Booker T. Washington Part 6

In recent years a certain section of the Republicans in the far Southern States have tried to free themselves of the reputation of being "n.i.g.g.e.r lovers" by vying with their Democratic rivals in seeking to deprive Negroes of civic and political rights. Republicans of this particular stripe are known colloquially as the "Lily Whites." In this connection the following correspondence is of interest.

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[_Personal_]

_White House,_ _Was.h.i.+ngton, March 21, 1904._

DEAR MR. WAs.h.i.+NGTON: By direction of the President I send you herewith for your private information a copy of letter from the President to Mr. ----, dated February 24, 1904.

Please return it to me when you have read it.

Yours very truly,

WM. LOEB, JR., Secretary to the President.

_Princ.i.p.al Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Inst.i.tute, Tuskegee, Alabama._

This was the letter enclosed:

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[_Personal_]

_White House,_ _Was.h.i.+ngton, February 24, 1904._

MY DEAR MR. ----: I take it for granted that there is no intention of making the Louisiana delegation all white. I think it would be a mistake for my friends to take any such att.i.tude in any state where there is a considerable Negro population. I think it is a great mistake from the standpoint of the whites; and in an organization composed of men whom I have especially favored it would put me in a false light. As you know, I feel as strongly as any one can that there must be nothing like "Negro domination." On the other hand, I feel equally strongly that the Republicans must consistently favor those comparatively few colored people who by character and intelligence show themselves ent.i.tled to such favor. To put a premium upon the possession of such qualities among the blacks is not only to benefit them, but to benefit the whites among whom they live. I very earnestly hope that the Louisiana Republicans whom I have so consistently favored will not by any action of theirs tend to put me in a false position in such a matter as this. With your entire approval, I have appointed one or two colored men ent.i.tled by character and standing to go to the National Convention.

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

In the year 1898 the success of the suffrage amendments in South Carolina and Mississippi in excluding from the franchise more than nine-tenths of their Negro inhabitants inspired an agitation in Louisiana to cut off the Negro vote by similar means, and this agitation came to a head in the Const.i.tutional Convention of that year. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton, a.s.sisted by T. Thomas Fortune, the well-known Negro editor, and Mr. Scott, his secretary, prepared an open letter addressed to this convention which was taken to the convention by Mr.

Scott and placed in the hands of the suffrage committee as well as the editors of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_ and the _Picayune_, the leading daily papers of the State. Extracts from the letter were sent out by the local representative of the a.s.sociated Press and widely published throughout the country. These New Orleans editors expressed to Mr. Scott their approval of the letter and their substantial agreement with its main features, and promised to publish it in full, which they not only did, but accompanied it by editorial reviews. This letter stated in part:

"The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South that restriction be put upon the ballot.... With the sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to find a way out of the difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an ignorant white man to vote and withhold the same opportunity from an ignorant colored man, without injuring both men.... Any law controlling the ballot, that is not absolutely just and fair to both races, will work more permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.

"The Negro does not object to an educational or property test, but let the law be so clear that no one clothed with state authority will be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one interpretation upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the history of the South, and you will find that where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you will find to-day the lowest moral condition of both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an easy step to dishonesty with the white man's ballot, to the carrying of concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the murder of a white man and then to lynching. I entreat you not to pa.s.s such a law as will prove an eternal millstone about the neck of your children."

Later in the same appeal he said: "I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot-box against the ignorant, that you open the schoolhouse.... Let the very best educational opportunities be provided for both races: and add to this the enactment of an election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the same time providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and character, they will be given the right of citizens.h.i.+p. Any other course will take from one half your citizens interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent producers and taxpayers--to become useful and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death."

The New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, in its editorial accompanying the publication of this letter, said: "We have seen the corrupting influence in our politics and our elections of making fraud an element of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we place in our new const.i.tution." The same editorial further states that impartiality in the use of the ballot can be given Negro and white man not only "with the utmost safety," but "it would have a beneficial effect upon the politics of the State." In fact, the press of both North and South, both of the whites and the blacks, published this letter with practically unanimous editorial endors.e.m.e.nt, but in spite of all this the leaders of the convention remained obdurate, the immediate object was lost, and Louisiana followed the example of Mississippi and South Carolina. No one realized, however, better than Booker Was.h.i.+ngton that the effort was by no means in vain. Owing to the general awakening of intelligent public opinion the convention leaders were forced into the position of driving through the discriminatory amendment not only in the face of the condemnation of the better element throughout the country but even with the disapproval of the better and leading citizens of their own State.

