candor to his fellow
Negroes, his inspiring encouragement to make
themselves individually valuable to the commun¬
ity; his urging upon the homely virtues of in¬
dustry, thrift and persistent use of their oppor¬
tunities, with a promise of higher achievements
as a reward have done more for the Negro race
than any other one factor in their progress. I
knew Booker T. Washington well and valued
him highly as a friend and a patriot. He united
with a signal power of eloquence and great in¬
tellectual force and practical executive faculty
124
Booker T. Washington
a saving common sense which made him the
great man he was. I greatly regret his death.
WILLIAM H. TAFT.
JAMBS L. SIBLEY, Ala State Rural School Supervisor,
Montgomery, Alabama,
November 15, 1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Was greatly shocked to learn of Dr. Wash¬
ington's death. Tuskegee's grief will be shared
by the entire State.
JAMES L. SIBLEY.
KELLY MILLER, Howard University Dean.
Washington, D. C.,
November 14,1915.
Mrs. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Am shocked beyond expression at death of
Dr. Washington. The human race will feel
the loss.
KELLY MILLER.
In The-Press Of The Nation
125
FRANK B. WILLIS, Governor of Ohio.
Columbus, Ohio.
November 15,1915.
Dr, W. S. Scarborough,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Please convey to family of Dr. Booker T.
Washington the deep sympathy of the people
of Ohio in their hour of sorrow. Solace should
be found in the memory of his heroic life so in¬
spiring to men of all races. Booker T. Wash¬
ington was a great American. A nation mourns
his loss.
FRANK B. WILLIS.
GEO. A. CARSON, Governor of Colorado.
Denver, Colorado,
November 16,1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
I offer my heartfelt sympathy in this time
of your great bereavement, and hope the mem¬
ory of your husband's noble character and great
achievement in his chosen life work will lighten
and make more bearable the heavy burden of
vour grief.
GEO. A. CARSON,
Governor..
126
Booker T. Washington
CHAS. A WICKERSHAM, R. R. President.
Atlanta, Ga.,
November 15, 1915.
E. J. Scott, Secretary,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Am shocked to learn of Dr. Washington's
death. He appreciated the necessity of indus¬
trial education to his race, and his success is
reflected in part in the splendid institution he
founded at Tuskegee which will forever stand as
a monument to his efforts.
CHAS. A. WICKERSHAM.
S. B. McCORMICK, Chancellor, University of Pittsburg.
Pittsburg, Penn.,
November 15, 1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
In behalf of Chancellor and Faculty, Univer¬
sity of Pittsburg, I extend very sincere sym¬
pathy to yourself and family and Mr. Washing¬
ton's associates at Tuskegee. He was a good
friend and wise counsellor of his race and his
death is the nation's loss. His remarkable life
service is his enduring monument.
S. B. McCORMICK,
(Chancellor, University of Pittsburg.)
In The Press Of The Nation
127
J. Y. JOINER, N. C. State Sup't Public Instruction.
Raleigh, N. C.,
November 15, 1915
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
I beg to express my sympathy and sorrow at
the death of Dr Washington. His death is a
great loss to both races and to the cause of
education in the South and the nation.
J. Y. JOINER,
CHAS. STAKELY, Montgomery (White) Pastor.
Montgomery Alabama.
November, 15 ,1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Your distinguished husband in serving the
race well has served all races. We share in the
universal sorrow over his death.
CHAS. STAKELY, D. D.
GEO. McANENY, President N. Y City Alderman.
New York City,
November 14, 1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Secertary,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Received your message with profound grief,
My personal sympathy with you in the loss of
your chief. GEORGE McANENY.
128
Booker T. Washington
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. Jr.
Hot Springs, Va.,
November 17, 1915.
Mrs. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Mrs. Rockefeller and I mourn with you and
his host of friends the world over the sudden
ending of the life of your husband. Although
still a young man his life has been so filled with
service to his fellowmen "that you can feel that
his work has been finished. Be assured of our
deep sympathy.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, Jr.
Washington, D. C.,
November 16, 1915.
Mrs. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Learned since my arrival of death of your
distinguished husband. The South as well as
nation mourns the loss of a great man. He had
won the confidence of our people and no man
since the Civil War did more to create harmon¬
ious relations between the races. Accept my
sincerest sympathy.
EMMETT O'NEAL.
Former Governor of Alabama,
MR. WASHINGTON SPEAKING TO TEN THOUSAND OF TITS PEOPLE IN MISSISSIPPI
WARNING THEM OF THE FUTURE.
In The Press Of The Nation
129
ANSON PHELPS STOKES, Sect'y Yale University.
New Haven, Conn.,
November 16, 1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington.
Tuskegee, Alabama.
I send you my deepest sympathy in your
sorrow. I had a very high regard for your
husband and feel that he did a constructive work
of the greatest importance for our country. I
am exceedingly sorry that I cannot, personally
attend the funeral. I have asked Dr. Thomas
Jesse Jones to go as representative of the Phelps
Stokes Fund.
ANSON PHELPS STOKES.
DR. E. C. MORRIS, President of the Biggest Negro Organization
In the World.
Helena, Arkansas,_
November 15, 1915.
Mrs. B. T, Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Dear Madam: I am shocked beyond ex¬
pression at the intelligence of the death of Dr.
Washington. His death is a national calamity.
Our race will feel it most keenly. A good and
great man has fallen.
E. C. MORRIS.
130
Booker T. Washington
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.
Lakewood, N. J.,
November 15, 1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
I learn with sorrow of the death of Dr.
Washington. Be assured of my sympathy for
you in this sudden and sad bereavement. He
rendered invaluable services to his race in a life
devoted to their uplift and he was the most
highly appreciated by multitudes of the best
people in the land. He will be greatly missed
and his memory will be cherished with grate¬
ful affection for generations to come.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER.
I. GARLAND PENN, Field Sec-t'y M. E. Church
Austin, Texas,
November 15, 1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Extend to Mrs. Washington my sincere sym¬
pathy in this sad hour. I feel keenly Qur loss.
I regarded Dr. Washington the safest, the san¬
est, the most tactful and wisest leader the race
has had since emancipation. He was a man of
vision.
I. GARLAND PENN,
In The Press Of The Nation
131
CHAS. BANKS, Vice-Pres. N. N. B. L.
Mound Bayou, Miss.,
November 14,1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
With the entire race I am bowed in mourn¬
ing—the loss of the greatest man the race has
produced in any epoch. One of America's fore¬
most citizens, regardless of race. The peer of
any educator in any clime. Convey to Mrs.
Washington and the bereaved family my deep¬
est sympathy.
CHARLES BANKS.
JULIUS EOSENWALD, President Sears & Roebuck Co.
New York City,
November 14,1915.
Mrs. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
My heart is too sad to attempt words of con¬
solation for you in your and our country's great
loss. One of our noblest and foremost citizens
has passed to his reward. The service he has
rendered his fellowmen will live forever. Mrs.
Rosenwald joins me in the hope that you will
bear up under this terrible affliction.
JULIUS ROSENWALD,
132
Booker T. Washington
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
Oyster Bay, New York,
November 14,1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Pray accept my deepest sympathy in the
death of your distinguished husband. No man
rendered greater service to his race, and his
loss cannot be supplied. He was one of the
citizens of whom this entire country should be
proud. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
CAROLINE HAZARD, Former President Wellesley College
Peace Dale, Rhode Island,
November 16, 1915.
Mrs. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Deepest sympathy in your loss. A loss to
the whole country. CAROLINE HAZARD.
CHAS. W. FAIRBANKS, Former Vice-Pres. of U. S.
French Lick, Indiana,
November 14,1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
Mr. Washington was a man of great power
and of wide and wholesome influence, not only
among his own race but among other races. His
death is distinctly a public loss.
CHAS. W. FAIRBANKS.
In The Press Of The Nation
133
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
New York, N. Y.,
November 15, 1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
I mourn with you today as one who shares
your sorrow. America has lost one of her best
and greatest citizens. History is to tell of two
Washingtons: One the Father of his country,
the other the leader of his race. Mrs. Carnegie
joins me in deep sympathy.
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
BISHOP B. F. LEE, President Wilberforce University
Paris, Illinois,
November 15, 1915.
Mrs. B. T. Washington,
Tuskegee, Alabama.
My dear Mrs. Washington: Speaking for the
African Methodist Episcopal Church let me as¬
sure the race, the country, the world mourns and
sympathizes with you because of the loss of your
illustrious and beloved husband. Our prayers
go up for you, the fatherless children, Tuskegee
Institute and the cause of the Negroes, educa¬
tion and refinement.
BISHOP B. F. LEE, Wilberforce, Ohio.
134
Booker T. Washington
FRANK TRUMBULL, R. R. President.
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
November 15, 1915.
Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary,
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
It was very thoughtful to telegraph me di¬
rectly. Of course I am greatly shocked. This
is an overwhelming bereavement for all of us.
Please convey my sympathy to Mrs. Washing¬
ton. I hope to see Mr. Low and Mr. Wilcox in
New York this week.
FRANK TRUMBULL.
In The Press OF The Nation
135
EXPRESSIONS FROM PROMINENT
CITIZENS,
The Rev. D. P. Roberts, Pastor of Bethel
A. M. E. Church—Mr. Washington's work was
an expression of the character of the man. I
believe he was one of the greatest characters
in America, and decidedly the greatest of our
race. As an educator he had no equal among
our people and his place will be decidedly dif¬
ficult to fill.
H. L. Sanders, Merchant and Manufact¬
urer—Mr. Washington was the greatest man
of our race; he had done more good for our
people than any other man. ..
James N. Shelton, Undertaker—I think
Mr. Washington was one of the greatest men
that ever lived. Our race has lost its greatest
asset.
136
Booker T. Washington
J. H. Lott, Attorney—As an educator Mr.
Washington was the greatest man the colored
race has produced, and, in fact among the
greatest any nation ever produced. His sys¬
tem of education is the only system that can
solve the race problem.
GOVERNOR WALSH of Massachusetts.
Governor Walsh said:
"I regret to learn of Booker T. Washing¬
ton's death. He was the leader of a great move¬
ment for the educational advancement of the
Negro race, and was a great contributor to the
progress and advancement of a race of people
who 50 years ago were in bondage. No member
of the colored race has done more to break down
the barrier of human prejudice between black
and white. The country, and the colored people
particularly, suffer a great loss in his death at
this time in his life."
William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., said:
"In the death of Booker T. Washington the
country loses one of its profound educators, as
well as one of its most powerful evangelists of
In The Press Of The Nation
137
human service. His viewpoint was ever ration¬
al, but radiant, his methods practical but in¬
spired, his achievements extraordinary, whether
measured by the notable educational institu¬
tions which he founded and developed, or by
the indelible impression made by an ex-slave up¬
on the contemporary mind and imagination of
America.
"The South will miss his sane and persis¬
tent constructive force. The North and South
will both be the poorer in the passing of a con¬
ciliator who was also born an optimist.'
The Rev. Dr. Herbert S. Johnson, pastor of
the Warren Avenue Baptist church, said:
"The death of Booker T. Washington con¬
stitutes a great loss to the colored race. Dr.
Washington was the leading man of his race,
and did more for the uplift of the colored man
than any other. His work was not always ap¬
preciated by his own race, but he demonstrated
his ability as a speaker, student and adminis¬
trator in no uncertain terms to the people of
this country."
138
Booker T. Washington
The Rev. Aaron W. Puller, pastor of the
Peopled Baptist church, said:
"The death of Dr. Washington is an in¬
ternational and an inter-racial loss. He con¬
verted his obstacles and hindrances into ve¬
hicles and wings that carried him irresistibly
toward the goal of his ambition, the betterment
of the condition of his race.
"Dr. Washington was not a man of one idea,
as he has been sometimes styled. Deprived cf a
college education he was one of the best read
and broadest-minded scholars with whom I
have ever talked.
"He was, in my humble mind, the God-made
golden link between the white and black races in
this country. He pleaded the cause of our race
and people before the bar of public opinion for
nearly 35 years, and yet during that time he
never gave offense to North or South."
Attorney Butler R. Wilson said:
"In many ways Mr. Washington was easily
the most distinguished man of the South, and
this in spite of all the inheritance of slavery
and all the handicaps of race prejudice. He was
In The Press Of The Nation 139
in turn subjected to the fiercest criticism and
given adulation approaching hero worship by
the two extreme wings of the colored people, the
first refusing to follow him or forgive him for
abandoning the insistence upon political rights;
the second believing in the propaganda of pro¬
perty acquisition and the fight along the line of
least resistance to get it.
"To a third group, the great body of in¬
telligent colored people not wholly in sympathy
with either of the extremists, Mr. Washington's
death "will come as a great calamity."
Tuskegee Trustees Praise Washington— Seth
Low Declares Dead Educator One of the
Greatest Men of His Generation.
At his home in Mount Kisco last night
Seth Low, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
of Tuskegee Institute, said of Booker T. Wash¬
ington :
"Measured by the value of his service to
our country, I think Dr. Booker T. Washington
one of the greatest Americans of his generation.
He has done more, I believe, than any other one
140
Booker T. Washington
man to bring about good relations between the
whites and the blacks of the South, and as the
leader of his own race he has been without a
peer.
"His death does not come as a total sur¬
prise to me. I saw him in St. Luke's Hospital on
Thursday last and realized that he had not long
to live. The trustees of Tuskegee have not
given any consideration to the naming of a man
as his successor in that work."
"William G. Wilcox, a trustee and Treas¬
urer of Tuskegee, said to The World at his home
at No. 166 Davis avenue, West New Brighton,
Staten Island, last night.
"Dr. Washington's death is a national
calamity. He has been a leader in establishing
harmonious and helpful relations between the
white and black races, and also a leader in pro¬
moting the industrial development of his own
people in a way which, while beneficial to them,
is of the utmost significance and far reaching
benefit to his country.
