Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

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Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 32 24.03.2006 later you have to take in roomers to help pay that rent, and after a while you take in Tom, Dick, or Harry, or anybody who's got the money regardless of who or what they are, and you mothers know the danger that spells for your daughters." (At this point he was interrupted by a chorus of "amens" from women all over the great hall.) He continued: "Now, you take the 'old man' aside an' tell him straight, you're not going to have any more roomers hanging round your house-- that he's got to hustle for a better job or go into some little business for himself, or move out into some little cottage in the country, or do something to get rid of those Tom, Dick, and Harry roomers." In short, in this speech Mr. Washington showed that he knew just as intimately the lives of his people in the flats of Greater New York as on the farms of southwestern Georgia. In spite of his grasp of details Mr. Washington never became so immersed in them as to lose sight of his ultimate goal, and conversely he never became so blinded by the Page 34 vision of his ultimate goal as to overlook details. The solution of the so-called Negro problem in America, he felt, is to be found along these lines: As his people have more and more opportunity for training and become better and better trained they become more and more self-sufficient. They are developing their own carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, farmers, merchants, and bankers as well as lawyers, teachers, preachers, and physicians. These trained people naturally, for the most part, serve their own race, and to them the members of the race naturally turn for the service that each is equipped to render. As they acquire wealth, education, and cultivation, the persons possessing these advantages naturally intermingle socially and build up a society from which the rough, ignorant, and uncouth of their own race are as inevitably excluded as are such persons from all polite social intercourse of whatever people. These Negroes of education and cultivation no more desire to force themselves into the society of the other race than do any persons of real education and cultivation desire to go where they are not wanted. As the race increases in wealth and culture it becomes more and more easy and natural for its successful members to satisfy their social desires and ambitions in their own society. Already in the centres of Negro prosperity and culture it would be almost, if not quite, as impossible for a white man to be received into the best Negro society as it would for a Negro to be received into the best white society. This growing
Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 33 independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leads Page 35 inevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segregation based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from the artificial and arbitrary segregation forced upon unwilling people by the laws of men. Under these conditions the disputes as to whether the best society of the blacks is inferior or superior to the best society of the whites becomes as academic and futile as would be similar contentions as to whether the best society of Constantinople is inferior or superior to that of Boston. While Negroes are more and more drawing apart from the whites into their own section of the city, town, or county they nevertheless find it a source of strength to live near the whites in order that they may have the benefit of their aid in those matters in which the older and stronger race excels. Nor is this an entirely one-sided advantage, as there are not a few matters in which the Negroes have natural advantages over the whites and hence may render them useful service. Thus the two races, socially separated but economically interdependent, may to mutual advantage live side by side. Some persons claim that any such plan of race adjustment, while theoretically plausible and ideally desirable, is nevertheless practically impossible. They contend that no so radically different races have ever lived side by side in harmony and each aiding the other. However that may be, there remains the fact that such a harmonious and mutually helpful relationship between the two races does already exist in the town of Tuskegee, throughout Macon Page 36 County, and in many other of the more progressive localities throughout the South to-day. And at the same time, the lynchings and riots and other manifestations of racial conflict are continuously if slowly growing less frequent. Whatever may be the relative strength of the two theories, the facts are lining up in support of the Booker Washington prophecy at the Atlanta Exposition when he 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." 24.03.2006
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Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

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