Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 24
24.03.2006
down in this brief address.
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It was not to be expected, however, that such a radically new note in Negro
leadership could be struck without some discord. As was perfectly natural, some
more or less prominent Negroes, whose mental processes followed the lines of
cleavage between the races engendered by the embittering experiences of the
Reconstruction period, looked with suspicion upon a Negro leader who had won
the approbation of the South, of leading white citizens, press, and public. In the
days of slavery it was a frequent custom on large plantations to use one of the
slaves as a kind of stool pigeon to spy upon the others and report their misdeeds.
Naturally such persons were hated and despised and looked upon as traitors to
their race. Hence, it came about that the praise of a white man was apt to throw
suspicion upon the racial loyalty of a black man. This habit of mind, like all
mental habits, long survived the system and circumstances which occasioned it.
Therefore, it was inevitable that the fact that the white press throughout the
South rang with his praises for days and weeks after the sensationally
enthusiastic reception of his speech at the exposition should not be accepted as a
desirable endorsement of the new leader by at least a few of his own people.
A more or less conspicuous colored preacher summed up this slight undertow of
dissent when he said: "I want to pay my respects next to a colored man. He is a
great man, too, but he isn't our Moses, as the white people are pleased to call
him. I allude to Booker T. Washington. He has been with the white people so
long that he has learned to throw sop with the rest. He made a speech at Atlanta
the
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other day, and the newspapers of all the large cities praised it and called it the
greatest speech ever delivered by a colored man. When I heard that, I said:
'There must be something wrong with it, or the white people would not be
praising it so.' I got the speech and read it. Then I said, 'Ah, here it is,' and I read
his words, 'the colored people do not want social equality.' (This man's
interpretation of this sentence in the speech, "The wisest among my race
understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest
folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to
us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial
forcing.") I tell you that is a lie. We do want social equality. Why, don't you