"I feel that in industrially developing his
own people he has set the pace for the indus¬
trial development of white children, a subject
which is now attracting so much attention
In The Press Of The Nation
141
throughout the white schools of the country.
The whole nation owes a great deal to him.
"Of course, knowing the condition of his
health, there has been some discussion among
the trustees as to his successor. I care to say
nothing about that at present except that the
man to succeed him will be, if I have any voice in
the matter, a colored man.
Edward Davidson Washington, the youngest
son of Dr. Washington, left New York for Tus-
kegee yesterday afternoon.
At Oyster Bay last night Col. Roosevelt
said of Dr.. Washington:
"He was one of the distinguished citizens
of the United States, a man who rendered
greater service to his own race than had ever
been rendered by any one else and who, in so do¬
ing, also rendered great service to the whole
country. I mourn his loss and feel that one of
the most useful citizens of our land has gone.
UNIVERSITY HEAD LIKENS WASHING¬
TON UNTO ABE LINCOLN.
HARRY PRATT JT.TDRON, President University of Chicago.
As a benefactor of the Negro race in this
country Booker T. Washington can be compared
.142
Booker T. Washington
only with Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln led them
to freedom from the bondage of oppression
which, by their own exertions they could win;
freedom from indolence, ignorance and poverty.
Freedom in itself by no means guarantees hap¬
piness, prosperity or usefulness. It merely
leaves the individual free to work out his own
future, and what it is depends more upon him¬
self than on environing circumstances.
Washington saw clearly that the primary
need'of the freed Negroes was to learn the
habits of sobriety, energy, and efficiency. By
these means they can win an honorable place for
themselves in the community, and can undoubt¬
edly secure respect and influence.
It is these solid things which Washington
brought to the Negroes; things which are far
more real and promising for the future than
the rainbows which have been held up by not
a few false leaders of the race.
Governor Charles Henderson of Alabama
said:
In the death of Booker T. Washington the
Colored race has lost a great leader. He was
a man of unusual force and executive ability
In The Press Of The Nation 143
and in many respects rose above the environ¬
ments of his race. In my opinion his efforts to¬
wards the development of his people have been
of great benefit to them and to the entire South.
Born a slave, living a life of earnest endeavors
and at his death the chief executive of an in¬
stitution of nation wide reputation, created by
his own brain and energy, demonstrates to the
world the unbounded possibilities open to those
whose purpose is to accomplish something, and
marks him as one of the able men of his time.
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, in
an interview for the Associated Press said:
I am deeply shocked and grieved at the
death of Dr. Booker Washington. He was one
of the distinguished citizens of the United
States, a man who rendered greater service to
his own race than had ever been rendered by
any one else and who, in so doing also rendered
great service to the whole country. I mourn
his death and feel that one of the most useful
citizens of our land has gone.
Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard ,editor of the
144
Booker T. Washington
New York Evening Post and grandson of Will¬
iam Lloyd Garrison said:
In the death of Booker T. Washington the
entire ocuntry suffers a grievous loss, because
no other man, white or black, has been so suc-
cesful in interpreting one race to another.
Judge E. 0, Brown, President of the Chi¬
cago Branch of the National Association for the
Advancement of the Colored People said:
I think that by the death of Dr. Booker T.
Washington the world lost one of its really
great men. However some may have differed
from details of his policy, no one with the wel¬
fare of the Negro at heart can fail to recog¬
nize his wonderful work for the material, moral
and physical impiwement of great masses of
American citizens. He was enthusiastic him¬
self and a tremendous force in arousing the
enthusiasm of others. As a teacher, a citizen
and an author, as well as in the still higher
character of a leader and prophet of the people
of his race, he has left a mark on his age which
time will never efface.
A pillar of the State has fallen.
In The Press Of The Nation
145
Hon. William Hale Thompson, Mayor of
Chicago said:
l am glad to add my testimony to the worth
and character of the late Booker T. Washington.
His loss is a loss not only to the colored race, but
to America. As a man and an educator his
memory will long survive.
Dr. Jenkins Lloyd Jones, of Chicago, said:
In the death of Booker T. Washington the
United States has lost a distinguished citizen
and educator, one of the most successful peda¬
gogues in the world. We search our country in
vain for a paralleled triumph in technical edu¬
cation. To emphasize the color of Booker T.
Washington is to disturb the perspective. There
was African blood in his veins and he gloried
in it. The colored people have a right to be
proud of him. But he had broken through the
limitations of race, compelled recognition among
the competent, forced by sheer power of mind
and heart to a place among the successful and
triumphant that connote humanity and not a
race or nation.
146
Booker T. Washington
FROM THE PRESS OF THE NATION.
THE PITTSBURG (Pa.) DAILY SUN.
The one Negro, however, who gave more
attention to the race than to himself, and seemed
to be more concerned with the success of un¬
dertakings that were intended to teach the
Negro how intelligently to help himself, was
Booker T. Washington, who died Sunday.
His death is untimely, but Tuskegee In¬
stitute has happily been firmly established. Mr.
Washington's ideas and methods have become
traditional and his work will go on.
THE PITTSBURG (Pa.) PRESS.
From the school the stimulus has spread
until there is not a Negro in America who has
not come consciously or unconsciously under
Booker T. Washington's influence. Both in the
school, and on the lecture platform (where lat¬
terly he spent most of his time) to say nothing
of his writings, he strove with great vigor to
In The Press Of The Nation 147
imbue his people with a passion of self-develop¬
ment, self-support, social and economic inde¬
pendence. In private he entertained greater
hope and confidence in their future than he al¬
lowed himself to express in public. No one who
ever heard or met him has been known to ques¬
tion his exceptional powers of heart and mind.
Nor is there anywhere any question of the tre¬
mendous value of the service that he rendered.
THE MEMPHIS (Tenn.) COMMERCIAL APPEAL.
Booker T. Washington was the most re¬
markable man of his race and one of the monu¬
mental figures in the progress of the civiliza¬
tion of the world. His services to the Negro
were the greatest one could give his fellow citi¬
zens. He was a valuable asset to the nation. The
South numbered him among her most useful
citizens. It will be difficult to find one who can
carry on that great work he had undertaken.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
THE NEW YORK WORLD.
When Appomattox left the ex-slave strand¬
ed on the strange shore of freedom, many toil-
148
Booker T. Washington
bent field hands wanted their children to learn
Latin, What Latin was, they had no idea; they
knew it played some part in the culture of a sec¬
tion more given to oratory and politics than
chemistry and manufacture. Need developed
leaders in wiser ways; the greatest of these died
yesterday.
Booker T. Washington did not know how old
he was. He must have been born before 1859,
the date usually given, else we must suppose him
placed at twenty-two at the head of Tuskegee.
He had learned at Hampton, and at once began
teaching that what the blacks most needed was
steady work and money in the bank. He praised
the Negro banker, teacher, lawyer, physician;
he could take a quiet and quizzical satisfaction
in the prowess of Jack Johns_on; but what
pleased him most was that 2,500,000 Negroes
were living in owned homes in 1910 and that
Negro farmers owned more than one billion dol¬
lar's worth of cultivated farms.
Herein Dr. Washington was a wiser leader
than those impetuous souls who demanded for
the Negro at once every political and cultural
opportunity. The Negro is on the soil. He is
in the South. His surest, shortest road to an
In The Press Op The Nation
149
assured place is efficiency. Dr. Washington was
far-seeing in his desire to work in harmony
with white men of his section. It is to the credit
of the whites that they were so ready to work
with him.
TUSKEGEE'S MAKER.
UHE NEW YORK SUN.
Dr. Booker T. Washington's work among
the members of his race was based on the be¬
lief that the Negro would win social and politi¬
cal advancement only after he had achieved
economic independence and stability. He held
that time was better spent in demonstrating the
capacity of the black man in those callings that
are now open to him, than in seeking opportun¬
ities in fields where every factor was opposed to
him.
This policy brought Dr. Washington into
conflict with many other leaders of the Negroes,
but he maintained it from the beginning of his
work at Tuskegee. He was not less concerned
with the progress of the blacks in the United
States than were those with whom he could not
agree with their methods; their dispute was
150
Booker T. Washington
over the means to be used, not the end to be
sought. His belief was supported by the intelli¬
gent judgment of thousands of citizens who saw
in Tuskegee a possible instrument for the solu¬
tion of a pressing problem.
Did the school's success depend on Dr.
Washington's energy and personality, or was he
able to install an organization competent to
continue it? Such questions will be answered
in the not remote future; it is to be hoped that
the institution in which he labored for more
than a generation possesses the apparatus and
personnel necessary to its continuance and
growth necessary as a memorial to this sen¬
sible and interesting educator.
A GREAT AMERICAN.
THE NEW YORK GLOBE.
* * # * *****
Judged by standards of race value and real
achievement, Booker T. Washington was one of
the great Americans of the generation since the
Civil War. He conferred new distinction on the
name of Washington, assigned to him, follow
In The Press Of The Nation 151
ing Appomattox- whence a nameless pickaninny
in Virginia. He served the South and he served
his race, and, so doing, he served his country
and those ideals of social justice and human
brotherhood with whose advancement America,
despite her glaring inconsistencies believes her¬
self identified.
Booker Washington was the first member
of his race conspicuously to emphasize the truth
that economic independence must exist to some
degree before a man can be a man. The nation
not having given the Negro property that right¬
fully belonged to him, and the wrong being
irreparable, Booker Washington led the move¬
ment of his people to win homes and a chance in
life by renewed industry. In spite of opposition
among his own people from men who lacked his
imagination and did not like his lack of empha¬
sis on political privileges, Booker Washington
pressed forward. That the Negroes of America
now own a billon dollars worth of property and
now have the economic status that should have
been conceded to them half a century ago, in¬
dicates to what degrees his labors have borne
fruit-
152
Booker T. Washington
Dr. Washington was not only a great Negro
and a great Southerner, but he was also a great
American. Into him, despite the color of his
skin, had entered a real belief in American prin¬
ciples. The principles of Jefferson and Lincoln
were his principles. He believed in democracy
and he believed in the attainability of human
brotherhood. He had the large faith that sees
the gains that society makes and is confident of
ultimate results. So he was an American, one
of the most typical, let us hope, of the gen¬
eration.
A PIONEER.
THE RALEIGH (N. C ) NEWS AND OBSERVER.
Booker T. Washington should be recognized
as a pioneer in leading his race into paths along
which it had the best opportunity of advance¬
ment. In emphasizing the value of industrial
undertakings to the Negro he rendered a ser¬
vice to that race and to the white man.
His work at Tuskegee has proved of value
to the South and to the nation. He has been a
wise counsellor of his people. His efforts have
been a source of uplift to the Negro, whom he
In The Press Of The Nation
153
emancipated from many things which shackled.
The career of Booker T. Washington gives him
first place among his race in America.
In commenting upon the statement made by
Hon. Seth Low, Chairman of the Board of Trus¬
tees, that the Trustees would stand by the school
in this, its hour of greatest need, a Southern
white friend of Dr. Washington remarked: "and
the South will do its part."
That is a fair example of the Southern sen¬
timent which prompted Mr. W. T. Gentry, Man¬
ager of the Southern Bell Telephone Company
of Atlanta, Georgia, to offer to be the first con¬
tributor of one hundred Southern white men
to give $100 to a fund to provide for the erection
of a suitable monument to the memory of Dr.
Washington. The sentiment of appreciation for
the peace and prosperity made possible by the
life which has just closed is further reflected
in the following editorials from Southern white
newspapers:
A GREAT AND GOOD MAN GONE
THE HOUSTON (Tex.) DAILY POST.
The death of Booker T. Washington, the
founder of Tuskegee Institute, brings to an end
154
Booker T. Washington
a life that was fruitful of results. He was a
great man. Not great in a comparative sense
or in that narrow judgment which merely re¬
cords him as one who achieved well considering
the circumstance that he was a Negro, but re¬
gardless of all limitations. His career must
stand as an ample answer to the theory that the
Negro is not capable of high intellectual and
spiritual development, because he blazed his
own way to usefulness and fame.
He was born in slavery and freedom found
him a small boy with an ambition and with the
will to realize it. His youth was not strewn
with flowers. He achieved through privation
just as so many boys of the white race have
achieved only amid greater difficulties and res¬
trictions, He was not exceptionally gifted in
the matter of mind. Thousands of Negroes be¬
fore him and thousands of his contemporaries
had as good or better advantages and were en¬
dowed with equal or superior talent.
Washington made his life tell. He found
early in life the challenge of a great purpose
which he accepted and he conquere.d every ob-
tacle that blocked the way to its fulfillment. The
fact that he was a Negro will not deny him the
honored place which history reserves for men of
In The Press Of The Nation
155
great deeds. Within the limitations of a com¬
paratively brief life he erected his own monu¬
ment and a monument that will endure.
Those who comment upon his career will
he apt to stress the great work he accomplished
for the people of his race and it was a great and
lasting work the result of which will live and
bring forth good fruit. But thoughtful men
who knew Washington and who are in a position
to appraise his character and achievements are
bound to testify that he has done quite as much
for the Southern whites as he did for the blacks.
Those who have studied the race problem
as we choose to call it need not be told that the
uplifting of the Negro race in the South is a
matter ^that concerns the white people of the
South quite as much as it concerns the Negroes.
There is a mutuality of interest that is unques¬
tionable and indissoluble. The two races are
living side by side in the South never to be sep¬
arated and they must rise or fall together.
The Southern white people are ultimately
to have as their neighbors many millions of
black people ignorant, immoral, criminal, ineffi¬
cient, filthy, diseased and hopeless or they are
going to have as their neighbors a Negro race
that is intelligent, virtuous, efficient, honest, pa-
156
Booker T. Washington
triotic and friendly. Intelligent men and women
know that the South needs the latter. Wash¬
ington strove for the better choice and he has
blazed the way that the leaders of his race will
surely follow with patience, earnestness and
determination. .
