Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 23
24.03.2006
the Amazon River." He then appealed to his own people to "cast down their
buckets where they were" by making friends with their white neighbors in every
manly way, by training themselves where they were in agriculture, in
mechanics, in commerce, instead of trying to better their condition by migration.
And finally to the Southern white people he appealed "to cast down their
buckets where they were" by using and training the Negroes whom they knew
rather than seeking to import foreign laborers whom they did not know.
When he reached the crux and climax of the speech--the delicate matter of the
relations between the races, socially --he held up his right hand with his fingers
outstretched and said: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." At
this remark the audience went wild! Ladies stood on their chairs and waved
their handkerchiefs, while men threw up their hats, danced, and catcalled. An
old ante-bellum Negro, who had been sitting crosslegged in one of the aisles,
wept tears of pride
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and joy as he swayed from side to side. By this statement, with what had led up
to it, Booker Washington captured the allegiance of all really representative
Southern whites, and by consistently adhering to this position he, in an everincreasing
degree, won and held their allegiance till the end.
Frederick Douglass, the great leader of his race during the closing days of
slavery, during the War and the Reconstruction period, had died only a few
months before. Everywhere, by leading whites, as well as blacks, Washington
was acclaimed as the successor of Douglass--the new leader of the Negro race.
One of the first colored men so to acclaim him was Emmett J. Scott, who was
then editing a Negro newspaper in Houston, Texas, and little realized that he
was to become the most intimate associate of the new leader. In an editorial Mr.
Scott said of this address: "Without resort to exaggeration, it is but simple
justice to call the address great. It was great! Great, in that it exhibited the
speaker's qualities of head and heart; great in that he could and did
discriminately recognize conditions as they affect his people, and greater still in
the absolute modesty, self-respect, and dignity with which he presented a
platform upon which, as Clark Howell, of the Atlanta Constitution says: 'both
races, blacks and whites, can stand with full justice to each.'" Perhaps the most
remarkable feature of Booker Washington's leadership was that from that time
on he never deviated one hair's breadth in word or deed from the platform laid