Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 83
Page 107
CHAPTER FIVE
MEETING RACE PREJUDICE
ALTHOUGH intensely human and consumingly interested in humanity--both in
the mass and as individuals, whether of his own race or any other--Booker
Washington thought and acted to an uncommon degree on the impersonal plane.
This characteristic was perhaps most strikingly illustrated in his attitude toward
race prejudice. When, many years ago, he had charge of the Indian students at
Hampton, and had occasion to travel with them, he found they were free to
occupy in the hotels any rooms they could pay for, whereas he must either go
without or take a room in the servants' quarters. He regarded these experiences
as interesting illustrations of the illogical nature of race prejudice. The
occupants of these hotels did not resent mingling with members of a backward
race whose skin happened to be red, but they did object to mingling on the same
terms with members of another backward race whose skin happened to be black.
It apparently never entered his head to regard this discrimination with bitterness
or as a personal rebuff. One could not, however, make a greater mistake than to
assume from this impersonal attitude that he condoned race prejudice, or in any
sense stood as an apologist for it. To
Page 108
dispel any such idea one has only to recall his speech at the Peace Jubilee in
Chicago after the Spanish War, from which we have already quoted, and in
which he characterized racial prejudice as "a cancer gnawing at the heart of the
Republic, that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army
without or within."
Very early in his career Washington worked out for himself a perfectly definite
line of conduct in the matter of social mingling with white people. In the South
he scrupulously observed the local customs and avoided offending the
prejudices of the Southerners in so far as was possible without unduly
handicapping his work. For instance, in his constant travelling throughout the
South he not only violated their customs, but oftentimes their laws, in using
sleeping cars, but this he was obliged to do because he could spare neither the
time to travel by day nor the strength and energy to sit up all night. This
24.03.2006