Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 66
poultry, and live-stock associations and thus make it possible for the members
of the colony to make not only a comfortable living but to lay by something.
They will, of course, have also the great advantage of the advice and guidance
of the experts of the Institute. Formerly the penniless Negro youth, who
graduated even most creditably from the agricultural department of Tuskegee,
had before him nothing better than a greater or less number of years of
monotonous drudgery as a mere farm or plantation laborer. Now, he may at
once take up his own farm at Baldwin and begin immediately to apply all he has
learned in carving out his own fortune and future. Thus did Booker Washington
plan to carry the benefits of classroom instruction directly into the actual life
problems of these graduates as well as bringing the problems of actual life into
the classroom.
However much Mr. Washington may have seemed to eliminate non-essentials in
the pressure and haste of his wholesale educational task he never neglected
essentials, but among essentials he included matters which might on the surface
appear to be small and trifling. For instance, he insisted upon good table
manners, and no boy or girl could spend any considerable time at Tuskegee
without acquiring such manners. Instead of a trivial detail he regarded good
table manners as an essential to self-respect and hence to the development of
character. In short, he was engaged not so much in conducting a school as
educating a race.
Page 82
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RIGHTS OF THE NEGRO
BOOKER WASHINGTON was occasionally accused both by agitators in his
own race and by a certain type of Northern white men who pose as the special
champions of the "downtrodden" black man as encouraging a policy of
submission to injustice on the part of his people. He was, for example, charged
with tame acquiescence in the practical disfranchisement of the Negro in a
number of the Southern States. As a matter of fact, when these disfranchising
measures were under consideration and before they were enacted, he in each
case earnestly pleaded with the legislators that whatever restrictions in the use
of the ballot they put upon the statute books should be applied with absolute
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