Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

by Emmett J. Scott; Lyman Beecher Stowe

[Signed] H.H. Asquith.

While at home, no matter how pressed and driven with work, Booker Washington snatched an hour or so every day for hunting or riding. This daily exercise became a fetich with him which he clung to with unreasonable obstinacy. He would frequently set off upon these hunts or rides in so exhausted a condition that obviously their only effect could be worse exhaustion. His intense admiration for Theodore Roosevelt probably had its influence, conscious or unconscious, in strengthening his devotion to violent outdoor exercise.

Whatever he was doing or wherever he was, his mind seemed constantly at work along constructive lines. At the most unexpected times and places he would suddenly call the inevitable stenographer and dictate some idea for an article or address or some plan for the improvement of Tuskegee or for the betterment of the whole race in this or that particular. He would sometimes reduce his immediate subordinates to the verge of despair by pouring out upon them in rapid succession constructive suggestions each one of which meant hours, days, and even weeks of time to work out, and then calling for the results of all before even one could be fairly put into effect. This tendency became particularly marked in his closing years when the consciousness of an immense amount of work to be done and a short and constantly lessening period in which to do it must have become an obsession and almost a nightmare to him.

He would sometimes wound the feelings of acquaintances and friends, particularly his teachers, by passing them on the street and even looking at them without recognition. This naturally was not intentional, nor was it because his mind was wool-gathering, but merely because he was thinking out some idea with which the people and events immediately about him had for the moment no connection and were consequently totally obliterated from his consciousness.

Mr. Washington's strength of will and determination were never better shown than in the closing hours of his life. When he was told by his doctors at St. Luke's Hospital, New York, whither he had been taken by the New York trustees of the Institute after his final collapse, that he had but a few hours to live, he insisted upon starting for home at once. His physicians expostulated and warned him that in his condition he could not reasonably expect to survive the journey. He insisted that he must go and be true to his oft-repeated assertion, "I was born in the South, I have lived and labored in the South, and I expect to die and be buried in the South." This remark, when sent out in the Associated Press dispatches announcing his death, touched the South as nothing else could have. No Negro was ever eulogized in the Southern press as he was. Long accounts of his career and death with sympathetic and appreciative editorial comments appeared in most of the Southern papers.

One of the doctors who was called in to attend him at the time he was taken to the hospital remarked that it was "uncanny to see a man up and about who ought by all the laws of nature to be dead." In this condition, then, he set out upon the long journey from New York to Tuskegee. When the party reached the Pennsylvania Station an invalid's chair was awaiting him, but he declined to use it, and leaning on the arms of his companions walked or rather tottered to his seat in the train. As soon as the train began to move Southward a slight invigoration of triumph seemed to come over him which increased as the journey continued, until at its close he seemed stronger than when he started. All along the way he would inquire at frequent intervals what point they had reached. The reaching and passing of each important station such as Greensboro, Charlotte, and Atlanta he would seem to score up in his mind's eye as a new triumph. And when finally he reached Chehaw, the little station five miles from Tuskegee, he was fairly trembling with eager expectancy. As we have said, he reached Tuskegee apparently stronger than when he left New York and strong enough to enjoy the final triumph of his indomitable will over his overworked and weakened body. The next morning, November 14, 1915, he was dead.

Of the myriads of tributes to Booker Washington by white men and black both North and South, which were spoken from platforms and pulpits and printed in newspapers and periodicals throughout the length and breadth not only of America but the world, there are two which we feel irresistibly compelled to use in concluding this chapter and book. One is the tribute of a former student, Isaac Fisher, president of the Tuskegee Alumni Association, speaking for the graduates at the memorial exercises held at Tuskegee on December 12, 1915; the other is the tribute of one of his teachers, Clement Richardson, head of the division of English, speaking in effect for the Tuskegee teachers in an article published in the Survey of December 4, 1915.

At this memorial meeting, after being introduced by Seth Low, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, as the representative of the Tuskegee Alumni Association, Mr. Fisher said:

"Mr. Chairman: The greatest citizens of this nation have paused long enough to pay tributes of honor to the memory of Dr. Washington; and to-night some of the world's most distinguished citizens are present to say their words of love for the departed chieftain whose body lies in a grave just outside of those walls. In the presence of these great men I do not see why you have asked me, one of the least of all, to add my simple praise.