So in choosing to serve his own people best,
he has served the white people the best at the
same time. His work will go on, although he is
no longer here to direct it, and his purposes and
ideals will find other stout hearts and cool heads
to strive on for their fulfillment, and there will
be an increasing number of white people to aid
and encourage his successors.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
THE NEW ORLEANS (La.) ITEM.*
Booker T. Washington was not only a great
Negro but a great man. His death removes from
the leadership of his race in this country charac¬
ter of singular balance and poise a mentality of
clear vision and keen sense of values and pro¬
portion.
He came literally "up from slavery" and
from that crossing of the racial streams which
Ik The Press Of The Nation
157
was the most pitiful and most tragic of all the
effects of slavery.
During his life he preached the worth of
toil. His practice followed strictly the lines of
his precept. Laboriously, studiously, he strove
in all ways possible to let his people see and un¬
derstand that by honest work, decent lives, self-
respecting behavior and demeanor—they could
win their way, as individuals, and as a race.
The school at Tuskegee is more than a monu¬
ment to his own efforts, for it is the creation of
a race's patience, his persuasiveness, and his
works. Each new addition to the plant, each
new thousand to its endowment, has come as the
fruit of results proven by the prior endeavors
of Washington and the teachers he brought
about him.
There is much in the teaching of Booker T.
Washington which might well be taken to heart
by others than Southern Negroes. There are
lessons he taught which are universal in their
application. His talks to his students are worth
being read by every teacher in the land. His
story of his own life and struggles ought to
carry a measure of inspiration to any earnest
and ambitious man.
158
Booker T. Washington
The South at large, as well as the Southern
Negroes will be fortunate if, to the leadership
of the Tuskegee school there comes some indivi¬
dual who has learned well the lesson of Booker
T. Washington's own life.
THE AMSTERDAM NEWS fNew York City.)
Booker Taliaferro Washington, educator,
orator, author, philanthropist, leader example
—is dead. That is his frame now mingles with
the dust from which it came. His fame but be¬
gins. Born in the South, he lived there and
devoted his life to the betterment of the land
which denied him an honorable birth, a Christ¬
ian name and ah equal right in its citizenship.
He lived to fling back into the teeth of ignorance,
prejudice, calamity, the blazing torch of a mar¬
tyred life.
In him there was no bitterness, no reproach,
no retaliation. He was too great to stoop to the
depths of those who once held his body in chains,
but who could not hold the soul of him.
THE NASHVILLE (Tenn ) GLOBE.
Booker T. Washington is dead. He did more
for mankind than any of those who were con-
In The Press Op The Nation 159
temporary with or preceded him. His name will
ever Jive in the hearts of men. He lived to see the
partial fruition of his dearest wishes. His ex¬
ecutive ability was marvelous and almost with¬
out precedent. His control of men and matters
was an admitted fact throughout the world. His
greatness was not thrust upon him but he fought
stubbornly for it, every inch of the way. That
he will be missed in the councils of the wise men
of the nation goes without saying. His place
may be filled, but not as he filled it. He was truly
the peer of his fellows. Education did not dim
his love for the unfortunate of the Negro race.
He was always kind, chivalrous and approach¬
able. The nation suffers an irreparable loss. And
the world mourns for truly he was a giant in
intellect, in character and in all things that tend
to make the world nobler, brighter, and better.
Heaven's gate never opened wider than on Sun¬
day morning when they swung ajar for the spirit
of Booker T. Washington.
THE SOUTH LOSES
THE SOCIAL CIRCLE (Ga.) ENTERPRISE.
The death of Booker T. Washington brings
to a close the career of.a black man whose
160
Booker T. Washington
national reputation equaled that of any white
contemporary, whose work was more monumen¬
tal because of greater opportunity, and whose
life- public and private, represented the height
of attainment among the Negroes in America.
His life means more to the South than any other
section, for here dwell the people from whom he
sprang and here was his work, and here is the
race for whom he labored.
The serious minded people of the South are
grieved, for Booker T. Washington has led his
people aright; and because of him the colored
race was taught to regard the South as its own
country, and the Southern white man as its best
friend.
In Washington the destiny of the race was
secure. May his mantle fall on worthy shoulders.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
THE NEW ORLEANS (La.) AMERICAN.
In the death of Booker T. Washington, the
colored race has lost a leader whose life is an
inspiration and an example to those of his color
who desire to better their conditions. Washing¬
ton was remarkable in many ways, but his won-
In The Press Of The Nation
161
derful power of self-control and his well-balan¬
ced sense of proportion were his best assets and
his strongest weapons in the fight he made to lift
himself from an unknown colored man to the
national place he occupied when he died.
THE OAKLAND (Cal.) SUNSHINE.
Other Negroes may rise to fame and great¬
ness along other lines and in other ways, but we
will still be minus Booker T. Washington. May
his soul rest in peace and the Negro race move¬
ments, such as the Negro Business League and
the Tuskegee school, live on and grow bigger
and better, which we are sure they can and will
do.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
THE BROOKLYN (NY) DAILY TIMES.
Had Booker T. Washington died ten years
ago the loss to the economic cause of the Ameri¬
can Negro would have been far greater than is
the case today. For in the interval the colored
educator practically completed his life,s work,
outlined the path along which he desired his race
162
Booker T. Washington
to advance and, unless a social upheaval destroys
the foundations he laid, his work will be con¬
tinued automatically by his successors.
THE WASHINGTON OF HIS RACE.
THE BURLINGTON (Vt.) FREE PRESS.
Many a man who boasts of a white face
might well envy the grand record of Booker T.
Washington, the famous Negro leader, who has
just died, and the good he did will live after him
in many an educational institution as well as in
many a home where little colored faces cluster
about a mother's knee. He realized the terrible
wrongs his people have been forced to endure, he
knew their burdensome handicaps, their insults
from little minds ,their frequent wretchedness,
their unutterable suffering.
Booker Washington also realized the grand
and ever-helpful possibilities of his race, of
which he was a distinguished example. No sac¬
rifice was too great for him to make in order
that the Negro might come into his own in this
boasted land of the free and the home of the
brave. It took courage to face the great cold,
indifferent world as he faced it in behalf of a
long despised people. He did his work enthus¬
iastically as well as zealously and effectively.
In The Press Of The Nation
163
THE BOSTON (^ass.) GUARDIAN
Booker T. Washington is dead. He had a
long and eventful career. His energy, persistence
and resourcefulness was remarkable. He built
up an immense industrial school. He won great
recognition from the dominating elements in
this republic. He attained great distinction, and
was the most conspicious colored man of his day.
At one time he wielded tremendous power over
the industrial and political opportunities of col¬
ored people. By the colored people he was both
ardently supported and strenously opposed with
regard to his industrial and political propa¬
ganda. A deep cleavage was made in the colored
American group by his doctrine. This is as
much a part of his career as is his international
reputation, and it is a part of the history of-
the colored race.
THE DETROIT (Mich.) INFORMER.
Gone! Ah, yes, gone! But never to be for¬
gotten. With the sudden demise of Dr. Booker
T. Washington the nation is called upon to
mourn the loss of one of the greatest and most
unique characters of modern times. The cause
of education loses one of its strongest advocates
164
Booker T. Washington
and devotees, the system of religion and practi¬
cal Christianity one of its most enduring friends.
THE ADVOCATE. Cleveland, Ohio.
Neither philosophy, nor even faith can
wholly reconcile us to the loss of this great man
—we know that death is the common lot, but
we are never ready for the coming of its angel.
He had before him years of service to his race
and the country when the dread messenger hove
in sight, but his "day of rest" had come— his
"period of vacation" was at hand—and Booker
T. departed. It is hard to realize our loss.
THE AFRO-AMERICAN LEDGER.
In his personality Principal Washington
united the essential qualities of a great leader.
With a vision beyond that of ordinary men he
saw the fundamental principles in human life,
which he adapted to suit the needs of the Negro
in the South. Phophet-like, he had the sense of
pre-vision, and added to this a simplicity and sin¬
cerity that were natural. No one who heard Mr.
Washington ever complained that he could not
understand his message or that the message
In The Press Of The Nation 165
lacked the speaker's own conviction of the truth
of his statements. He uttered the profoundest
philosophy in the language a child could under¬
stand.
THE SAVANAH (Ga.) TRIBUNE.
The death of Booker T. Washington has re¬
moved one of the most valauble assets the Negro
race possessed. His life was so intertwined in
the development of the race that a sadder and
more irreparable loss could not be sustained by
the ten million black souls in this country who
are toiling and working that the race might
some day reach its proper place among the great
people of the universe.
THE SEARCHLIGHT, Sedalia, Mo.
He was the most forceful character in
American life. Rising from poverty and ob¬
scurity he early caught the spirit of the age in
which he lived and by it was swept into world¬
wide fame. He built no air castles, but gaveTa
solidarity to Negro citizenship that insured its
perpetuity upon the western hemisphere.
166
Booker T. Washington
THE COLORADO STATESMAN, Denver, Col
In the death of this champion of human
rights the whole country has suffered a great
and permanent loss, but the loss is more keenly
felt by the people of his race who are familiar
with his solution of the grave racial problem
that confronts this country, and the impres¬
sions that he made upon rich and poor, high and
low by the God-given gift and talent he posses-
ed will open an ingress to the most closeted
arena of the selfish and drastic opponents of his
followers.
THE SOUTHWESTERN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE.
Dr. Washington was a man of large vision,
fine poise and a rich intellect, with a passion
for achievement and tireless in activity. He
was a man of whom it might be said as Thayer
said of Cavour, the great Italian patriot and
statesman, "He had the enthusiasm for the pos¬
sible." When Booker T. Washington came into
this world he was not his own; he was a slave,
but he made the world his debtor by his master¬
ful spirit. He conquered environment, baffled
heredity, and by intrepid personality so
tacked his bark of life as to make opposing
winds advance him.
In The Press Of The Nation
167
SATURDAY NEWS, Hopkinsville, ICy.
The whole world pauses at the passing of
Booker T. Washington, who laid down his arms
last Sunday and surrendered to that inevitable
conqueror of men—Death. Prince and pauper,
wealth and penury, all of whom he served, bow
their heads as the book is closed upon the career
of a most remarkable citizen, who wrote reali¬
zation into the dreams of Aladdin. The echo of
"Well done" comes from palace and hovel alike.
Thoughtful men accord glory and honor to the
sable son of Ethiopia, who stretched forth his
hand and emblazoned again in American his¬
tory the name of Washington.
THE DENVER (Col.) STAR.
God still reigns and He will look after His
children. While Booker T. Washington, Tus~
kegee's inspiration and founder, has died, his
spirit will ever live as long as American ideals
of self-made men live and are cherished. May
his ashes rest in peace. Selah.
THE REFORMER. Richmond, Va.
Booker T. Washington's life work is ended,
—his life and character. ^Tuskegee will be his
168
Booker T. Washington
greatest monument. He rose from humble birth
to the highest fame one could aspire. He had
few equals and few superiors in the field of in¬
dustrial training.
THE STAR OF ZION, Charlotte, N. C.
His death comes as a distinct shock to his
own race and to the nation. From poverty and
obscurity, Booker T. Washington had risen
to an eminence scarcely equaled by any other
man of his time, John Bright ,the eminent
English statesman, after a tour in this country,
said that the three greatest men he saw in
America were Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T.
Washington and Charles W. Eliot. Any list of
greatest Americans is incomplete without the
name* of this Negro teacher-statesman. As the
apostle of the industrial education, he taught
the world.
THE ADVOCATE-VERDICT, Harrisburg, Pa.
Booker T. Washington is dead! A bare, cold
fact. Millions of loyal big-hearted Americans,
regardless of race, creed, color or class, will
repeat this many times, many times before they
fully realize that it is true.
In The Press Of The Nation
169
THE STAR, Newport News, Va.
Let us hope that no matter what may have
been the differences existing while Dr. Wash¬
ington lived, that now he has passed to the
great beyond, every Negro, great and small,
will do all he can to make the name of Booker
T. Washington the same to us as the name of
George Washington is to the white people of
this country.
T. THOMAS FORTUNE in The Philadelphia (Pa.) Tribune
Dr. Washington's life will always be an in¬
spiration to the young people of the race who
come into the world with nothing but discour¬
agements before them, which they must over¬
come in order to be able to help themselves or
others. And it is always a failing business with
any; person to spend his life in efforts to help
others who has not first made a foundation of
'helpfulness for himself. Thousands of such
lives have been wasted and are being wasted
every day. The victims mean well, but they
have begun at the wrong end of helpfulness. Dr.
Washington made no such mistake, nor did he
teach others to make it. He always thought out
well what he should do and ascertained the
170
Booker T. Washington
means by which it should be accomplished be¬
fore he undertook some new thing. He built
Tuskegee Institute that way; he built his repu¬
tation that way, inch by inch, here a little and
there a little' but, like Davy Crockett, always
being sure he was right, he was safe in making
the effort, and then going ahead.
THE DAYTON (Ohio) FORUM.
We can best show our appreciation of
Booker T. Washington by fostering the great
work that he established. Tuskegee Institute
must go forward, filling the mission designed
by the builder. Perhaps no one man can be found
to do the work of Mr. Washington, but the
united efforts of the American people can con¬
tinue the work of lifting the man farthest down
to a higher standard of life. The mantle of Mr.
Washington has fallen upon all of us. We must
continue the great teachings of the founder of
Tuskegee Institute.
He was a safe and sane leader and his worth
was recognized by the esteem and love of his
people during his busy life, and by their sorrows
and their tears in his death. Tuskegee Institute
is the visible monument of his foresight, his
patience and his energy, and his service for his
In The Press Of The Nation 171
people during a generation is shown in their sub¬
stantial growth along the lines which he carved
out and pointed the way. He had the confidence
and esteem of the leaders of both races and in
his death one of nature's Noblemen has been
called from labor to reward. The world has been
made the richer by his having lived and poorer
by his passing away.
