Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 86
24.03.2006
and that is, that I am the leader of the colored people. Do you think it will ever
be possible for one man to be set up as the leader of ten millions of people,
meaning a population nearly twice as large as that of the Dominion of Canada
and nearly equal to that of the Republic of Mexico, without the actions of that
individual being carefully watched and commented upon, and what he does
being exaggerated either in one direction or the other? Again, if I am the leader
and therefore the mouthpiece for ten millions of colored people, is it possible for
such a leader to avoid coming into contact with the representatives of the ruling
classes of white people upon many occasions; and is it not to be expected that
when questions that are racial, and national and international in their character
are to be discussed, that such a representative of the Negro race would be sought
out both by individuals and by conventions? If, as you kindly suggest, I am the
leader, I hardly see how such notoriety and prominence as will naturally come
can be wholly or in any large degree avoided.
Judging by some of the criticisms that have appeared recently, mainly from the
class of people to whom I have
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referred, it seems to me that some of the white people at the South are making
an attempt to control my actions when I am in the North and in Europe.
Heretofore, no man has been more careful to regard the feelings of the Southern
people in actions and words than I have been, and this policy I shall continue to
pursue, but I have never attempted to hide or to minimize the fact that when I
am out of the South I do not conform to the same customs and rules that I do in
the South. I say I have not attempted to hide it because everything that I have
done in this respect was published four years ago in my book, "Up from
Slavery," which has been read widely throughout the South, and I did not hear a
word of adverse criticism passed upon what I had done. For fifteen years I have
been doing at the North just what I have been doing during the past year. I have
never attended a purely social function given by white people anywhere in the
country. Nearly every week I receive invitations to weddings of rich people, but
these I always refuse. Mrs. Washington almost never accompanies me on any
occasion where there can be the least sign of purely social intercourse.
Whenever I meet white people in the North at their offices, in their parlors, or at
their dinner tables, or at banquets, it is with me purely a matter of business,
either in the interest of our institution or in the interest of my race; no other
thought ever enters my mind. For me to say now, after fifteen years of creating
interest in my race and in this institution in that manner, that I must stop, would