Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

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Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 36 purpose of their school and church life, and in the purity and sweetness of their home life and social intercourse, will compare favorably with the races of the earth. You can never lift any large section of people by continually calling attention to their weak points. A race, like a child in school, needs encouragement as well as chastisement." In his address before the annual session of 1914 of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mr. Washington made the following remarks which are typical of his points of chief emphasis in addressing his own people: "Let your success thoroughly eclipse your shortcomings. We must give the world so much to think and talk about that relates to our constructive work in the direction of progress that people will forget and overlook our failures and shortcomings. . . . One big, definite fact in the direction of achievement and construction will go farther in Page 40 securing rights and removing prejudice than many printed pages of defense and explanation. . . . Let us in the future spend less time talking about the part of the city that we cannot live in, and more time in making that part of the city that we can live in beautiful and attractive. It is characteristic of the kind of criticism to which Mr. Washington was subjected that a certain element of the Negro press violently denounced this comment as an indirect endorsement of the legal segregation of Negroes. Probably the last article written by Mr. Washington for any publication was the one published posthumously by the New Republic, New York City, December 4, 1915, entitled, "My View of Segregation Laws," in which he stated in no uncertain terms his views on the segregation laws which were being passed in the South. In concluding his article, he said: "Summarizing the matter in the large, segregation is ill-advised because: 1. It is unjust. 2. It invites other unjust measures. 3. It will not be productive of good, because practically every thoughtful Negro resents its injustice and doubts its sincerity. Any race adjustment based on injustice finally defeats itself. The Civil War is the best illustration of what results where it is attempted to make wrong right or seem to be right. 24.03.2006
Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 37 4. It is unnecessary. 5. It is inconsistent. The Negro is segregated from his Page 41 white neighbor, but white business men are not prevented from doing business in Negro neighborhoods. 6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races. Wherever a form of segregation exists it will be found that it has been administered in such a way as to embitter the Negro and harm more or less the moral fibre of the white man. That the Negro does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it. "It seems to me that the reasons given above, if carefully considered, should serve to prevent further passage of such segregation ordinances as have been adopted in Norfolk, Richmond, Louisville, Baltimore, and one or two cities in South Carolina. "Finally, as I have said in another place, as white and black learn daily to adjust, in a spirit of justice and fair play, these interests which are individual and racial, and to see and feel the importance of those fundamental interests which are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run, no individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the common good; for in the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim." In concluding his Muskogee speech he said: "If there are those who are inclined to be discouraged concerning racial conditions in this country we have but to turn our minds in the direction of the deplorable conditions in Europe, growing largely out of racial bitterness and Page 42 friction. When we contrast what has taken place there with the peaceful manner in which black people and white people are living together in this country, notwithstanding now and then there are evidences of injustice and friction, which should always be condemned, we have the greatest cause for thanksgiving. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found so many white people living side by side with so many of dark skin in so much of peace and 24.03.2006
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Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

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