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BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Builder of a Civilization

by

EMMETT J. SCOTT and LYMAN BEECHER STOWE

With a Preface by Theodore Roosevelt







[Illustration: logo]


Illustrated from Photographs


Garden City      New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1918

Copyright, 1916, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

Copyright, 1916, by the Outlook Publishing Co.



[Illustration: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON]




FOREWORD


In the passing of a character so unique as Dr. Booker T. Washington,
many of us, his friends, were anxious that his biography should be
written by those best qualified to do so. It is therefore a source of
gratification to us of his own race to have an account of Dr.
Washington's career set forth in a form at once accurate and readable,
such as will inspire unborn generations of <DW64>s and others to love
and appreciate all mankind of whatever race or color. It is especially
gratifying that this biography has been prepared by the two people in
all America best fitted, by antecedents and by intimate acquaintance
and association with Dr. Washington, to undertake it. Mr. Lyman
Beecher Stowe is the grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" had a very direct influence on the abolition of slavery,
and Mr. Emmett J. Scott was Dr. Washington's loyal and trusted
secretary for eighteen years.

ROBERT R. MOTON.
Principal Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

_Tuskegee Institute, Alabama,_
  _August 1, 1916._




AUTHORS' PREFACE


This is not a biography in the ordinary sense. The exhaustive "Life
and Letters of Booker T. Washington" remains still to be compiled. In
this more modest work we have simply sought to present and interpret
the chief phases of the life of this man who rose from a slave boy to
be the leader of ten millions of people and to take his place for all
time among America's great men. In fact, we have not even touched upon
his childhood, early training, and education, because we felt the
story of those early struggles and privations had been ultimately well
told in his own words in "Up from Slavery." This autobiography,
however, published as it was fifteen years before his death, brings
the story of his life only to the threshold of his greatest
achievements. In this book we seek to give the full fruition of his
life's work. Each chapter is complete in itself. Each presents a
complete, although by no means exhaustive, picture of some phase of
his life.

We take no small satisfaction in the fact that we were personally
selected by Booker Washington himself for this task. He considered us
qualified to produce what he wanted: namely, a record of his struggles
and achievements at once accurate and readable, put in permanent form
for the information of the public. He believed that such a record
could best be furnished by his confidential associate, working in
collaboration with a trained and experienced writer, sympathetically
interested in the welfare of the <DW64> race. This, then, is what we
have tried to do and the way we have tried to do it.

We completed the first four chapters before Mr. Washington's death,
but he never read them. In fact, it was our wish, to which he agreed,
that he should not read what we had written until its publication in
book form.

EMMETT J. SCOTT,
LYMAN BEECHER STOWE.




PREFACE


It is not hyperbole to say that Booker T. Washington was a great
American. For twenty years before his death he had been the most
useful, as well as the most distinguished, member of his race in the
world, and one of the most useful, as well as one of the most
distinguished, of American citizens of any race.

Eminent though his services were to the people of his own color, the
white men of our Republic were almost as much indebted to him, both
directly and indirectly. They were indebted to him directly, because
of the work he did on behalf of industrial education for the <DW64>,
thus giving impetus to the work for the industrial education of the
White Man, which is, at least, as necessary; and, moreover, every
successful effort to turn the thoughts of the natural leaders of the
<DW64> race into the fields of business endeavor, of agricultural
effort, of every species of success in private life, is not only to
their advantage, but to the advantage of the White Man, as tending to
remove the friction and trouble that inevitably come throughout the
South at this time in any <DW64> district where the <DW64>s turn for
their advancement primarily to political life.

The indirect indebtedness of the White Race to Booker T. Washington
is due to the simple fact that here in America we are all in the end
going up or down together; and therefore, in the long run, the man who
makes a substantial contribution toward uplifting any part of the
community has helped to uplift all of the community. Wherever in our
land the <DW64> remains uneducated, and liable to criminal suggestion,
it is absolutely certain that the whites will themselves tend to tread
the paths of barbarism; and wherever we find the <DW52> people as a
whole engaged in successful work to better themselves, and respecting
both themselves and others, there we shall also find the tone of the
white community high.