THE SOUTHERN INDICATOR, Columbia, S. C.
Booker Washington was greater than Will¬
iam McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow
Wilson because the greatness to which they at¬
tained, the path had been blazed by hundreds
of travelers, and, too, they had centuries of
civilization behind them. He had no "lamp"' by
which his feet were guided—not even exper¬
ience.
He was his own path-finder, the pioneer, the
father of the Ethiopian race.
Had he been white no power on earth could
have kept him from the White House in Wash¬
ington. He revolutionized the educational ideas
of centuries. He will live till rolling years shall
cease to move.
172
Booker T. Washington
THE PORTLAND (Ore.) ADVOCATE.
Few men have lived whose lives were so
useful to others as the life of Booker T. Wash¬
ington^ has been to the people of the United
States. Although a member of the Afro-Amer¬
ican race, his services have been equally advan¬
tageous to both. His death is a national loss,
it will be found difficult to think of one whose
place in the world will not be more easily filled.
THE DEATH OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
THE BROOKLYN (N. Y.) DAILY EAGLE.
The liberation and enfranchisement of the
Negroes was the result of an idealism religious
in its fervor. In the exaltation of that devo¬
tion to the ideal of freedom thousands of men
came to believe that the Negro was entitled, not
merely to equality of opportunity, but that' by
some spiritual conquest over natural law, he was
to be established and protected in equality of
achievement. It is not strange that the Negroes
themselves regarded emancipation as emanci¬
pation from work, idleness being the badge of
freedom which had been most persistently
ground into them. Perhaps it is not strange
either, that a people which had given blood and
In The Press Of The Nation 173
treasure for that liberation should become pos¬
sessed of the idea that schooling for one genera¬
tion would give the children of ex-slaves capac¬
ity to compete with whites in divers fields of
labor, including the professions and arts.
That notion, born of a consecrated idealism,
was an utter defiance of the laws of evolution,
and the attempts to apply it have brought per¬
sonal disappointments and far-reaching bitter¬
ness of spirit. While that bitterness was at its
height it was Booker T. Washington who turned
the tide by proving that the condition of the
Negroes could be raised by training them for the
work of the hand which has been the foundation
of the progress of every nation of whites which
through centuries of development has arrived
at high state of civilization. He began in the
eighties training his people in industry and
thrift the very virtues from which the genera¬
tion before had believed itself to be emancipated.
But the career of Dr. Washington himself
shows that the achievement of a black man will
receive abundant recognition, once its useful¬
ness is established. The degrees which colleges
conferred on this man were richly earned. He
was a great citizen because he did a great and
174
Booker T. Washington
useful work. He was not merely a prophet, but
an example to his countrymen, both black and
white. He has taught to the one race hardly
less pointedly than to the other that the only-
sure basis of prosperity and honor lies in ser¬
vice. That lesson was and is badly needed on
both sides of the color line.
OF DISTINGUISHED COMMON SENSE
THE COLUMBIA (S C.) STATE.
Booker T. Washington was what is rare
among Negro leaders, a man of distinguished
common sense. He saw the futility of an ig¬
norant and pauperized race attempting political
competition with one having thousands of years
the start of it. His self-chosen task was to
teach his people the necessity of an economic
foundation for progress, to point out that South¬
ern conditions were singularly favorable for it,
and to lead the Negroes away from the false
vision held out to them by carpet-baggers during
the Reconstruction period that paradise instant¬
ly was to be realized by the ballot. Washington
had the sagacity to accept conditions as they
were for his race and to see that, on the whole,
they are not bad. ,
In The Press Of The Nation 175
THE DETROIT PRESS.
It is impossible to measure the influence
Booker T. Washington exercised upon the pro¬
gress of civilization during his lifetime. The or¬
dinary standards by which we gauge the results
of an educator's work do not apply in his case,
for the radiating force of Tuskegee has been
vastly more penetrating than that which eman¬
ates from educational institutions generally. He
made his impress upon those who passed directly
through his hands, as all college teachers do,
and there alone must have been a very large
number since the attendance at the school in this
one year is more than 1,600. But every one of
his graduates was a missionary, sent out to dis¬
seminate through the mass of the Negro people
the leaven of uplifting culture instilled into him
or her by the founder of the college, and in this
light the ultimate influence of the man upon
the world becomes one of the marvels of our era.
For the advance of the negro race in the
United States, is to be borne in mind, has been
from the absolute zero of slavery conditions—
the slave being nothing and having nothing—t.n
all that race is and has today. It is not to be
supposed, of course, that the average level of
the Afro-American people has been raised
176
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
through the long sweep of distance which Book¬
er Washington covered in his personal climb.
He was an inspiration to all our people. But
the race level has gone up to a mar¬
velous extent from its starting point, and
for this aggregate advance the educator, now
dead, should be given the credit in addition to
what he deserves, for his individual develop-
ment.
Estimated in gross, it may be that the in¬
fluence of this son of a slave woman and an un¬
known father has been the greatest of all Amer¬
ican forces for progress in our generation. The
Computation is beyond finite minds. Only the
Supreme Judge can bid farewell to the departed
man with deep respect and an acknowledge¬
ment of his, to us, immeasurable value to our
time.
The now terminated career of Booker T.
Washington, the distinguished negro educator,
will be a lasting inspiration for his race for all
time.
From the loins of the colored people in
America may yet spring greater men than Book¬
er T. Washington, but no pioneer compares with
him in breath of intellect, character and achieve¬
ment.
FOR A WHJLE AWAY PROM TOIL.
In The Press Of The Nation
177
It was necessary only to be ushered into
the presence of Mr. Washington to feel here was
a man of unusual attainments whose grasp of
life, power of reserve, vision and judgment set
him apart from merely average man of what¬
ever race.
One does not explain away his attainments
and his achievements on the score of his white
blood. For he had the warmth of feeling, and
most of the other strong characteristics of that
race with whom his lot was cast not only during
the struggles of his poverty-stricken boyhood,
but also through his successive triumphs as a
student and as an educator.
Booker T. Washington was head and should¬
ers over most of the white educators* of this
continent, for he saw first and saw truly the
need of technical education. When we copy
Washington's work at Tuskegee we will-then
have started on the way to education for the
masses.
When other educators were fumbling with
the mistakes and obsolete process of so-called
education in the little red school house on the
hill, he was setting up the first real educational
institution for the world-a-work and the world-
a-field in an obscure town in Alabama.
178
Booker T. Washington
This man was just 25 years ahead of the
rest of us in the discovery and application of
great fundamental and radical principles, just
as all geniuses are ahead of their day.
THE DALLAS (Tex.) EXPRESS.
And his leadership of the Negro people was
such that it won the approval of a large major¬
ity of the white people regardless of section. The
author of several widely read books, Dr. Wash¬
ington was also noted as a lecturer and as a
speaker of unusual eloquence and ability.
In 1904 he accepted a luncheon invitation
extended to him by Theodore Roosevelt, then
President. The incident revived for the time
much of the old bitterness between the North
and the South. The South, fearing the effect
it might have upon its colored people, severely
criticised President Roosevelt for extending
such an invitation and Dr. Washington for ac¬
cepting it. The North rushed to the defense of
both and criticism of the South.
Included in the number of Dr. Washington's
close personal friends may be mentioned such
men as Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard
Taft- Oswald Garrison Villard, President Kel-
In The Press Of The Nation
179
sey of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company,
Andrew Carnegie, Jacob Schiff, Hamilton
Wright Mabie, Robert Shaw Minturn, Felix M.
Warburg, William Jay Schieffelin, Dr. Hillis,
Seth Low and Gov. Whitman.
OUR LEADER'S LIGHT BURNT OUT
THE ATLANTA (Ga.) INDEPENDENT.
He demonstrated in his life and character
the possibilities of his race. His life and achieve¬
ments stood out as the most striking and con¬
clusive evidence that God Almighty, in His wis¬
dom and goodness, made all men equal and en¬
titled to enjoy the inalienable rights of life,
liberty and happiness, and that no race, creed
or sex has a monopoly upon the possibilities or
capacities of men for usefulness and contribu¬
tion to the world's civilization. Mr. Washing¬
ton made no effort at race leadership; he sought
to lead the world "in his line; and he succeeded.
He was pre-eminently the leading industrial ad¬
vocate of his day. He dignified labor with the
hands as no man before him was able to do. He
removed the stigma of disgrace from the work
with hands ,and taught the world that
180
Booker T. Washington
"Honor, from no condition rises,
Act well your part- there the honor lies."
He taught the world that any kind of work
well done was honorable, and that all work half
done, it matters not whether it was with the
hands, mind or heart, was a disgrace. In becom¬
ing leader in his line, he became the leader, not
only of his race in America; but the leader of the
world in industrial thought and economic de¬
velopment. He was the industrial emperor of
the world. He made the white man see that
work with the hands was the foundation of the
world's civilization and the fundamental upon
which all lasting and permanent achievements
must rest. He was easity the greatest states¬
man of his day and time. He literally spent
himself in an earnest and sincere effort to love
the races into peace. His whole life was spent
in one godly effort to unite the North and the
South, the East and the West to promote the
highest usefulness of his people. His one effort
was to uplift his race and to make his race a
helpful and most useful factor in the solution
of every American problem.
In the death of this statesman, the nation
loses its first citizen, the church its greatest
benefactor, society its standard of moral and
In The Press Of The Nation 181
intellectual excellence, the family a father, hus¬
band and brother. His death is distinctly the
world's loss. Tuskegee, the greatest exponent
of industrialism in the world, is but the con¬
ception of his massive brain. The monument
that he has left to mark his memory is more
lasting than one of stone, bronze or brass. His
memory will live forever in the hearts of men.
We loved him for the enemies he made in the
conscientious discharge of a Christian duty. He
was our friend, our brother and advisor. We
loved him for his brilliant intellect, constructive
genius, love for mankind, and above all, because
the man in his greatness and glory never for¬
got to serve his God. He literally offered him¬
self upon the altar of his country in service, that
the sunlight of hope, encouragement, industry
charity, kindliness and Christian philanthropy
might beam in the hearts of his fellowmen, and
reflect the gospel of peace and good-will to the
world; and it might be said without contra¬
diction or question, that he died literally, lov¬
ing the races into peace; that a statesman has
fallen asleep.
THE LOUISVILLE (Ky ) NEWS.
With a single speech he halted the march of
caste and gave heart to his people, for in 1895
182
Booker T. Washington
his people thought themselves to have been
caught by despair. His was a simple text, long
overlooked by cloud-dwellers and star shooters:
earth, rain, sun, heat, love, labor—a freeman
will set himself free.
He held the humblest members of his race
to be as good as he, and he knew himself to be
as good as the best that ever wore a robe of
purple or adorned the ornaments of wealth. If
the Revolutionary Army of 1776 could have
claimed a leader of his sagacity, the first great
war would have ended the second winter.
He taught his race its first lessons in organ¬
ization; in teaching his own he instructed the
world. Tuskegee blessed the youth of the South
and chained education to pine stumps and ash
knots. The Business League unfolded to man¬
kind, of the freedman, the certain, the unfailing
scheme of rising in the life of a republic and
turned their woe into wealth. He believed in
human rights; also in human duties. He sought
for himself no reputation in the Government, yet
he spent a fortune in money and energy seeking
to advance men of his blood to positions of
great trust- so that all might see through them
the worth and patriotism of his people. He was
educated in the house of Pharaoh, but he stood
In The Press Of The Nation
183
against the Egyptian in any test. He saw the
world in the whole of its glory, yet he separated
sea and star and running brook.
His mind was equally at home in detail or
in the finished plan. He was principal of the
most renowned seat of learning of the new
world,, and yet he kept the dairy herd> He
looked out of his window in the Biltmore Hotel
in New York and inspected a thousand miles
away Major Ramsey's cadets drawn up on the
field of peace at Tuskegee!
He spoke in eloquent phrases and lived in
more eloquent deeds.
He gave his , race a press, and established
the editors thereof in a place of dignity. The
Southern Education Board, the General Edu¬
cation Board, the Jeanes Fund are each of his
mind of wonders. He led men, white and black.
His genius embraced all and drew the line not of
color but of worth.
* * * *■ $ *
Let us conclude:
He gave the world an idea. He took edu¬
cation out of the clouds and put it in the reach
of poverty.
184
Booker T. Washington
He established his superiority over all men
of modern times.
He was the accepted orator of his country,
Frederick Douglass alone surpassing him in
power of speech.
He was the master of the art of diplomacy,
and the first statesman of his period.
He lived the books he wrote, and the books
he wrote the world is reading.
He is the only uncontested contribution of
his country to fame, excepting Lincoln the
Great.
He established his superiority over all men
in his day and proved "equality" to be a mad¬
man's phrase to frighten little children to stuff
ballot boxes.
He marshalled his forces by plan second to
none ever employed by a soldier.
He vindicated wisdom as the weapon of si¬
lence and established speech as the servant of
truth.
He gave to his country a life that his coun¬
try is not yet prepared to accept, for his life
was given to man, but his country is given to
men.
In The Press Of The Nation
185
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
THE CHICAGO (111.) DEFENDER.
The grim reaper claims his toll from the
bud to the full bloom of life. There is no escape;
there is no telling the day, the hour, the minute;
it is always sudden- always unexpected, always
a shock to the survivors, always a loss to the
world.
Last Sunday morning a cloud enveloped the
sky, there was sorrow in the hearts of all
peoples of all lands. A man in the depth of
night fell asleep never again to awaken this
side of that Holy River. A man in every sense
of the word, a man who came from obscurity
with a message and a determination to deliver
it. That he accomplished his mission is not only
evidenced at Tuskegee, but throughout the
civilized world his doctrine of vocational train¬
ing has been adopted.