Shortly afterward members of the Georgia Legislature, seeking political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate against the Negroes of Georgia by legislative enactment just as the Negroes of Louisiana had been discriminated against by a const.i.tutional amendment. This time Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton went personally to Atlanta and appealed directly to a number of the members of the Legislature and to the editors of the leading papers in opposition to this bill. In an interview published in the Atlanta _Const.i.tution_ at the time he said:

"I cannot think that there is any large number of white people in the South who are so ignorant or so poor that they cannot get education and property enough to enable them to stand the test by the side of the Negro in these respects. I do not believe that these white people want it continually advertised to the world that some special law must be pa.s.sed by which they will seem to be given an unfair advantage over the Negro by reason of their ignorance or their poverty. It is unfair to blame the Negro for not preparing himself for citizens.h.i.+p by acquiring intelligence, and then when he does get education and property, to pa.s.s a law that can be so operated as to prevent him from being a citizen, even though he may be a large taxpayer. The Southern white people have reached the point where they can afford to be just and generous; where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to explain. It is an easy matter, requiring little thought, generosity or statesmans.h.i.+p to push a weak man down when he is struggling to get up.

Any one can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmans.h.i.+p are shown in stimulating, encouraging every individual in the body politic to make of himself the most useful, intelligent, and patriotic citizen possible. Take from the Negro all incentive to make himself and his children useful property-holding citizens, and can any one blame him for becoming a beast capable of committing any crime?"

This time the immediate object was attained. The Atlanta _Const.i.tution_ and other leading Georgia papers indorsed Booker Was.h.i.+ngton's appeal and the Legislature voted down its anti-Negro members. Be it said to the credit of the Georgia Legislature that it has resisted several similar attempts to discriminate against the Negro citizens of the State, and it was not till 1908, ten years after the Louisiana law was pa.s.sed, that Georgia finally pa.s.sed a law disfranchising Negro voters.

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton has been accused of not protesting against the lynching of Negroes. In the article published in the _Century Magazine_ in 1912, from which we have previously quoted, he said on this subject: "When he was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks say in a public speech that he knew of five cases during his administration of innocent colored people having been lynched. If that many innocent people were known to the governor to have been lynched, it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom the governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of other states. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the colored persons lynched are innocent.... Not a few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their faces and committed a crime, knowing that some Negro would be suspected and mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where Negroes have committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones have escaped and gone on committing more crimes.

"Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored people do not feel that innocence offers them security against lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends to give greater security to the criminal, white or black."

Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton often pointed out how the lynching of blacks leads inevitably to the lynching of whites and how the lynching of guilty persons of either race inevitably leads to the lynching of innocent persons of both races.

Let it not be supposed that Booker Was.h.i.+ngton confined his condemnation of lynching to the comparatively safe cover of the pages of an eminently respectable Northern magazine. Some years ago when he was on a speaking trip in the State of Florida two depraved Negroes in Jacksonville committed an atrocious murder. The crime aroused such intense race feeling that Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's friends foresaw the likelihood of a lynching and, fearing for his safety, urged him to cancel his engagements in Jacksonville, where he was due to speak before white as well as black audiences within a few days. This he refused to do and insisted that because there was special racial friction it was especially necessary that he should keep his engagements in the city. While he was driving to the hall where he was to address a white audience the automobile of one of his Negro escorts was stopped by a crowd of excited white men who angrily demanded that Booker Was.h.i.+ngton be handed over to them. When they found he was not in the car they allowed it to pa.s.s on without molesting the Negro occupant, who enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence and respect of both races in the city. What they would have done had they found Booker Was.h.i.+ngton one may only conjecture. At about the same time the Negro murderers were captured. The howls of the infuriated mob on its way to the jail to lynch the accused murderers could be heard in the distance from the hall where Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton spoke. Without referring in any way to the event which was taking place at the time Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton, to the alarm of his friends, launched into a fervid denunciation of lynching and ended with an earnest and eloquent appeal for better feeling between the races. Instead of his words breaking up the meeting in a storm of anger and rioting, this audience composed of Southern whites and colored people vigorously applauded his sentiments. Undoubtedly they were applauding not so much the views expressed as the courage shown in expressing them at that place and under those circ.u.mstances.

A somewhat similar experience occurred on a recent speaking tour which he and a party were making through the State of Louisiana. He was accompanied by a company of Negro leaders, including Major Moton of Hampton, who has since become his successor as Princ.i.p.al of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute. They were in a portion of the State notorious for its lynchings of Negroes. No one who has ever seen Major Moton, or knows anything about him, would think of accusing him of timidity or cowardice. But when they went before a white audience in this particular district he urged Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton as a matter of common prudence to "soft pedal" what he had to say about lynching. Just as in Jacksonville Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton did just the opposite, and made his denunciation particularly emphatic, and just as in Jacksonville there was the same applause and apparent approval of his views.

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton also protested that in the matter of public education his people are not given a square deal in parts of the South, particularly in the country districts. He continually emphasized the relation between education and crime. Other things being equal the more and the better the education provided the less the number and seriousness of the crimes committed. Also he pointed out that the neglect of Negro school facilities injures the white citizens almost if not quite as much as the Negroes themselves. And conversely that good school facilities for the colored children benefit the whites almost as much as the Negroes. He also insisted that quite aside from all moral and ethical considerations Negro education pays in dollars and cents. As ill.u.s.trating the relation between Negro education and crime or rather lack of Negro education and crime he related this incident in an article ent.i.tled, "Black and White in the South" published in the _Outlook_ of March 14, 1914: "A few weeks ago three of the most prominent white men in Mississippi were shot and killed by two colored boys. Investigation brought to light that the two boys were rough and crude, that they had never been to school, hence that they were densely ignorant. While no one had taught these boys the use of books, some one had taught them, as mere children, the use of cocaine and whiskey. In a mad fit, when their minds and bodies were filled with cheap whiskey and cocaine, these two ignorant boys created a 'reign of murder,' in the course of which three white men, four colored men, and one colored woman met death. As soon as the shooting was over a crazed mob shot the two boys full of bullet-holes and then burned their bodies in the public streets.

"Now this is the kind of thing, more or less varied in form, that takes place too often in our country. Why? The answer is simple: it is dense ignorance on the part of the Negro and indifference arising out of a lack of knowledge of conditions on the part of the white people."

He then pointed out that the last enumeration in Mississippi, where this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent. of the colored children had had no schooling during the past year. That in Charleston County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro education, there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2; for the colored child $3.12; in Abbeville County $11.17 for the white, 69 cents for the colored child. This 69 cents per capita expense was incurred by maintaining a one-room school for two and one-half months, with a teacher paid at the rate of $15 a month. In another county the Negro school was in session but one month out of the twelve. Throughout the State, outside the cities and large towns, the school term for the colored children is from two to four months. Thus 200,000 colored children in South Carolina are given only three or four months of schooling a year. "Under these conditions it would require twenty-eight years for a child to complete the eight grades of the public school.... But South Carolina is by no means the only State that has these breeding spots for ignorance, crime, and filth which the nation will sooner or later have to reckon with."

In the article in the _Century Magazine_ from which quotations have already been made Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton cites this statement made by W.N.

Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida, in explanation of an a.n.a.lysis of the sources of the school fund of the State: "A glance at the foregoing statistics indicates that the section of the State designated as 'Middle Florida' is considerably behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of Negro education, and a general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause.

The following figures are given to show that the education of the Negroes of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that section one cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to the presence of the Negro, but that the presence of the Negro has been actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools."

Mr. Sheats then shows that the cost of the Negro schools was $19,467, while the Negroes contributed to the school fund in direct taxes, together with their proper proportion of the indirect taxes, $23,984.

He concludes: "If this is a fair calculation the schools for the Negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4,525 for Negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted to the white schools."

Mr. Charles L. c.o.o.n, Superintendent of Schools at Wilson, N.C., is quoted as demonstrating that had there been expended upon the Negro schools the Negro's proportionate share of the receipts from indirect taxes, as well as the direct taxes paid by them, $18,077 more in a given year would have been expended on colored schools in Virginia, $26,539 more in North Carolina, and $141,682 more in Georgia. These figures would seem to show that in these States at least the Negro schools are not only no burden upon the white taxpayers but that the colored people do not get back in school facilities the equivalent of all they themselves contribute in taxes.

