Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 41
24.03.2006
Harriet" Tubman Davis, the black woman, squat of stature and seamed of face,
who piloted three or four hundred slaves from the land of bondage to the land of
freedom. While
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there he also agreed to speak at Auburn prison in response to the special request
of some of the prisoners.
Then we find a courteous but firmly negative reply to a long-winded bore who
writes a six-page letter urging Mr. Washington to secure the acceptance by the
Negro race of a flag which he has designed as their racial flag.
After this follows a group of letters which passed between him and the late
Edgar Gardiner Murphy, author of "The Present South," "The Basis of
Ascendency," and other important books. In one of these letters Mr. Washington
agrees, as requested, to read the proofs of "The Basis of Ascendency," and in
another he thus characteristically comments upon Mr. Murphy's fears that a
pessimistic book on the status of the Negro written by a supposed authority (a
colored man) would do wide-reaching harm: "Of course among a certain
element it will have an influence for harm, but human nature, as I observe it, is
so constructed that it does not take kindly to a description of a failure. It is hard
to get up enthusiasm in connection with a funeral procession. No man, in my
opinion, could write a history of the Southern Confederacy that would be read
generally because it failed. I am not saying, of course, that the Negro race is a
failure. Mr.---- writes largely from that point of view, hence there is no rallying
point for the general reader."
In reply to a Western university professor who had asked his opinion of
amalgamation as a solution of the race problem he wrote: "I have never looked
upon amalgamation as offering a solution of the so-called race problem, and
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I know very few Negroes who favor it or even think of it, for that matter. What
those whom I have heard discuss the matter do object to are laws which enable
the father to escape his responsibility, or prevent him from accepting and
exercising it, when he has children by colored women. I think this answers your
question, but since there seems to be some misunderstanding as to how colored
people feel about this subject, I might say in explanation of what I have already
said: The Negroes in America are, as you know, a mixed race. If that is an