We are all actors in the drama of life; some
must play the minor parts, some the major or
leads. To this man was given the task of play¬
ing the leading role for a people who sorely need¬
ed their cause presented in the most favorable
light. The curtain has been rung down on the
last act, the star has made his final bow; the
186
Booker T. Washington
lights are out, but the applause still continues
and generous though it is it will increase as the
years roll on and on and each generation, is
told of this wonderful character.
Booker T. Washington has gone; the world
has lost one of its foremost educators, his race
its greatest champion; but he has left to the
whole people a legacy of incalculable worth.
And it is the earnest prayer of all that when
he is called for the final accounting he will be
bid to enter the heavenly gates with, "Well
done, my good and faithful servant."
THE NEW YORK AGE.
In the death of Dr. Washington, the race
suffers an immnese loss. He had the nation
for an audience. Whenever he spoke the na¬
tion listened. But the loss which his death in¬
curs is not confined to the Negro race; it is one
which the entire country suffers. He was a
great Negro; but he was also more than that;
he was a great American citizen. He was a
citizen in which this country ought to feel the
same kind of pride in having produced that it
feels in having produced Lincoln. In truth,
if the lives of all the great men of this country
In The Press Of The Nation
187
were written out to be passed upon by the civ¬
ilized world, not one would be a more impressive
example to foreign peoples of the possibilities,
of American democracy than the life of Booker
T. Washington. The whole history of the Re¬
public can show no man, with the exception of
Frederick Douglass, who rose to honorable fame
in the face of such overwhelming obstacles. And
his greatness need not be measured only by the
depths from which he came, it may be measur¬
ed also by the heights to which he attained.
His career affords many lessons to his own
race. It is an example of how success may be
won by concentrated energy and determination,
in spite of intervening and surrounding difficul¬
ties. The traits of his character which stand out
and which should be ever set for emulation were
his power of devotion to an ideal, his great sim¬
plicity, his large optimism, his ability to over¬
come discouragement and his skill as an organ¬
izer and builder. His great love for his race and
his pride in being a Negro will be an inspiration
for many generations to come.
No less important, perhaps more so, is the
lesson to the white race. Dr. Washington's
life was a justification of his famous plea, "Let
down your buckets where you are!" Here was
188
Booker T. Washington
a man born under conditions which made him a
chattel, without early training at home or in
school, a member of a proscribed and despised
race hemmed in, held back, pushed down; yet by
his own will and worth, he made his skill as an
organizer and builder of his country and his age.
Should not America then, in viewing this man's
life learn that the race to which he belonged is
an almost untapped source from which may be
drawn high and devoted service for the national
welfare? Should not the white people of this
country realize that in their midst there is a
race possessed of powers and talents which can
contribute to the glory of the nation?
THE (Chicago, 111.) BROAD AX.
% sj; % ^5
He has erected a monument to his memory
not constructed by the hands of men and, being
firmly anchored on a solid foundation, it will
stand unseen in the hearts of the sons and
daughters of humanity for the next thousand
years to come.
EAST TENNESSEE NEWS.
Booker Washington was one of the earth's
choicest spirits. He was strong in body, bril-
In The Press Of The Nation 189
liant in intellect, noble in character, great in
aims and lofty purposes. He was logical in
thought, clear in expression and courageous in
following his convictions. He loved his country
with an intense love and the welfare of his peo¬
ple was his highest aim. He was loyal to the
race which he so faithfully led and was ever
faithful to his trust, able and fearless in express¬
ing and advocating his views to those policies
which he believed to be for the good of all.
THE LOUISVILLE (Ky) NEWS.
"With a single speech he halted the march
of caste and gave heart to his people, for in 1895
his people thought themselves to have been
caught by despair. His was a simple text, long
overlooked by cloud-dwellers and star shooters;
earth, rain, sun, heat, love, labor—a freeman will
set himself free.
He held the humblest members of his race
to be as good as he, and he knew himself' to
be as good as the best that ever wore a robe of
purple or adorned the ornaments of wealth. If
the Revolutionary Army of 1775 could have
claimed a leader of his sagacity, the first great
war would have ended the second winter.
190
Booker T. Washington
"He taught his race its first lesson in organ¬
ization; in teaching his own he instructed the
world. Tuskegee blessed the youth of the South
and chained education to pine stumps and ash
knots. The Business League unfolded to the
manhood of the freedom certain, the unfailing
scheme of rising in the life of a republic and
turned their woe into wealth. He believed in
human rights; also in human duties. He sought
for himself no reputation in the Government;
yet he spent a fortune in money and energy seek¬
ing to advance men of his blood to positions of
great .trust, so that all might see through them
the worth and patriotism of his people. He was
educated in the house of Pharoh, but he stood
against the Egyptian in any test. He saw the
world in the whole of its glory, yet he separated
sea and star and running brook.
"His mind was equally at home in detail or
in the finished plan. He was principal of the
most renowned seat of learning of the new
world, and yet he kept the dairy herd He
looked out of his window in the Biltmore Hotel
in New York and inspected a thousand miles
away Major Ramsey's cadets drawn up on the
field of peace at Tuskegee!
In The Press Of The Nation
191
"He spoke in eloquent phrase and lived in
more eloquent deeds.
"He gave his race a press, and established
the editors thereof in a place of dignity. The
Southern Education Board, the General Edu¬
cation Board, the Jeannes Fund are each of his
mind of wonders.. He led men, white and black.
His genius embraced all, and drew them, not of
color but of worth.
hs & * ♦ sfc
Let us conclude:
"He gave the world an idea. He took edu¬
cation out of the clouds and put in the reach of
poverty.
"He established the greatest seat of learn¬
ing of modern times.
"He was the accepted orator of his country,
Frederick Douglass alone surpassing him in
power of speech.
"He was the master of the art of diplomacy,
and the first statesman of his period.
"He lived the books he wrote, and the books
he wrote the world is reading.
"His is the only uncontested contribution of
his country to fame, excepting Lincoln the
Great.
192
Booker T. Washington
"He established his superiority over all men
in his day and proved 'equality' to be a madman's
phrase to frighten little children to stuff ballot
boxes.
"He marshalled his forces by plan second to
none ever employed by a soldier.
"He vindicated wisdom as the weapon of
silence and established speech as the servant of
truth.
"He gave to his country a life that his coun¬
try is not yet prepared to accept, for his life was
given to man, but his country is given to men.''
BORN A SLAVE.
THE NEW WORLD.
If the United States is not still the land of
opportunity, how are we to account for the ca¬
reer of Booker T. Washington? Born a slave,
he did not even inherit a name. A member of a
race despised and oppressed, he fitted himself
for education at Hampton, and with the training
that he there received he became famous as an
instructor and leader of men. There is not a
Negro in this country today whose outlook is
so unpromising as that of the Virginia slave
boy. There is not a white man who suffers such
hardships.
THE L4.ST SCENE.
In The Press Of The Nation
193
Booker Washington's success in life may be
explained in part by hard work, but more impor¬
tant than that was his early recognition of the
fact that he was to be master of his own for¬
tunes. He compelled respect because he was re¬
spectable. He made no claims upon others that
he was not prepared to justify. He was received
everywhere as an equal not because he asserted
the right but because he proved that he was ser¬
viceable.
Contemplating a life like his, most Amer¬
icans must be thankful that hereafter it cannot
be written of such a man that he was born a
slave. That stigma, which did not attach to
Booker Washington but to the country that gave
him to the world, will be placed no more upon
Americans. In the brief span of fifty-six years
he sounded the depths of a Republic false and
sealed the heights of a Republic true That is
the lesson that men of every degree and station
may learn from his struggles and triumphs if
they will. ,
A NEGRO EDUCATIONAL STATESMAN.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR.
By his life, works, travels and his auto¬
biography, "Up From Slavery," Booker T.
194
Booker T. Washington
Washington had become an international figure
a unique record for a man of his race in the
United States. When he toured Europe in 1911
he was received by Queen Victoria, he dined
with the King of Denmark, and as he journeyed
from country to country statesmen conferred
with him about ways and means of adapting his
tested methods of education at Tuskegee for so¬
lution of colonial problems in Africa. As for his
"Up From Slavery," like Franklin's classic of an
earlier day ,it has been much translated and has
become a window through which many an alien
youth has seen the meaning of the saying that
"America spells opportunity."
Nor was Washington's place unique solely
on account of the range and variety of interest
in him felt the world over. No man of his race
ever had been the adviser of so many presidents
on racial and economic issues affecting the
southern states. Upon no other Negro have
equally high academic honors been conferred.
He had a larger following of supporters among
white men North and South than any of his con¬
temporaries, men who backed their trust with
wealth.
To account for this high ranking of Wash¬
ington some allowance must be made for the ro-
In The Press Of The Nation 195
mantic if pecunious stages of his youth as a
cabin "pickanniny," as a laborious coal miner,
and as a penniless pilgrim setting out for Hamp¬
ton Institute to "get learning." There is some¬
thing in the repeated triumphs of men like
Franklin, Lincoln, Garfield and this "Moses of
his race," who begin low and rise above all ob¬
stacles, which insures them popularity with
their countrymen. They come to be symbols of
a manner of conserving all talent, wherever
found, in whatever stratum of society.
But there were other and more durable
grounds for Washington's fame than the pic¬
turesque chapters of his epic of emergence from
squalor, ignorance and social ostracism to a place
among orators of fame and publicists of emin¬
ence. Early on his climb up the ladder he came
under the influence of Samuel C. Armstrong,
who, as time goes on, will perhaps be seen to
have been the greatest educational statesman of
the United States during the last decades of the
nineteenth century. From Armstrong, Wash¬
ington got inspiration to serve his own race.
From Armstrong he also got both the theory and
the tested, working method of a system of edu¬
cation best suited for the millions of Negroes of
the South,
196
Booker T. Washington
One unquestionable source of Washington's
quickly won and long retained command of the
loyalty of his own people was his pride of race,
his comparative satisfaction with its achieve¬
ments since it was emancipated, and the certain-
ity of his confidence in its ultimate place of con¬
cealed worth in the body politic. Here he was
no opportunist but a partisan; but without the
fanatic's bitterness. For he had unusual re¬
sources of good will, magnanimity, superiority
to contention, and ability to forgive insults and
contempt.
When the sources of the man's power are
analyzed it will be seen that judged by sheer in¬
tellectual ability, he had not a few superiors
past and present, Negroes with wider culture,
more flexible and cleverer intellects knowing
more of literature and history and finer styles.
Frederick Douglass symbolized such a group in
reconstruction days. Prof. W. E. B. Du Bois does
now. But Washington had wit and humor, was
a keen observer of affairs, drew his anecdotes
and illustrations from the comedy and tragedy
he saw 'round him. Knowing his abilities both
as thinker and orator he never tried to be what
he could not reasonably be, but tenaciously clung
to a few fundamental truths in which he believe
In The Press Of The Nation
197
ed„ and set them forth emotionally and fluently,
albeit with restraint and careful use of words.
The man gave weight to his spoken mes¬
sage. He was no poser. Sincerity, good sense,
devotion to a cause—all rather in good will—
these were the characteristics of the man as he
went up and down the land, for many years a
sort of national "pet", using that word in a kind¬
ly way . His speeches made readers for his
books. His twelve books made hearers for his
speeches. If, of late, he has not drawn such large
audiences or been so much in evidence, it is
partly due to popular fickleness and partly to his
own indiscretions. But a time has returned for
fair judgment of the man and the work that he
wrought, and for the policy he defined for his
race. It must take into account the handicaps
with which he was weighed, and the deep-rooted
convictions against which he had to contend.
He must be judged by the constancy of a major¬
ity of his race to his leadership, and by the sort
of men who stood with him as trustees and
backers of Tuskegee Institute. Some estimate
of the difficulty which even the best-informed
men now have in naming a man to take his place
as a racial leader, so wide is the gap between
what he had become to be and what any other
198
Booker T. Washington
Negro has earned in apprenticeship to the cause
for which he lived. And what was that cause,
making economically independent- and educa¬
tionally efficient millions of descendants of illi-
erate slaves suddenly turned freedmen and faced
with the need of self-support.
THE ROANOKE NEWS.
Booker T. Washington without a doubt was
the wisest Negro of his day and generation and
it is greatly to his credit that he applied his wis¬
dom to directing his people's energies and activ¬
ities into lines which they were best adapted. He
was shrewd enough to recognize the Negro's
limitations and he devoted his life to training
young Negro men and women to do the work
they were best fitted to perform. As Col. Roose¬
velt said of him, he "rendered greater service
to his own race than had ever been rendered by
anyone else, and in so doing, also rendered great
service to the whole country." Born a slave, the
fame and influence that came to him later in
life did not turn his head and he never ceased to
labor earnestly for the upbuilding of his race.
He loved the South and when he realized that
the end was near he insisted that he be carried
In The Press Of The Nation
199
to the "land of cotton" to await the coming of
death, for he felt that it was fitting that he
should die in the section in which he was born
and in the section in which he had passed his
life. His influence upon his race will live long
and it can be said of him in all truth that the
world is the better for his having lived and
wrought in it,
Dr. Washington had no difficulty in under¬
standing the reasons of white supremacy. He did
not attribute all to their knowledge of Latin and
mathematics. He knew that the reason the white
man ruled and would continue to rule was that
he had steady employment and money in the
bank.
It was this thing he taught his race. And
his teachings have borne fruit. He has not tired
of dwelling on the fact that the negro farmers
of the south in 1910 owned more than one billion
dollars worth of cultivated farms, and that 2,-
500,000 negroes in the United States own their
homes.
The keynote of all Dr. Washington's teach¬
ings was "efficiency." His object was to make
the negro efficient in the development of the
south. He worked in harmony with the whites,
200
Booker T. Washington
and they always were ready to work with him.
