Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. Emmett J. Scott

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization - Emmett J. Scott

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Tuskegee in the making. Nothing delighted Mr. Washington more than to see his students doing the actual work of erecting the Tuskegee Institute buildings 12 Tuskegee Institute students laying the foundation for one of the four Emery buildings 14 "His influence, like that of his school, was at first community wide, then county wide, then State wide, and finally nation wide" 16 A study in black. Note the tensity of expression with which the group is following his each and every word 33 Showing some of the teams of farmers attending the Annual Tuskegee Negro Conference 58 An academic class. A problem in brick masonry 62 Mr. Washington in characteristic pose addressing an audience 136 Mr. Washington silhouetted against the crowd upon one of his educational tours 136 Mr. Washington in typical pose speaking to an audience 136 A party of friends who accompanied Dr. Washington on one of his educational tours 138 This old woman was a regular attendant at the Tuskegee Negro Conference 170 The cosmopolitan character of the Tuskegee student body is shown by the fact that during the past year students have come from the foreign countries or colonies of foreign countries indicated by the various flags shown in this picture 238 In 1906 the Tuskegee Institute celebrated its 25th Anniversary. A group of well-known American characters attended 248 Some of Mr. Washington's humble friends 274 Soil analysis. The students are required to work out in the laboratory the problems of the field and the shop 274 Mr. Washington was a great believer in the sweet potato 280 Mr. Washington had this picture especially posed to show off to the best advantage a part of the Tuskegee dairy herd 290 Mr. Washington feeding his chickens with green stuffs raised in his own garden 306 Mr. Washington in his onion patch 306 Mr. Washington sorting in his lettuce bed 306

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

       Table of Contents

       IT CAME about that in the year 1880, in Macon County, Alabama, a certain ex-Confederate colonel conceived the idea that if he could secure the Negro vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he coveted in the State Legislature. Accordingly, the colonel went to the leading Negro in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he could do to secure the Negro vote, for Negroes then voted in Alabama without restriction. This man, Lewis Adams by name, himself an ex-slave, promptly replied that what his race most wanted was education and what they most needed was industrial education, and that if he (the colonel) would agree to work for the passage of a bill appropriating money for the maintenance of an industrial school for Negroes, he (Adams) would help to get for him the Negro vote and the election. This bargain between an ex-slaveholder and an ex-slave was made and faithfully observed on both sides, with the result that the following year the Legislature of Alabama appropriated $2,000 a year for the establishment of a normal and industrial school for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General Armstrong of Hampton Institute a young colored man, Booker T. Washington, a recent graduate of and teacher at the Institute, was called from there to take charge of this landless, buildingless, teacherless, and studentless institution of learning.

      This move turned out to be a fatal mistake in the political career of the colonel. The appellation of "nigger lover" kept him ever after firmly wedged in his political grave. Thus, by the same stroke, was the career of an ex-slaveholder wrecked and that of an ex-slave made. This political blunder of a local office-seeker gave to education one of its great formative institutions, to the Negro race its greatest leader, and to America one of its greatest citizens.

      One is tempted to feel that Booker T. Washington was always popular and successful. On the contrary, for many years he had to fight his way inch by inch against the bitterest opposition, not only of the whites, but of his own race. At that time there was scarcely a Negro leader of any prominence who was not either a politician or a preacher. In the introduction to "Up from Slavery," Mr. Walter H. Page says of his first experience many years ago with Booker Washington: "I had occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as 'The Rev. Booker T. Washington.' In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as a clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and persisted in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a postscript: 'I have no claim to Rev.' I knew most of the colored men who at that time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher; and I had not heard of the head of an important colored school who was not a preacher. 'A new kind of man in the colored world,' I said to myself—'a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one."

      And just because Booker Washington did look "upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one" he was at first regarded with suspicion by most of the preachers of his race and by some openly denounced as irreligious and the founder of an irreligious school. Like so many men of greater opportunity in all ages and places, many of these Negro ministers confounded

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