“the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and short comings of Mr. Washington’s career, etc.”
The criticism is this:
“His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean, if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs. The South ought to be led by candid and honest criticism to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North, her co-partner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold.... The black man of America has a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate, a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands.... But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the effect of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South or the Nation does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.”[257]
Between “the most distinguished literary man of the race” and “the most eminent man whom the African race has produced” there was then a profound difference, for what could be considered, by many, as the essential element of greatness in the policy of Washington, was that, for which this critic took him most severely to task, viz, his willingness that the burden of the Negro problem should be shifted from the shoulders of the whites to those of the Negroes.
Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the willingness of Northern and Southern whites, that it should be shifted is not to their credit, there is a virility in the promulgation of a policy for the Negroes by a Negro, which seeks to force the Negro “to stand upon his feet and play the game”, which offsets many imperfections, and for that Dr. Washington must get credit.
William Hannibal Thomas, 1900
Free Person of Color—Ohio, 1860
The second of the two Negro thinkers who questioned Dr. Washington’s leadership, has also been quoted by Professor Hart; but of William Hannibal Thomas, one of the few Negroes of distinct intellectual force as before narrated, who participated in the struggles of Reconstruction in South Carolina and emerged, uncriticised, Dr. Hart has but two allusions.
Of the author of—“The American Negro; What he was; What he is; and What he may become,” Professor Hart, in his own strong book, only says, first:
“He has made admissions with regard to the moral qualities of his fellow Negroes which have been widely taken up and quoted by anti-Negro writers.”[258]