Washington was the greatest man the negro
race has produced. In his death it has suffered
a tremendous loss. It remains to be seen whether
there is a man among the negroes capable of tak¬
ing up and carrying on his work.
DR. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
THE FREEMAN, Indianapolis, Ind.
In the passing of Dr. Booker T. Washington
the race loses its foremost member and the coun¬
try one of its most useful citizens. Other race
men have won distinctions, but in other fields,
especially statesmanship and politics. Such men
as Douglass, Bruce, Langston reached eminence
in those fields. Scores of others can well be cited
who became more or less distinguished in other
lines of endeavor. But until Booker T. Wash¬
ington came with his new (old) philosophy of
providing a fitting ground work for a beginning
race, no one had greatly busied himself in that
direction. The industrial idea as a school incid¬
ent was old enough, but he saw the reasonable¬
ness of applying it to the needs of his people who
were groping their way to the citizenship in
In The Press Of The Nation
201
reality which so suddenly fell to them—the re¬
sult of the country's most troublesome days.
Booker T Washington happened to be the
man of the hour, just as Abraham Lincoln was
the man of the hour. The assertion is not meant
to detract from what is due him in the least.
For with the hour a man had to be born, if a
great work was to be done, one who knew
what to do and when to do it. Had he not come
along with his peculiar insight, perhaps, there
would have been no Tuskegee. And when this
is said we mean that we, perhaps, would not have
had this great institution, sending its inspiration
through the race like electrical impulses giving
life and character to all things touched. This is
Tuskegee and as conceived by the master.
It may not be that Dr. Washington conceiv¬
ed the whole Tuskegee plan at the very begin¬
ning. He was no less for that; since he had the
endowment—the rare discernment, the judg¬
ment, which after all are the underlying quali¬
ties of greatness. He was great as an executive.
This means that as the years went by new pos¬
sibilities for the institution were unfolded.
Other men may have seen what he saw, it is
charitable to say so; but other men did not seize
the opportunities. Other men lacked the initia-
202
Booker T. Washington
tive, the address or proper mode of attack when
pressing their causes, if they pressed them at
all
Nor must we think that Dr. Washington was
humbler than he should have been. His speech
at Altanta, Ga., in 1895, and which appears else¬
where in this issue was like as the sermon on the
mount when it comes to expressions that will
not perish. But very little revision of his utter¬
ances of that day is needed if any at all. Our
race did have, and does have a fondness for be¬
ginning at the top. It is not altogether a bad fault
since it signifies pride and ambition. But to have
these without the ground work of the common
and necessary useful is just as wrong as it was
twenty years ago.
He insisted on casting the bucket down
where you are. This application may not be
so strict today, but it holds good. Our race is
prodigal with opportunities—with its means. Of
course, there is not opportunity for wide excur¬
sions into the affairs of the other race, but we
can not get away from the fact that we have
practically unbounded opportunities right with¬
in the race.
Dr. Washington, in former years, met some
objections to his educational views among his
In The Press Of The Nation 203
own people. The objection, however, grew less
as the years went by, when it was found that he
was not trying to make his education the "state"
education for the Negro race. He at no time
took a stand against the higher education. He
clung to his own views that the masses had to be
trained along the lines of their probable future
employment—a very sane doctrine—leaving it
to the elect and well prepared to take on as much
education as they could get. Tuskegee features
industrialism, but it must not be forgotten that
the product of the scholastic department meets
every demand of this day, refuting the argu¬
ment that Tuskegee stood for limitations- In
his Atlanta speech he said: "There is no defense
or security for any of us except in the high in¬
telligence and development of all."
Tuskegee rapidly grew in importance as the
years went by, and as the master mind took ad¬
vantage of passing opportunities. Here were
his wisdom and greatness, all compelling; execu¬
tive as we have said, marshalling about him cen¬
ters of influence, groups and individuals, that
made for a distinct Tuskegee idea, and as an¬
nounced in the preamble. Tuskegee is a univer¬
sity, differing only from the institutions best
known by that name in that Dr. Washington's
204
Booker T. Washington
school dealt with the things more nearly in reach
of the masses. The student is actually fitted
for the world in which he is to move. He is in
daily contact with the probable things of his
whole career.
The beauty of such things was appealing.
Only a few men of wealth could keep their
purses closed when he spoke of the general up¬
lift of citizenship, through his institution, thus
contributing to the stability—the tranquility of
the state. Preparedness for citizenship was the
keynote; it was finely plausible, and Dr. Wash¬
ington successfully moved among us, the apostle
of an educational righteousness that could not
be assailed. North and south, east and west,
gave support to Tuskegee, continued support
proving the undeniable value of the man and his
institution.
His one shanty, and then a few more, grew
and grew until the day of his death, when Tuske¬
gee was like a city—a perfect city. No thing
is wanting to make it complete. It is pleasurable
convenient to the many students and a delight
to visitors.
As for usefulness Dr. Booker T. Wash¬
ington was the foremost man of his race. Very
few men of any race have wrought so usefully
In The Press Of The Nation
205
for mankind The great inventors are held
blessed, and they are, and the great Negro edu¬
cational pathfinder was like them. What he gave
the Negro race, including his great skill in man¬
aging it, constitutes his greatness. It will not
be possible to see him in parts. He was a most
pleasing, persuasive, interesting speaker. He
had success as a teacher. He had the art of gen-
eraling men, and in other directions he measur¬
ed with thoughtful men generally. But it was
the total man that made for the great Dr. Book¬
er T. Washington his great work and person¬
ality. He found himself at home and at ease in
the best society; kings and presidents found him
agreeable and companionable, just as he appear¬
ed to the humblest of his own race. Tact was his
forte—this was his talent and cause, were the
open sesame to hearts and homes.
THE COLORED PRESS ON THE DEATH OF
DR BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
THE ATLANTA (Ga ) INDEPENDENT
He demonstrated in his life and character,
the possibilities of his race. His life and achieve¬
ments stood out as the most striking and con-
206
Booker T. Washington
elusive evidence that God Almighty, in His wis¬
dom and goodness made all men equal and en¬
titled to enjoy the inalienable rights of life lib¬
erty and happiness, and that no race, creed or
sex has a monopoly upon the possibilities or ca¬
pacities of men for usefulness and contribution
to the world's civilization. Mr. Washington
made no effort at race leadership; he sought to
lead the world in his line, and he succeeded. He
was pre-eminently the leading industrial advo¬
cate of his day. He dignified labor and work with
the hands as no man before him was able to do.
He removed the stigma of disgrace from work
with the hands, and taught the world that
"Honor from no condition rises,
Act well your part, there the honor lies."
THE ZION STAR.
His death comes as a distinct shock to his
own race and to the nation. From poverty and
obscurity Booker T. Washington had risen to an
eminence scarcely equalled by any other man of
his time. John Bright, the eminent English
statesman, after a tour in this country, said that
the three greatest men he saw in America were
Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington and
In The Press Of The Nation
207
Chas. W. Eliot. Any list of great Americans is
incomplete without the name of this Negro
teacher-statesman. As the the apostle of indus¬
trial education he taught the world. Commis¬
sions not only from all parts of America, but
from Europe, Asia and even Africa journeyed
to Tuskegee and went away declaring that "the
half had not been told." He had made the poor
pine hills of that Alabama town blossom as a
rose. Tuskegee leads all schools regardless of
race and language in the industrial education.
Booker Washington was one of the earth's
choicest spirits. He was strong in body, bril¬
liant in intellect, noble in character, great in
aims and lofty purposes. He was logical in
thought, clear in expression and courageous in
following his convictions. He loved his country
with an intense love and the welfare of his peo¬
ple was his highest aim. He was loyal to the race
which he so faithfully led and was ever faithful
to the trust, able and fearless in expressing and
advocating his views and devoted to those poli¬
cies which he believed to be for the good of all.
—East Tennessee News.
208
Booker T. Washington
THE BOSTON POST.
Booker T. Washington, head of the fam¬
ous Tuskegee Institute and recognized leader
of the colored people, was a frequent visitor to
Boston, where he gave many lectures and ad¬
dresses before many men and women of his own
race and in the churches in behalf of his school
and the advancement of the race.
He was welcomed into many Boston homes,
and in 1907 was the recipient of a signal honor
by the colored Masons of Boston when Masonic
degrees were confered upon him by the grand
lodge, F. and A. M. of Massachusetts.
Mr. Washington was the intimate friend
of McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft and Cleveland and
was a frequent visitor at the White House dur¬
ing their administrations. His institute receiv¬
ed generous support from many of the leading
financiers of the country.
In 1900 he was granted a life pension by the
Carnegie Pension Fund Commission.
He traveled extensively and on one of his visits
to Europe in 1910 was given an audience by the
King and Queen of Denmark, during which he
was urged to establish a school in the Danish
West Indies similar to that at Tuskegee.
from the jaws of carrizau
These are all of the black troops that survived the deadly amhush at Carrizal,
Mexico. The troopers had just crossed the line at El Faso and ard holding flowers
given them by their friends.
In The Press Of The Nation 209
BOOKER T WASHINGTON.
AN APPRECIATION.
Address by W. T. B Wlilliams.)
This address was delivered on Devember 9 at the Memorial
Exercises in East Orange on "Booker Washington Day"—a day
set apart in the State of New Jersey for showing respect "for
the great Negro Scho'lar, publicist, an deducator." This plan,
conceived by a Memorial Committee of colored men, was en¬
dorsed by Governor Fielder, who added the following tribute:
"Mr. Washington was a great man and a born leader, whose
keen insight into human nature, combined with the develop¬
ment of his mind, made him a power for good in this country
and a powerful factor in bringing about a better understanding
between his race and mine."
Mr. Williams, is a Harvard graduate, now engaged in edu¬
cational work'in the South as field agent for the Jeanes and
Slater Funds and for Hampton Institute—The Editors.
JJY common consent Dr. Booker T. Washing¬
ton is regarded as the greatest Negro of his
time,if not all time. It is generally admitted,
too, that he is one of the greatest men of any
race that has come out of the South since the
Civil War. And such have been the amount and
quality of his services to his section that, though
he was a Negro and born a slave, the South
proudly joins with the nation in ascribing to him
210
Booker T. Washington
the qualities of greatness. These estimates he
richly deserved by his unselfish, inspiring, use¬
ful life. We can add nothing to the honor that
has been so generously accorded him in his life,
and since his untimely death. It is fitting, how¬
ever, that we add our portion of praise, and that,
for our own sakes, we try in some measure to
evaluate his services to his race, to his section,
to his country, and to the world. All are richer
for his splendid life.
Booker T. Washington was certainly not
born to greatness. And whatever of greatness
was thrust upon him came as a result of the
greatness he achieved. He was the most prac¬
tical of men, yet at the same time a man of great
imagination, a dreamer of dreams. But he had
the power of making his dreams come true. He
saw with clear vision, when others doubted, a
great future for his race, and he was among the
first to visualize the coming remarkable develop¬
ment of the South. He had confidence in the
Negro in spite of his failures, and never doubted
the ultimate triumph of intelligence and effici¬
ency in the black man- He had the ability to
keep his eye steadfastly on the goal he had set
for himself and his pepole, and to let nothing
obscure his view or turn him from his chosen
In The Press Of The Nation
211
path—neither time nor distance, success or fail¬
ure, narrowness nor prejudice nor misunder¬
standings, from his own race or from the white
race. Littleness had no place in him. He look¬
ed far into the future, and saw things in the
large. But he was able to take infinite pains
to accomplish his ends. -He combined many of
the qualities of the far-seeing constructive
statesman and the modern captain of industry.
He understood men of these types, and talked
with them in terms they appreciated, winning
from them the material support necessary to his
own work. Nothing hazy or uncertain charac¬
terized his plans. He worked with a well-order¬
ed, definite aim. He saw that the South was an
open field for unlimited material development,
and that, with this, new spiritual forces must
be created. Unhampered by traditional edu¬
cation and training, he understood that the fu¬
ture civilization of the South must be erected
upon a substantial material foundation and that
the first need was efficient skilled labor. Here
he was upon bed-rock principles, demonstrated
by the experience of all peoples who have made
any progress out of the ordinary. Accordingly
Booker T. Washington found his task already
cut out and waiting for him. It was his great-
212
Booker T. Washington
ness, however, that enabled him to see it, and
that led him, in lowly fashion, to undertake its
accomplishment. He must lead his people to see
that, if they would take advantage of their posi¬
tion in the South, they must prepare themselves
to supply the pressing need of skilled laborers
in the common industries of their section.
In his work of regeneration, Dr Washing¬
ton's suggestion was not only foreign to existing
educational ideals in the South but to the estab¬
lished practice of schools nearly everywhere.
This new idea had made some headway in Vir¬
ginia, where it originated with General Arm¬
strong at Hampton Institute. But Dr. Wash¬
ington had to do pioneer work with it in the
lower South, and finally he became its chief
apostle to the Nation.
During these years torrents of opposition
to his educational ideals poured in upon Dr.
Washington from well-educated, capable, honest
Negroes of more sensitive natures~but narrower
vision. But he kept steadily and persistently on
his way, to the very end. And he lived to see
his course justified to the extent that there is
no school of importance for Negroes today that
has not incorporated into its curriculum some
form of the work for which he stood. And the
In The Press Of The Nation
213
conservative white South is rapidly vitalizing its
whole educational system by the adoption of
the principles most effectively championed by
Booker T. Washington. It must never be for-
jgotten that Dr. Washington worked just as
earnestly and as constantly for the betterment
of the whole South as for the improvement of
his race. The Negro was merely the present,
imperatively needy, more plastic means to the
larger end.
