Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 40
Then comes a letter from a poor woman who wants him in the course of his
travels to look up her husband who abandoned her some years before. For
purposes of identification she says: "This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark
hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve. . . ." Even
though Mr. Washington did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a
disloyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and
suggested some means of tracing her recreant spouse.
We come next upon a long letter written to a man who wishes to quote for
publication in a magazine Booker Washington's opinion on the relation between
crime and education. In the concluding paragraphs of his reply Mr. Washington
says: "In nine cases out of ten the crimes which serve to unite and give an
excuse for mob violence are committed by men who are without property,
without homes, and without education except what they have picked up in the
city slums, in prisons, or on the chain gang. The South is spending too much
money in giving
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the Negro this kind of education that makes criminals and not enough on the
kind of schools that turn out farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Other things
being equal, it is true not only in America, in the South, but throughout the
world, that there is the least crime where there is the most education. This is true
of the South and of the Negro, just the same as it is true of every other race.
Particularly is it true that the individuals who commit crimes of violence and
crimes that are due to lack of self-control are individuals who are, for the most
part, ignorant. The decrease in lynching in the Southern States is an index of the
steady growth of the South in wealth, in industry, in education, and in individual
liberty."
Then comes a letter to an individual who desires to know what proportion of the
American Negroes can read and write now, and what proportion could at the
time of the Civil War. The reply again quotes the 1910 census to the effect that
69.5 per cent. can now read and write as compared with only 3 per cent. at the
close of the war. The letter also points out that the rate of illiteracy among
American Negroes is now lower than the rate for all the peoples of Russia,
Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela, and almost as low as that of Spain.
There follows a sheaf of correspondence in which Mr. Washington agreed to
speak at the unveiling of a tablet in Auburn, New York, to the memory of "Aunt
24.03.2006