  It was not. In fact, Washington was explicit in the address in declaring that it was “important and right that all privileges of the law be ours…” He went further in articulating a vision of “that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law” (Washington 1895; 1992, p. 359).  Hearing, apparently, what they wanted to hear, not the fullness of what Washington wanted them to hear, anxious White people of power and influence certified him a ‘good and safe’ Negro and promptly made him their go-to Negro designated by them as “the Leader of the Negro people.” Washington accommodated them, in service to his own ego as well as in service to the benefit of the Negro race (by his own reasoning, of course). He was brilliantly skillful in executing a nuanced, pragmatic strategy of wearing a mask of seeming accommodation to White hegemony as he promoted Negro empowerment and self-sufficiency through education that stressed disciplined comportment, thrift, industrial and agricultural work, and ownership of property (and while clandestinely supporting securing political equality for Negroes). As an enlarged figure who brokered the largesse and influence of White people flowing to Negroes throughout the nation, and as the founding administrative and educational leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama that continues to provide education to persons of African descent, Booker T. Washington’s philosophizings, political engagements, and practical endeavors would have widespread, profound, and lasting impact.