Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

by Emmett J. Scott; Lyman Beecher Stowe

With a laugh Mr. Washington handed the old man the dollar and drove on. He never could be made to feel that by these spontaneous generosities he was encouraging thriftlessness and mendicancy. He was incorrigible in his unscientific open-handedness with the poor, begging older members of his race.

At the time of the Tuskegee teachers' annual picnic, usually held in May, many of these old colored people would attend uninvited and armed with huge empty baskets. Mr. Washington always greeted them like honored guests and allowed them to carry off provisions enough to feed large families for days. He would also introduce them to the officers and teachers of the school and to any invited guests who might be present.

Old man Harry Varner was the night watchman of the school in its early days and a man upon whom Mr. Washington very much depended. He lived in a cabin opposite the school grounds. After hearing many talks about the importance of living in a real house instead of a one or two room cabin, old Uncle Harry finally decided that he must have a real house. Accordingly he came to his employer, told him his feeling in the matter, and laid before him his meagre savings, which he had determined to spend for a real house. Mr. Washington went with him to select the lot and added enough out of his own pocket to the scant savings to enable the old man to buy a cow and a pig and a garden plot as well as the house. From then on for weeks he and old Uncle Harry would have long and mysterious conferences over the planning of that little four-room cottage. It is doubtful if Dr. Washington ever devoted more time or thought to planning any of the great buildings of the Institute. No potentate was ever half as proud of his palace as Uncle Harry of his four-room cottage when it was finally finished and painted and stood forth in all its glory to be admired of all men. And Booker Washington was scarcely less proud of it than Uncle Harry.

With Uncle Harry Varner, Old Man Brannum, the original cook of the school to whom reference has already been made, and Lewis Adams of the town of Tuskegee, whom Mr. Washington mentions in "Up from Slavery" as one of his chief advisers, all unlettered-before-the-war Negroes, his relationship was always particularly intimate. These three old men enjoyed the confidence of the white people of the town of Tuskegee to an unusual extent and often acted as ambassadors of good-will between the head of the school and his white neighbors when from time to time the latter showed a disposition to look askance at the rapidly growing institution on the hill beyond the town.

Another intimate friend of Mr. Washington's was Charles L. Diggs, known affectionately on the school grounds as "Old Man Diggs." The old man had been body servant to a Union officer in the Civil War and after the war had been carried to Boston, where he became the butler in a fashionable Back Bay family. When Mr. Washington first visited Boston, as an humble and obscure young Negro school teacher pleading for his struggling school, he met Diggs, and Diggs succeeded in interesting his employers in the sincere and earnest young Negro teacher. When years afterward the Institute had grown to the dignity of needing stewards, Mr. Washington employed his old friend as steward of the Teachers' Home. In all the years thereafter hardly a day passed when Mr. Washington was at the school without his having some kind of powwow with Old Man Diggs regarding some matter affecting the interests of the school.

To the despair of his family Booker Washington seemed to go out of his way to find forlorn old people whom he could befriend. He sent provisions weekly to an humble old black couple from whom he had bought a tract of land for the school. He did the same for old Aunt Harriet and her deaf, dumb, and lame son, except that to them he provided fuel as well. On any particularly cold day he would send one or more students over to Aunt Harriet's to find out if she and her poor helpless son were comfortable. Also every Sunday afternoon, to the joy of this pathetic couple, a particularly appetizing Sunday dinner unfailingly made its appearance. And these were only a few of the pensioners and semi-pensioners whom Booker Washington accumulated as he went about his kindly way.

One means of keeping in touch with the masses of his people which he never neglected was through attending the annual National Negro Baptist Conventions. At these great gatherings he came in touch with the religious leaders of two million Negroes. Notwithstanding the fact that he practically collapsed at the annual meeting of the National Negro Business League held in Boston in August, 1915, and had to be nursed for some weeks following before he was even strong enough to return to Tuskegee, he insisted in spite of the admonitions of physicians and the pleadings of friends, family, and colleagues, in keeping his engagement to speak before this great convention in Chicago in September. To all protests he replied, "It would do me more harm to stay away than to go." With these words, and rallying the rapidly waning dregs of his once great strength he went and made an address which ranks with the most powerful he ever delivered to his people. A threatened split in the Baptist denomination in part accounted for his insistence upon attending this convention. In this address, delivered only two months before he died of sheer exhaustion, and the last he made before any great body of his own people, he said in part:

"My only excuse for accepting your invitation to appear before you in these annual gatherings is that I am deeply interested in all that this National Baptist Convention stands for. It is in my opinion the largest and most representative body of colored people anywhere in the world.... I believe most profoundly in the work of this convention because it represents the common masses of all our people, those who are the foundation of our success as a race. I believe in you because you do not pretend to represent the classes but the masses of our people. I am here, too, because the Baptist Church among our people throughout the country is affording them an opportunity to get lessons in self-government in a degree that is true of few other organizations.

"You who control this great convention have before you a great opportunity and along with this opportunity a tremendous responsibility. It is given to you, as to all men, to pursue one of two courses, and that is, to be big leaders or little leaders. You can construct or you can destroy. The time is now at hand when in each individual church organization and each district association and each State convention and in this great national convention, the little man must give way and let the big, broad, generous man take his place. Nothing is ever gained in business, in education, or in religious work by being little, narrow, or jealous in our sympathies and activities."

Two days later, after he had left the convention and returned home, Mr. Washington received word that the convention had split, contending leaders holding out for what they termed principles. Immediately on the receipt of this report he dispatched the following telegram to the leaders of the two opposing factions: