Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 102
to the ground and his feet on the ground. Some one has said that "a practical
idealist is a man who keeps his feet on the ground even though his head is in the
clouds." Booker Washington was that kind of an idealist. He kept in constant
and intimate touch with the masses of his people, particularly with those on the
soil. Like the giant in the fable who doubled his strength every time he touched
the ground, Booker Washington seemed to renew his strength every time he
came in contact with the plain people of his race, particularly the farmers. No
matter how pressed and driven by multifarious affairs, he could always find
time for a rambling talk, apparently quite at random, with an old, uneducated,
ante-bellum black farmer. Sometimes he would halt the entire business of a
national convention in order to hear the comment of some simple but shrewd
old character. He had a profound respect for the wisdom of simple people who
lived at close grips with the realities of life.
At the 1914 meeting of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee,
Okla., a Mr. Jake----, who had
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started as an ignorant orphan boy, delighted Mr. Washington's heart when he
testified: "When I first started out I lived in a chicken house, 12 x 14 feet; now I
own a ten-room residence, comfortably furnished, and in a settlement where we
have a good school, a good church, and plenty of amusement, including ten
children."
After the laughter and applause had subsided Mr. Washington asked: "Do you
think there is the same kind of an opening out here in Oklahoma for other and
younger men of our race to do as you have done and to succeed equally as well?
"
To which Mr. Jake replied: " . . . I think I have succeeded with little or no
education, and it stands to reason that some of the graduates from these
industrial and agricultural schools ought to be able to do better than I have
done."
Which was, of course, just the answer Mr. Washington hoped he would make.
Mr. Washington's instinct for keeping close to the plain people was perhaps best
illustrated by his tours through the far Southern States for the improvement of
the living conditions of his people, the tours to which allusion has several times
been made. His insistence upon cleanliness, neatness, and paint became so well
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