In the matter of pa.s.senger transportation facilities Booker Was.h.i.+ngton protested that injustice is done his people by most of the railroads of the South, not in providing separate accommodations for blacks and whites, but in furnis.h.i.+ng the Negroes with inferior accommodations while charging them the same rates. This injustice causes, he believes, more resentment and bitterness among his people than all the other injustices to which they are subjected combined. The Negro or "Jim Crow" compartment is usually half of the baggage car which is usually inadequate for the traffic, badly lighted, badly ventilated, and dirty. The newsdealer of the train uses this coach and increases the congestion by spreading his wares over several seats. White men frequently enter this compartment to buy papers and almost always smoke in it, thus requiring the colored women to ride in what is virtually a smoker. Aside from these matters the Negroes rarely have through cars and no sleeping, parlor, or buffet cars, and frequently no means of securing food on long journeys since many if not most of the station restaurants refuse to serve them.

In the _Century_ article Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton thus quoted the experience of a sensible and conservative Negro friend of his from Austin, Texas--a man of education and good reputation among both races in his native city: "At one time," he said, in describing some of his travelling experiences, "I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the keeper of the restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out of the window. He refused, and I had to travel a hundred miles farther before I could get a sandwich. At another time I went to a station to purchase my ticket. I was there thirty minutes before the ticket office was opened. When it did finally open I at once appeared at the window. While the ticket agent served the white people at one window, I remained waiting at the other until the train pulled out. I was compelled to jump aboard the train without my ticket and wire back to get my trunk expressed. Considering the temper of the people, the separate coach law may be the wisest plan for the South, but the statement that the two races have equal accommodations is all bosh. I pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair or a lavatory, and rarely a through car. I must crawl out at all times of night, and in all kinds of weather, in order to catch another dirty 'Jim Crow' coach to make my connections. I do not ask to ride with white people. I do ask for equal accommodations for the same money."

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton was of course obliged to travel in the South almost constantly and to a great extent at night. He nearly always travelled on a Pullman car, and so when not an interstate pa.s.senger usually "violated" the law of whatever State he happened to be pa.s.sing through. The conductors, brakemen, and other trainmen, as a rule, treated him with great respect and consideration and oftentimes offered him a compartment in place of the berth which he had purchased.

Pullman cars in the South are not as a rule open to members of the Negro race. It is only under more or less unusual conditions that a black man is able to secure Pullman accommodations. Dr. Was.h.i.+ngton, however, was generally treated with marked consideration whenever he applied for Pullman car reservations. He was sometimes criticised, not only by members of his own race, but by the unthinking of the white race who accused him of thus seeking "social equality" with the white pa.s.sengers.

The work he was compelled to do, however, in constantly travelling from place to place, and dictating letters while travelling, made it necessary that he conserve his strength as much as possible. He never believed that he was defying Southern traditions in seeking the comfort essential to his work.

Upon one occasion Dr. Was.h.i.+ngton went to Houston, Texas, and was invited by the Secretary of the Cotton Exchange, in the name of the Exchange, to speak to the members of the leading business organizations of Houston, upon the floor of the Cotton Exchange Bank.

He was introduced by the secretary, who desired to give Dr. Was.h.i.+ngton the opportunity to put before representative Southern white men the thoughts and ideas of a representative colored man as to how the two races might live together in the South on terms of mutual helpfulness.

Such was the impression he made upon the whites that when Dr.

Was.h.i.+ngton's secretary applied for Pullman accommodations for him, returning East, they were not only ungrudgingly but even eagerly granted. In those days it was unheard of for a colored man to travel as a pa.s.senger in a Pullman car in Texas.

The injustices mentioned and all others connected with railway pa.s.senger service for Negroes Booker Was.h.i.+ngton sought in characteristic fas.h.i.+on to mitigate by inst.i.tuting, through the agency of the National Negro Business League, what are known as Railroad Days. On these days each year colored patrons of railroads lay before the responsible officials the respects in which they believe they are unfairly treated and request certain definite changes. Although started only a few years ago these Railroad Days have already accomplished a number of the improvements desired in various localities.

As an aid to the committees appointed in the various communities Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton sent out a letter addressed to these committees which was published in the Negro papers. This letter advised that all protests on Railroad Days give: first, "a statement of present conditions,"

second, "a statement of conditions desired." There followed a sample detailed statement of the present conditions about which there is usually cause for complaint accompanied by a similar statement of the conditions desired.

It was then suggested that these specific recommendations be followed by these general requests:

"1. The same cla.s.s and quality of accommodations for colored pa.s.sengers as are provided for the most favored cla.s.s of travellers.