Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

by Emmett J. Scott; Lyman Beecher Stowe

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 Negro 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 Negro 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 Negroes as a whole, he did believe that in the interests of the White, as well as in the interests of the Colored race, the upright, honest, intelligent Black Man or Colored 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 Negro 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 Colored 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 Negro, 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.