The patriotic white man with an interest in the welfare of this
country is almost as heavily indebted to Booker T. Washington as the
<DW52> men themselves.

If there is any lesson, more essential than any other, for this
country to learn, it is the lesson that the enjoyment of rights should
be made conditional upon the performance of duty. For one failure in
the history of our country which is due to the people not asserting
their rights, there are hundreds due to their not performing their
duties. This is just as true of the White Man as it is of the <DW52>
Man. But it is a lesson even more important to be taught the <DW52>
Man, because the <DW64> starts at the bottom of the ladder and will
never develop the strength to climb even a single rung if he follow
the lead of those who dwell only upon their rights and not upon their
duties. He has a hard road to travel anyhow. He is certain to be
treated with much injustice, and although he will encounter among
white men a number who wish to help him upward and onward, he will
encounter only too many who, if they do him no bodily harm, yet show a
brutal lack of consideration for him. Nevertheless his one safety lies
in steadily keeping in view that the law of service is the great law
of life, above all in this Republic, and that no man of color can
benefit either himself or the rest of his race, unless he proves by
his life his adherence to this law. Such a life is not easy for the
White Man, and it is very much less easy for the Black Man; but it is
even more important for the Black Man, and for the Black Man's people,
that he should lead it.

As nearly as any man I have ever met, Booker T. Washington lived up to
Micah's verse, "What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do
Justice and love Mercy and walk humbly with thy God." He did justice
to every man. He did justice to those to whom it was a hard thing to
do justice. He showed mercy; and this meant that he showed mercy not
only to the poor, and to those beneath him, but that he showed mercy
by an understanding of the shortcomings of those who failed to do him
justice, and failed to do his race justice. He always understood and
acted upon the belief that the Black Man could not rise if he so acted
as to incur the enmity and hatred of the White Man; that it was of
prime importance to the well-being of the Black Man to earn the good
will of his white neighbor, and that the bulk of the Black Men who
dwell in the Southern States must realize that the White Men who are
their immediate physical neighbors are beyond all others those whose
good will and respect it is of vital consequence that the Black Men of
the South should secure.

He was never led away, as the educated <DW64> so often is led away,
into the pursuit of fantastic visions; into the drawing up of plans
fit only for a world of two dimensions. He kept his high ideals,
always; but he never forgot for a moment that he was living in an
actual world of three dimensions, in a world of unpleasant facts,
where those unpleasant facts have to be faced; and he made the best
possible out of a bad situation from which there was no ideal best to
be obtained. And he walked humbly with his God.

To a very extraordinary degree he combined humility and dignity; and I
think that the explanation of this extraordinary degree of success in
a very difficult combination was due to the fact that at the bottom
his humility was really the outward expression, not of a servile
attitude toward any man, but of the spiritual fact that in very truth
he walked humbly with his God.

Nowhere was Booker T. Washington's wisdom shown better than in the
mixture of moderation and firmness with which he took precisely the
right position as to the part the Black Man should try to take in
politics. He put the whole case in a nutshell in the following
sentences:

"In my opinion it is a fatal mistake to teach the young black man and
the young white man that the dominance of the white race in the South
rests upon any other basis than absolute justice to the weaker man. It
is a mistake to cultivate in the mind of any individual or group of
individuals the feeling and belief that their happiness rests upon the
misery of some one else, or their wealth upon the poverty of some one
else. I do not advocate that the <DW64> make politics or the holding of
office an important thing in his life. I do urge, in the interests of
fair play for everybody, that a <DW64> who prepares himself in
property, in intelligence, and in character to cast a ballot, and
desires to do so, should have the opportunity."

In other words, while he did not believe that political activity
should play an important part among <DW64>s as a whole, he did believe
that in the interests of the White, as well as in the interests of the
<DW52> race, the upright, honest, intelligent Black Man or <DW52>
Man should be given the right to cast a ballot if he possessed the
qualities which, if possessed by a White Man, would make that White
Man a valuable addition to the suffrage-exercising class.

