Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History
Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History
Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History
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<strong>Booker</strong> T. <strong>Washington</strong>, <strong>Builder</strong> of a Civilization. 74<br />
24.03.2006<br />
it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom the<br />
governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of<br />
other states. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the colored<br />
persons lynched are innocent. . . . Not a few cases have occurred where white<br />
people have blackened their faces and committed<br />
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a crime, knowing that some Negro would be suspected and mobbed for it. In<br />
other cases it is known that where Negroes have committed crimes, innocent<br />
men have been lynched and the guilty ones have escaped and gone on<br />
committing more crimes.<br />
"Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of lynching,<br />
nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged with the crime of<br />
rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored people do not feel that<br />
innocence offers them security against lynching. They do feel, however, that the<br />
lynching habit tends to give greater security to the criminal, white or black."<br />
Mr. <strong>Washington</strong> often pointed out how the lynching of blacks leads inevitably<br />
to the lynching of whites and how the lynching of guilty persons of either race<br />
inevitably leads to the lynching of innocent persons of both races.<br />
Let it not be supposed that <strong>Booker</strong> <strong>Washington</strong> confined his condemnation of<br />
lynching to the comparatively safe cover of the pages of an eminently<br />
respectable Northern magazine. Some years ago when he was on a speaking trip<br />
in the State of Florida two depraved Negroes in Jacksonville committed an<br />
atrocious murder. The crime aroused such intense race feeling that Mr.<br />
<strong>Washington</strong>'s friends foresaw the likelihood of a lynching and, fearing for his<br />
safety, urged him to cancel his engagements in Jacksonville, where he was due<br />
to speak before white as well as black audiences within a few days. This he<br />
refused to do and insisted that because there was special racial friction it was<br />
especially necessary that he should<br />
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keep his engagements in the city. While he was driving to the hall where he was<br />
to address a white audience the automobile of one of his Negro escorts was<br />
stopped by a crowd of excited white men who angrily demanded that <strong>Booker</strong><br />
<strong>Washington</strong> be handed over to them. When they found he was not in the car<br />
they allowed it to pass on without molesting the Negro occupant, who enjoyed