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WASHINGTON, BOOKER T. 1856-1915

AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICAL LEADER AND EDUCATOR

Up from Slavery

Booker T. Washington was the most influential African American political, social, and educational leader of the 1900s . As head of the Tuskegee Institute and founder of the National Negro Business League he shaped an accommodationist strategy to cope with segregation and discrimination and became the center of a fierce debate among black leaders and intellectuals. He was born the son of a slave woman and a white father, whose identity he never learned, on a small farm in western Virginia in 1856. As a child Washington, who was taught the virtues of frugality, cleanliness, and personal morality, worked in a salt furnace and as a houseboy for a white family. In 1872 he entered Hampton Institute, graduating in 1875. There he formed one of the central ideas of his life: if African Americans were to be accorded equality and respect by whites, they would have to demonstrate their usefulness and establish their autonomy in concrete and unmistakable ways.

Tuskegee

This idea shaped the guiding principles of the Tuskegee Institute, which Washington founded in 1881. The school instructed its students in academic subjects, but it primarily emphasized training in carpentry, masonry, agriculture, cooking, and other basic skills. Washington shaped the curriculum at Tuskegee around manual training, not because he accepted the notion that blacks were inferior to whites but because he believed that the black community would have to establish a firm economic foundation before demanding political equality. Washington's ideals attracted the financial support of several northern white philanthropists, whose contributions helped to fund the dramatic expansion of Tuskegee in the 1880s and 1890s. The school was even accepted by most white southerners, despite their hostility to education for African Americans.

Washington and Jim Crow

In the 1890s and 1900s, as Washington's influence was reaching its peak, southern politics and government were being transformed by new legislation mandating separation of the races and disenfranchising black voters. These "Jim Crow" laws were advocated by white Democrats, who had controlled the region since the end of Reconstruction. Since virtually all southern blacks voted for the Republican Party—the party of Abraham Lincoln and not the party of most former slaveowners—disenfranchising black voters solidified Democratic control of the South and made it clear to disgruntled poor southerners that racial solidarity was the foremost political issue of the era. Washington's critics believed that in his 1895 address at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, he signaled to both whites and blacks his acceptance of segregation and political repression when he said, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." In the same address he advised black southerners to stay in the region rather than seeking opportunity in northern cities. When a year after Washington's Atlanta address the Supreme Court upheld the legality of segregated facilities, Washington seemed fully in step with white opinion and the political reality of the New South.

Republican Leader

Washington's prominence among whites, and a war chest he assembled at Tuskegee from funds donated by northern benefactors, made him an intimidating presence in black politics in the 1900s. His stature as a political leader with the power to influence federal patronage was immensely augmented in 1901, when Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington to dine with him at the White House. Southern Democrats were outraged, and blacks across the country were delighted at this signal that Roosevelt did not side with segregation. Despite the uproar that followed Washington's visit with the presidents, both Roosevelt and his successor, William Howard Taft, continued to consult with Washington throughout the 1900s on political appointments and policy issues touching on the race issue. While on the surface Washington seemed content to build his influence, he in fact was working behind the scenes throughout the 1900s to fight segregation, not through the ballot box but through establishing the economic importance of the black community to southern businessmen. He quietly supported boycotts of segregated streetcar lines, and he proclaimed that he did not "favor the Negro's giving up anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed to him by the Constitution."

Opposition

Despite these sentiments, Washington found himself confronted by increasingly vocal opposition from other African Americans in the 1900s, particularly those outside the rural South. The leading spokesman for an alternative black political strategy was W. E. B. Du Bois, who admired Washington's achievements but disagreed with his tactics. Du Bois argued that the only appropriate response to disfranchisement was to demand equality and to fight for it at the polls when possible and in the courts when necessary. While he shared Washington's aspirations for black economic independence (a goal Washington advanced in the 1900s through the National Negro Business League), Du Bois believed that African Americans were equally in need of a cadre of leaders with college educations and professional training. As an alternative to Washington's "Tuskegee Machine" Du Bois helped to organize the Niagara Movement in 1905 and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. While Du Bois's willingness to battle prejudice directly left an important legacy, so too did Washington's quiet diplomacy and emphasis on the need for the economic autonomy and independence of African Americans.