The task Washington undertook was new,
difficult, and enormous in its proportions. White
people and black people doubted its accomp¬
lishment. His first and most important duty
was to dispel the commonly accepted notions of
the white people regarding the Negro—notions
both as to his capabilities and as to his desires
and intentions—and to inspire belief in the
Negro- Then he must awaken in the common
masses of colored people respect for and confi¬
dence in themselves, and equip them with or¬
dinary intelligence, mechanical skill, and indus¬
trial efficiency, as well as inspire them with the
impulse for sustained effective labor. While
others were properly enough contending for
rights and privileges for the Negro, Washing¬
ton was striving to lead the dense, untutored
214
Booker T. Washington
masses of his people to a higher average intelli¬
gence, to industrial efficiency, and to wealth, and
to awaken in both races a spirit of good will—
the very conditions for rights and privileges.
The practical nature of this platform read¬
ily became apparent. It lessened the tension
between the races. It caught the fancy of the-
public, and won for the Negro temoprary ad¬
vantages that gave him time and opportunity
to gain a surer footing in the South, a vantage
ground from which work for every right and
privilege accorded every other citizen of this
republic. Nothing short of this was Washing¬
ton's ultimate aim. But he was willing, as he
saw he must, to bide his time, and to train his
race to reach its goal by the sure paths of work
and worth. He would make the Negro so useful
and desirable that the South would want him as
a citizen and prefer his presence to that of any
peoples from outside. He would have the Negro
attempt the possible things from day to day, and
so in the end reach all the desirable things.
The physical freedom of the Negro in Amer¬
ica was won on the battlefield, where colored
troops played no inconspicuous or unimportant
part.. But his truer freedom has come through
the more peaceful methods of the schools. Dr.
In The Press Of The Nation
215
Washington used his school as his laboratory
for working out his ideas, and from it, and in its
interest, he preached his educational doctrines.
But Tuskegee Institute, which he founded and
directed, has been as eloquent in its way as Dr.
Washington himself. Indeed, it is Booker T.
Washington. It is one of the most remarkable
institutions in the world. Certainly is it the
greatest ever built and conducted by a Negro. No
colored man can go to Tuskegee and not feel a
bit prouder of being a Negro after seeing this
wonderful institution, created by a member of
his own race and administered by his black
brothers and sisters.
But in spite of its size and impressiveness
Tuskegee has been kept very simple. It was
planned as a school for the masses of the colored
people. And to this day no Negro boy or girl
from anywhere, or with however limited an edu¬
cation is turned away. The School gives scant
attention to conventional education, as such, and
accordingly has exposed itself to endless shallow
criticism. It chooses rather to train youths to
do the work of the world, and uses these pro¬
cesses as means of education and development.
Books are only incidental accessories in the pro¬
cedure. Along with this teaching goes training
216
Booker T. Washington
in habits of industry, order, thrift, cleanliness,
and the intellectual and moral discipline of a
well-ordered school. Annually Tuskegee sends
out scores of graduates as trained mechanics,
farmers and teachers. They spread every¬
where the doctrine of the dignity of labor, of
thrift, order, cleanliness, and of friendly rela¬
tions with men. Nothing is more remarkable
than Tuskegee's ability to impress its students
with the principles for which it stands and to
send them out as militant missionaries of the
cause. Every graduate becomes a live center for
the propagation of Tuskegee ideas. He goes
forth determined to build a new Tuskegee wher¬
ever he may be located. ,
As a matter of fact, a dozen or more schools
of importance have been founded and are con¬
ducted by graduates of Tuskegee. There is at
least one in nearly every Southern state. If the
ability to reproduce one's self, or to project one's
self into the future, is the measure of the
strength and vitality of a man or a movement,
Dr. Washington and his school admirably meet
these conditions. These offsprings of Tuskegee
breed true to type in the minutest details. A
friend of mine who is quite critical of the whole
Washington movement once stood with me on
In The Press Op The Nation
217
the beautiful grounds of one of these Tuskegee
offshoots and watched the uniformed students
march by. He turned to me and said, "No little
man could have determined the shape of those
coats or the cut and color of those dresses."
Dr. Washington has not only dominated the
group of Tuskegee offshoots and other schools
devoted to industrial training, he has affected
the public schools as well. He has created a type
of rural school that takes hold of all the activi¬
ties of the neighborhood and trains pupils to
perform their everyday duties with greater in¬
telligence and skill while carrying on the regular
literary work. He strove constantly to break
down the barrier between school and life and to
make the two interact upon each other. He
would have the country schoolhouse look as
much like a dwelling as possible, with a man and
his wife as teachers living in it, surrounded with
garden, orchard, barns with horses, cows, pigs,
and chickens. Books he would use, of course,
but mainly as aids to completer undestanding
and mastery of the real problems of life about
the schools. So, instead of lessening the in¬
fluence of the public school, as he has been
charged with doing, he has shown the way to
magnify its influence and to vitalize its work.
218
Booker T. Washington
Not only did he teach men how to improve
the public school, and showed the way to do it,
but with Dr. Frissell at Hampton, and others,
he has helped to develop a new and far-reaching
work for the Negro teacher—that of industrial
supervisor of rural schools. "These young
women," declared a distinguished, well-inform¬
ed Southern white woman recently; "are doing
the most significant work in Southern education
today," and she added that she was doing every¬
thing in her power to get such workers for the
white public schools. These colored supervisors
are interpreting the public schools to the Neg¬
roes and showing them the possibilities for prac¬
tical, no less than for cultural education. They
are also showing the local white pepole what an
instrument for sensible, helpful industrial train¬
ing these neglected little Negro schools may be
made ,and are thereby winning increased finan¬
cial support for such schools. They are waking
up school officials with these new and effective
forms of educational practice, and, by their
labors ,are helping to create careers for superin¬
tendents which hitherto these officials never
dreamed of. Such are the forces that a few
choice spirits, with Washington in the forefront,
In The Press Of The Nation
219
have set a-going in the Southland. When the
Negro public school had reached its lowest point
in efficiency, Washington helped to galvanize it
into life again with these vital forms of edu¬
cation.
It is not strange, then, that Tuskegee has be¬
come an educational shrine to which schoolmen
from all over the world have journeyed. Dr.
Washington's remarkable personality also made
it a place where the rich and great from the
North and from the South might meet and for¬
get their differences and plan for a better South
and a grander nation. Tuskegee has also be¬
come a meeting place for the humbler school
officials—superintendents, directors, and prin¬
cipals—to study and plan. Only last winter, at
a meeting of Southern county superintendents
and Jeanes industrial teachers, these superin¬
tendents demanded that ampler provision be
made at Tuskegee Institute for the entertain¬
ment of white people, for they felt that Southern
people in large numbers ought to come and
study the work of this institution.
And what other lessons has not Dr. Wash¬
ington taught with this remarkable school ? He
built it up from humble beginnings to a plant
220
Booker T. Washington
costing millions of dollars, with an endowment
of two millions. And difficult as it is to man
effectively so large an educational institution, he
called to his assistance only Negro teachers and
workers. He believed, with Bishop Haygood,
that Negro ears were made for Negro tongues,
and that, all things considered, no one could
teach a Negro youth so effectively as a member
of his own race. To Negro youths, these teach¬
ers were a wonderfully inspiring example, and
to the world they served as a splendid illustra¬
tion of the Negro's ability to administer his own
affairs and to discharge a large and important
trust. So successfully has this service been
rendered, that there is no question, for instance,
about a Negro successor to Dr. Washington or
about changing Negro officers and teachers at
the .institution. This is a tremendously impor¬
tant lesson to have taught a doubting world. The
gain therefrom is shared by every Negro man
and woman. Only a great man colud have made
Tuskegee possible; but it took much of the same
quality of greatness for a Negro to have entrust¬
ed its weighty administration to his fellows.
On his speaking tours throughout the
North Dr. Washington rendered the cause of the
In The Press Of The Nation
221
Negro incalculable service. But, great and im¬
portant and absolutely necessary as was this
work, yet, to me, the tours he made through the
Southern states were of greater significance.
First, last, and all the time, Dr. Washington was
a lover of the South. His aim on all these
tours, as he frequently said, was to study condi¬
tions at first hand, to say whatever he could to
improve these conditions, and to cement the
good feeling between the races. These efforts
were the finest examples of his constructive
statesmanship. It was a great opportunity to
accompany him on these tours, as, again and
again, I had the privilege of doing. This was
the work for which Dr. Washington was better
fitted than any other man in America. No one
else of commanding importance had, to the same
extent, the respect and confidence of both races
of all sections. A white man,, however promin¬
ent, could have reached only the white people
in the South.. No other Negro could have got
hold of the masses of Southern whites and blacks
as he did. He brought together the rank and
file, the high and the low, of both races, and with
his incisive but kindly logic, made them reason
over their difficulties; and with his inimitable
222
Booker T. Washington
humor, he heartened them to laugh away their
troubles. He dug deep down beneath their pre¬
judices and hatreds, and tapped hidden springs
of kindliness and good will, and set genial, lib¬
eralizing streams aflow. He revealed each race
to. itself, and interpreted the one to the other.
He was large enough to comprehend both, and
wise enough to understand their common inter¬
ests. Wherever he went on these tours in the
South, awakened confidence gained on arrogant
suspicion, and sprightly kindliness entered upon
winning battles with sluggish hatred and ill-will.
The generous, unselfish, helpful spirit of this
iuan inspired all classes to strive for the ma¬
terial, social and spiritual regeneration of every
Southern section he touched.
As he grew in the confidence of men and
gained widely in influence, praise and even adu¬
lation took the place of the censure and opposi¬
tion which had too often been his portion. But
Washington never lost his head, nor used his
power for selfish ends. He accepted his respon¬
sibility with knightly noblesse oblige, and used
his influence for the good of his race. The Na¬
tional Negro Business. League illustrates the
constructive uses to which he put his powers.
In The Press Of The Nation 223
He alone could catch the imagination and bring
together these diverse, secretive, vigorously in¬
dependent elements, and unite them into an in¬
spiring example of fundamental racial progress.
Again, he looked deep into the needs of the race
and saw the imperative necessity for better
health conditions among the colored people if
they are to hold their own or make progress
in this strenuous age. Then he set on foot,
through the Tuskegee Conference, an exhaus¬
tive investigation into Negro health, and by the
force of his power and position as national lead¬
er, he decreed a "clean-up week" for the Negroes
of the Nation.
It was this breadth of sympathy, comprehen¬
siveness of view, and striking initiative, that
gave Washington the power and position of a
national leader. He led, not by accident or
chance, but because he possessed so many of the
essential elements of leadership, and champion¬
ed live, fundamental issues. He loved all men,
but especially the man farthest down, the crowd,
the common herd. At one of his great meetings
where Negroes are thickest in North Carolina,
his chauffeur rushed him away from the train
through the city into the suburbs before Dr.
224
Booker T. Washington
Washington noticed what was happening. When
he asked the chauffeur where he was taking him,
he replied, "I am getting you away from the
crowd." "Go back," said Dr. Washington, "I
came here to meet the crowd." He was never so
happy as when.addressing simple, crude, coun¬
try people, and especially farmers. . He entered
into their feelings and experiences and enshrin¬
ed himself in their hearts. His sympathies gave
him the power to lead, where so many others
have no fitness for leadership. But he never
flattered nor over-rated his people, nor tried to
deceive them as to the position they occupied.
He frequently felt called upon to tell them very
plain, and often unwelcome, truths about them¬
selves. However, he would work with his people
wherever he found them, and try to build them
from the ground up. The masses of his race,
with their simple, hard, common sense, appre¬
ciated his efforts and set him on high as their
leader. And the great hosts of Negro men and
women of every walk and station rejoiced to be
counted with them in their fealty to their chief.
In a single lifetime a man can do but little.
Booker T. Washington wrought tremendously
in the brief span alloted to him. He undertook
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
In The Press Of The Nation 225
the uplift of a race in need of everything. He
chose "first things first," singled out the necess¬
ary and worked mightily toward perfection. He
established an educational institution upon new
lines, and set it the difficult task of justifying
its existence in his day and in its own neighbor¬
hood. It has become the admiration of the
world. It has brought peace and prosperity
to the little town of Tuskegee and to Macon
County about it. Through its graduates, and
the farmers reached by the various conferences,
it has influenced and blessed numerous sections
of every portion of the South and of the islands
of the sea. Dr. Washington himself has been a
compelling factor in the Negro's accumulation
of six hundred million dollars of wealth, for this
has been the burden of his effective teaching.
He has influenced for good the whole course of
education in the South, and has made special,
helpful contributions to the work of Negro
schools. He has taught the nation the
value and importance of Negro education and
has pointed out its duty in the matter.
Dr. Washington did more than any other
man could do to establish good feeling between
the races in the South. At the same time he was
226
Booker T. Washington
continually rendering his own race incompar¬
able service, and he won from them a following
such as has been accorded no other Negro
in America. The nation united in honoring him
at his death, and, as the Montgomery Journal
says, the press of the South has eulogized Book¬
er Washington "as no other Negro in the history
of the South or of the country has been eulo¬
gized." He was far-seeing, practical, wise, sim¬
ple, kind, great.
In The Press Of The Nation
227
THE SERVANT OF ALL.
Address of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt at the Memorial
Service held for Principal Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee
Institute,, December 12, 1915.
TF I were obliged to choose one sentence out of
all the sentences that have been written in
which to sum up what seems to me the deepest
religious spirit, I should take a phrase from the
prophet Micah, which says, "What more doth
the Lord require of thee than to do justice and
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy
God?"—and Booker Washington did justice to
every man, no injustice could swerve him from
the path of justice to others, and he not only
loved mercy, but he lived the love he felt for
mercy, and, finally, he walked humbly with his
God. There was not in him a touch of unworthy
abasement: but there was the genuine humility
of spirit that made him eager and anxious to
Avalk humbly and work humbly with his God for
the welfare of his race. There is not one of you
here, not one of you tonight,black man or white,
who does not know that every word I am speak¬
ing is the exact truth.
