Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 157
you, honor and respect you. If you deposit $2,000 this week, the bank president
will know about
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it, and when it gets to the place that you have got in the bank $25,000, why this
man even (pointing to an ebony black man in the audience) will have become a
bright mulatto!"
Perhaps the most unique and impressive session of the National Negro Business
League was that held at the invitation of John Wanamaker in his great
department store in Philadelphia in 1913. One of the most interesting talks at
this meeting was that of Charles Banks of Mound Bayou, Miss. Mr. Banks has
been referred to in an earlier chapter. He has often been called the J. Pierpont
Morgan of his race. He said in part: "I live in the little town of Mound Bayou,
Miss., that was founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery, an ex-slave of Jefferson
Davis, the President of the Southern Confederacy. Mr. Montgomery, the exslave
in question, is present at this meeting. We live in what is called the 'Black
Belt of Mississippi' and our plantations embrace some of the richest and most
fertile land that can be found in the entire 'Delta.' In some parts of the 'Delta' the
Negro population outnumbers the white population in a ratio of five to one. In
the town in which I live (Mound Bayou) we outnumber the white population in
a ratio of five to nothing. (Laughter and applause.)
"Instead of whining and lamenting our lot, and bemoaning the racial prejudice
which exists in our section of the country, we are taking advantage of some of
the opposition and the tendency to segregate us and we are trying to show,
through the leadership of this ex-slave of
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Jefferson Davis, that it is possible for us to build up a Negro community, a town
owned and controlled by Negroes right there under his direct supervision. And
as a result, on the Yazoo and Mound Bayou Branch of the Yazoo Central
Railroad, we have one of the best-governed and most prosperous towns on the
whole line. We have something like thirty to forty thousand acres of land in that
rich and fertile country owned and controlled exclusively by Negro men and
women. We have there the little town of Mound Bayou, which it is our privilege
to represent, and so far as its management or government is concerned, we have
control of everything. There we have a Negro Depot Agent, a Negro Express
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