No man, White or Black, was more keenly alive than Booker T.
Washington to the threat of the South, and to the whole country, and
especially to the Black Man himself, contained in the mass of
ignorant, propertyless, semi-vicious Black voters, wholly lacking in
the character which alone fits a race for self-government, who
nevertheless have been given the ballot in certain Southern States.

In my many conversations and consultations with him it is, I believe,
not an exaggeration to say that one-half the time we were discussing
methods for keeping out of office, and out of all political power, the
ignorant, semi-criminal, shiftless Black Man who, when manipulated by
the able and unscrupulous politician, Black or White, is so dreadful a
menace to our political institutions. But he felt very strongly, and I
felt no less strongly, that one of the most efficient ways of warring
against this evil type was to show the <DW64> that, if he turned his
back on that type, and fitted himself to be a self-respecting citizen,
doing his part in sustaining the common burdens of good citizenship,
he would be freely accorded by his White neighbors the privileges and
rights of good citizenship. Surely there can be no objection to this.
Surely there can be no serious objection thus to keep open the door of
hope for the thoroughly decent, upright, self-respecting man, no
matter what his color.

In the same way, while Booker T. Washington firmly believed that the
attention of the <DW52> race should be riveted, not on political
life, but on success sought in the fields of honest business endeavor,
he also felt, and I agreed with him, that it was to the interest of
both races that there should be appointments to office of Black Men
whose characters and abilities were such that if they were White Men
their appointments would be hailed as being well above the average,
and creditable from every standpoint. He also felt, and I agreed with
him, that it was essential that these appointments should be made
relatively most numerous in the North--for it is worse than useless to
preach virtue to others, unless the preachers themselves practise it;
which means that the Northern communities, which pride themselves on
possessing the proper attitude toward the <DW64>, should show this
attitude by their own acts within their own borders.

I profited very much by my association with Booker T. Washington. I
owed him much along many different lines. I valued greatly his
friendship and respect; and when he died I mourned his loss as a
patriot and an American.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

_Sagamore Hill,_
  _August 28, 1916._




CONTENTS


                                                        PAGE

FOREWORD BY ROBERT R. MOTON                                v

AUTHORS' PREFACE                                         vii

PREFACE BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT                             ix

CHAPTER

   I. THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL IN THE MAKING                 3

  II. LEADER OF HIS RACE                                  19

 III. WASHINGTON: THE EDUCATOR                            57

  IV. THE RIGHTS OF THE <DW64>                             82

   V. MEETING RACE PREJUDICE                             107

  VI. GETTING CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE                        135

 VII. BOOKER WASHINGTON AND THE <DW64> FARMER             164

VIII. BOOKER WASHINGTON AND THE <DW64> BUSINESS MAN       185

  IX. BOOKER WASHINGTON AMONG HIS STUDENTS               222

   X. RAISING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS A YEAR               248

  XI. MANAGING A GREAT INSTITUTION                       272

 XII. WASHINGTON: THE MAN                                300




ILLUSTRATIONS

Booker T. Washington                               _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACING
                                                            PAGE

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                                                   32

Showing some of the teams of farmers attending the
  Annual Tuskegee <DW64> 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 <DW64> 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




BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

BUILDER OF A CIVILIZATION




CHAPTER ONE

THE MAN AND HIS SCHOOL IN THE MAKING


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 <DW64> vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he
coveted in the State Legislature. Accordingly, the colonel went to the
leading <DW64> in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he could do
to secure the <DW64> vote, for <DW64>s 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 <DW64>s, he
(Adams) would help to get for him the <DW64> 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 <DW64>s in the
town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General Armstrong of
Hampton Institute a young <DW52> 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 "<DW65> 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 <DW64> 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 <DW64>
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 <DW52> 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  school who
was not a preacher. 'A new kind of man in the  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 <DW64> ministers confounded theology and religion. Finding no
theology about Booker Washington or his school, they assumed there was
no religion. Some of them even went