228
Booker T.- Washington
Many of you realize that in the long rim you
cannot help any of us very much unless you help
all of us a little; but it is one thing to realize
and^ Booker Washington lived up to it in life,
and Booker Wishington lived up to his reali¬
zation of that truth—Booker Washington, who
came from so low down that he had to climb
upward, upward, upward, steadily all the time in
order that he might help others ,yet at every
step that he took upward, stretched out his hand
to help a man who was still on the step beneath.
No failure by anyone else to appreciate what he
was doing ever made him bitter toward that
man. His aim was to help the white man just
as much as his aim was to help the black man.
He had that great spirit of patriotic loyalty to
the country which showed itself in the desire to
make this country a better place in which our
children shall live. He had the forward look
which enabled him to see what the country need¬
ed, and then the power to strive that he might
realize the ideal that was in his soul.
I am certain that there is not a person here
who was not deeply touched by the address to
which we have listened this evening made on be¬
half of the Alumni. Booker Washington does
not need any monument in stone; he has his
In The Press Of The Nation
229
monument now. The man whose life work can
inspire the speech from one of his pupils to
which we have listened has a monument pre¬
cious above all others. I want to say just one
word in addition to what was said and what I
think was implied in that speech: I merely wish
to express it just a little more clearly. Mr. Fish¬
er said that Booker Washington realized that
the colored man and the colored woman had to
be trained for economic fitness in the commun¬
ity. Of course, together with that training,
went steadily the training for moral rectitude,
for cleanliness and decency in life. With it went
also the realization on his part that it was nec¬
essary to instill into his pupils honesty, fair deal¬
ing, consideration for men and women, and right
behavior, not merely as accompaniments, but as
part of the life of economic fitness in the com¬
munity. As I say, I know that was implied in
Mr. Fisher's address and I am merely express¬
ing it so that there shall not be any chance fail¬
ure to understand that it was there.
Booker Washington owed his wonderful
success, his wonderful achievement, to the com¬
bination of many rare qualities. It was not to
any one quality alone that he owed success and
achievement, it was to many. He understood,
230
Booker T. Washington
for example, and preached the gospel of effi¬
ciency, the gospel of work, and he realized that
this is as necessary for a white man as it is for
the black man; that for almost all of us there
must be a foundation of manual efficiency, of the
efficiency that is industrial, or else there cannot
be a superstructive of mere efficiency built
upon it. Men have got to learn to do the pri¬
mary useful things before they do the things
that are secondarily useful, and the average
man in the community must have the efficiency
that shows itself in the work of the mechanic
in the city, or the work of the farmer in the
country, else the community cannot be on a
healthy basis. He realized that thoroughly. He
realized the necessity of that in order that the
colored man might become a useful member of
the community. He realized just as much that
the colored man could not be a useful member of
the community unless he was respected by, and
was on good terms with, the white man, and,
further, that the white man whose good will and
respect were most essential to him was the
white man who was his neighbor.
It is the Southern white man whom it is in¬
dispensable to have feel good will and respect
for his black neighbor, and no white man in
In The Press Of The Nation
231
any other part of the world can, by his good will
or respect, supply the lack of those qualities in
the white man who is the actual neighbor of the
black man. Booker Washington's steadfast pur¬
pose was to handle this situation so that Tuske-
gee should be expected by the white man in the
South to be an asset in the development of the
South, so that the white men of the South should
realize that it was to their advantage, to the ad¬
vantage of all our people, that this institution
should be a success. It was a great and noble
ideal, and it was a realized ideal long before
Booker Washington died.
Also, he had that quality, that essential
quality in every teacher (and when I say in
every teacher, I mean mother and father just
as much as school-teacher and I mean white
man and white woman just as much as black
man and black woman) which will teach the boy
and the girl that the real happiness of life is to
be found, not in shirking difficulties, but in over¬
coming them; not in striving to lead a life which
shall so far as possible avoid effort and labor and
hardship, but a life which shall face difficulty
and win over it, be it ever so hard, by labor very
intelligently entered into and resolutely per¬
severed in. He never sought to make you believe
232
Booker T. Washington
that you were going to have easy times ahead of
you. There are only a few people who do what
he did in life, and they are always the happiest
and they are really the most useful. He knew
that you would have difficulties. He taught you
to face them smilingly and resolutely and not
indulge in that most pernicious of habits, self-
pity. If you ever get to pitying yourselves too
much, you can make up your mind that nobody
else is entitled to pity you. He sought to make
those who were trained under him face life
cheerfully, and resolutely bend to do the best
they could with their physical, intellectual and
moral traits, and bend to make their neighbors—
those beside whom they lived, with whom they
did business—realize that it was a good thing
for everybody that these particular people
should have been trained in this particular in¬
stitution. That was his ideal—a composite ideal
—as high an ideal as any man in this country has
had since its foundation. I weigh my words
—as high an ideal as any man in this country
has had since its foundation—and he realized
that high standard. There can be no greater
tribute paid to any man.
He helped you; he helped every man whom he
approached in the effort to get that man to help
In The Press Of The Nation
233
you, for I have never known of one case in which
Booker Washington approached any man to get
him to help Booker Washington. I never knew
of such a case. He appealed to many men for
help, but it was always to help others, and to
help others in the only practical way—to help
them carry themselves. Booker Washington's
idea in appealing to any man for help was to
appeal for help for someone else, and his idea of
giving that help was to give it in the only way
in which help can ever be given, so as to be per¬
manently useful, to help the man to learn how
to help himself. That was the aim of Booker
Washington's teachings, in this institution and
in life.
I owe him much. I know of very many
people who owe him much. He was one of the
men to whose counsel and guidance I frequently
turned when I was President of the United
States. He was one of the men whom I summon¬
ed to aid me by his wisdom—a wisdom guided
by moral purpose accompanied with extraor¬
dinary sanity of judgment. I turned to him,
as I turned to only a limited number of other
men for advice, when I was President, because
I knew that never would he give me one word
of advice with any selfish purpose to benefit him-
234
Booker T. Washington
self, that he would never give me any advice save
what the exercise of his best judgment deemed
would be best, not only for the people of his race,
but for the people of all races.
Lowell, the poet who wrote so many noble
lines, wrote among them that in the long run the
safest motto is, "Not some men down, but all
men up," and it was that motto which guided
Booker Washington throughout his life; no man
in our country has ever by his life given a
clearer translation of that motto into action
than was given by Booker T. Washington.
In The Press Of The Nation
235
TUSKEOEE'S NEW HEAD.
Arthur W. Spaulding.
WHEN Dr. Booker T. Washington died, so
fully had he for nearly a generation filled
the mind of the public as the chief representative
of his race, and so thoroughly was his great
school identified with his personality, that to
most minds occurred the question: "What now
will become of Tuskegee?" Was there another
colored man prepared to take up and carry on
that great work which had become so wide¬
spread and influential? It was repugnant to the
history and the purpose of Tuskegee to choose
white leaders; and even were it otherwise, where
was the white man who could enter into the
spirit of the man who had made Tuskegee and of
his fellow workers who had built with him?
But when Tuskegee's trustee's had announ¬
ced their choice, every intelligent friend of the
Negro race applauded. For Major Robert R.
Moton had long been giving evidence of those
great qualities of sane and broad leadership
which are so sorely needed in the present state
236
Booker T. Washington
of the race. Washington was a pioneer, with
the enthusiasm, the magnetism, of a prophet.
He preached the glory of work, of duty, of ser¬
vice, of fulfilling the privileges of the present
rather than grasping for the privileges of the
future. He laid a foundation on which others
may build, with materials of which others should
make use.
But Moton, with perhaps less magnetic per¬
sonality, comes with a greater power as conser¬
vator and organizer. He has been trained in the
second period of Hampton, under the greatest
Negro's white leaders now living, Dr. Hollis B.
Frissell, a period which has been solidifying of
the great work of Armstrong, Hampton's found¬
er. Major Moton has for more than twenty
years been connected with Hampton as a teach¬
er and administrator, the special assistant of
Dr. Frissell, and widely recognized as being, next
to Dr* Booker T. Washington, the most influen¬
tial of Negro educators.
Unlike Dr. Washington, who had some ad¬
mixture of white blood, Major Moton is of pure
Negro stock, the descendant of a West Coast
chief who was stolen into slavery in 1735. In
some sense, by his present promotion, Major
Moton will be looked to by many as the leader of
In The Press Of The Nation
237
bis race in America, a position, nevertheless,
given less by his succession to Washington's
work than by his own demonstrated power of
leadership. Most fully indicative of his fitness
is his modest disclaimer of his ability: "I hope no
one will believe that I, for a moment, think that
I can fill Dr. Washington's place. I am earnestly
and humbly aware that this is well-nigh impos¬
sible. It will require the combined energy and
efforts of all the Negroes in America, and then
they will need the cooperation and backing of the
white people to carry on Dr. Washington's
work."
It was Washington's great work, on the one
hand, to inspire the Negro people with the dig¬
nity and the value of labor and service; and, on
the other, to draw together upon terms of amity
and mutual usefulness the two most alien races
of America. In the development of the grave
problems contained in the relations of the white
and the black races, there has now come a new
situation, an increasingly acute crisis. Upon
Major Moton in great degree will rest the re¬
sponsibility of guiding his people for the rest of
the wilderness journey. He recognizes and em¬
phasises the basic principles upon which Wash¬
ington's work was built: in the Negro, self-re-
238
Booker T. Washington
spect, industry, frugality, and service; in both
races, that open-mindedness and cooperation
which alone can insure their living together in
harmony and united progress. To this end we
may well join in the prayer of the old colored
preacher which Moton himself quoted at the
Negro Christian Students' convention held in
Atlanta last year:
"0 God of all races, will you please, Sir,
come in an' take charge of de min's of all dese
yere white people, an' fix dem so dat dey'll know
an' understan' dat all of us colored folks is not
lazy, dirty, dishones' an' no coun't, an' help dem.
Lord, to see dat most of us is prayin', workin',
an' strivin', to get some land, some houses, and
some ed'cation for ourselves an' our chillun, an'
get true 'ligion, an' dat most eve'y Negro in
Northampton County is doin' his lebel bes' to
make frien's an' get along wid de white folks.
Help dese yere white folks, 0 Lord, to unnerstan'
dis thing. Lord, while you is takin' charge ob de
min"s ob dese white peopl,e, don' pass by de
colored folks. Open de Negro's blin' eye dat he.
may see dat all de white folks is not mean and
dishones' an' prejudice' ag'inst de colored folks,
dat dere is hones', hard-workin', jus', an' God-
fearin' white folks in dis yere community who
In The Press Of The Nation
239
is tryin' de bes' dey know how, wid de circum¬
stances ag'inst dem, to be fair in dere dealin's
wid de colored folks, an' help dem to be 'spec-
table men an' women. Help us, Lord, black an'
white ,to unnerstan' each other more eve'y day."
240
Booker T. Washington
DR. WASHINGTON AS A CITIZEN AND
CHRISTIAN.
The incident which makes possible this sad
occasion is both touching and painful when view¬
ed without a knowledge of history and without
vision. In the death of Dr. Booker T. Washing¬
ton—which occurred at his home, Sunday morn¬
ing 4:40, Nov. 14th of this year—one of the old
and familiar land marks is removed, which, in
points of service and usefulness, outstrips all
others and stands in a class to itself. Born just
a little better than half a century ago—in
slavery, with all its attendant ills and beset-
ments—Dr. Washington was destined to become
a world-power along his chosen line—that of in¬
dustrialism, In this vast and varied field, he
specialized and became a specialist without a
guide or tutor, save his own fertile brains,
'Tis true General Armstrong and Dr. Marshall
had—during his student life at Hampton—
stimulated his potentialities and quickened his
mentality, but a man like Dr. Washington is
bigger by—measurelessly larger—than a school
In The Press Of The Nation
241
curriculum. His name is a household word
throughout the civilized world and the work he
did at Tuskegee, alone, will live "until the wreck
of matter and the crush of worlds." Not since,
nor before, the days of Pestalozzi has any man
had such a firm grasp upon the true meaning and
the real significance of industrialism and the ap¬
plied sciences. Had Dr. Washington not lived
and wrought mightily there would be no depart¬
ment of Commerce and Labor; and the Depart¬
ment of Agriculture would be poorer in achieve¬
ments and far less conspicuous in accomplish¬
ments.
The National Negro Business Men's League
and Farmers' Annual Conference—together
with the by-products of these concerns, such as
community fairs, corn clubs and other clubs—
are the result of his creative genius. And it
remains to be seen whether or not the future
historian, unbiased and clear-eyed to dutv—will
give this great man the credit he so richly de¬
serves. In his successful effort to dignify labor
and to give it a new meaning the South—and the
North, as for that matter—has fallen heir to a
priceless legacy, and the "racial mind" made
richer by the tolls and fruits of his labor. But
Dr. Washington is not dead—such a man never
242
Booker T. Washington
dies. He has simply boated across this little in¬
cidental chasm in the lives of all men—called
death—and entered into a fuller, bigger life. His
spirit—still with us—will yet serve to inspire
many a faint heart that shall journey on the up¬
ward way. And as God raised up a Joshua to
take the place of Moses; George Washington to
throw off the yoke of British oppression; an Al¬
fred the Great to free Briton from the fury of
the Northmen; an Abe Lincoln to preserve his
country; a Fred Douglass to champion the cause
of Universal freedom, so will he raise up for the
colored man, even mightier than Dr, Washing¬
ton. I have dealt thus with my subject: Dr.
Washington as a Christian and Citizen," because
Christianity and citizenship are best measured
by service and their true worth consist in what
one does here on earth; one's worth in one in¬
stance is—invariably—compassed and compre¬
hended by the other. And thus measured Dr.
Washington was an ideal citizen and an ideal
christian.