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Chapter 3 from The book The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois is in the public domain in the United States. UMGC has modified this work.

III

Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!

* * * * * *

Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

BYRON.

Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy

of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly

passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and

hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington

came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a

little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its

energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and

submission and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly original; the Free Negroes

from 1830 up to war-time had striven to build industrial schools, and the American Missionary

Association had from the first taught various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of

honorable alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked

these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into his programme, and

changed it from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he

did this is a fascinating study of human life.

It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of bitter

complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of

the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes

themselves.

To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising the white South was

Mr. Washington's first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black

man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: "In

all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all

things essential to mutual progress." This "Atlanta Compromise" is by all odds the most notable

thing in Mr. Washington's career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received

it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives, as a

generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and to-day

its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with

the largest personal following.

Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington's work in gaining place and consideration in the

North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had

fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and training,

so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the

North. And so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and

the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French

grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of

absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this.

And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the

successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force.

So Mr. Washington's cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully

prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. To-day he stands as the one

recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation

of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little, has

done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy

of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without

being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the

world.

The criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad character.

In the South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments,—and

naturally so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness to that section.

Twice—once when at the Chicago celebration of the Spanish-American War he alluded to the

color-prejudice that is "eating away the vitals of the South," and once when he dined with

President Roosevelt—has the resulting Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten

seriously his popularity. In the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words, that

Mr. Washington's counsels of submission overlooked certain elements of true manhood, and that

his educational programme was unnecessarily narrow. Usually, however, such criticism has not

found open expression, although, too, the spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been

prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and

self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or worthy of ridicule. While, then, criticism has not

failed to follow Mr. Washington, yet the prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too

willing to deliver the solution of a wearisome problem into his hands, and say, "If that is all you

and your race ask, take it."

Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most

lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even today continuing strong and

insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation.

Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues

and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful

colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide

currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington's theories have gained. These same

men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is

doing something worth the doing. They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they

conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power that,

steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the

respect of all.

But the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the

best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so

passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those

whose interests are most nearly touched,—criticism of writers by readers,—this is the soul of

democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by

outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain

palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,—a loss of that peculiarly valuable education

which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders.

The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social

growth. History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its

type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership

of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real progress may be negative

and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student's inspiration and

despair.

Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing of group

leaders, founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions is worth while

studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a people, their attitude

is largely one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and

brute is added an environment of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group may

take three main forms,—a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and

action to the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-realization and self-

development despite environing opinion. The influence of all of these attitudes at various times

can be traced in the history of the American Negro, and in the evolution of his successive

leaders.

Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves, there was in

all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge,—typified in the

terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato of Stono, and veiling all the Americas in fear of

insurrection. The liberalizing tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought,

along with kindlier relations between black and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment and

assimilation. Such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest songs of Phyllis, in the

martyrdom of Attucks, the fighting of Salem and Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of

Banneker and Derham, and the political demands of the Cuffes.

Stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the previous humanitarian ardor.

The disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the persistence of slavery and serfdom

voiced itself in two movements. The slaves in the South, aroused undoubtedly by vague rumors

of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce attempts at insurrection,—in 1800 under Gabriel in

Virginia, in 1822 under Vesey in Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible Nat

Turner. In the Free States, on the other hand, a new and curious attempt at self-development was

made. In Philadelphia and New York color-prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro

communicants from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious institution

among the Negroes known as the African Church,—an organization still living and controlling in

its various branches over a million of men.

Walker's wild appeal against the trend of the times showed how the world was changing after the

coming of the cotton-gin. By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the

slaves thoroughly cowed into submission. The free Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto

immigrants from the West Indies, began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized

the slavery of slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation and

amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. Thus, Forten and Purvis of

Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston, and others,

strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as "people of color," not as

"Negroes." The trend of the times, however, refused them recognition save in individual and

exceptional cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks, and they soon found

themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting and working and moving

as freemen. Schemes of migration and colonization arose among them; but these they refused to

entertain, and they eventually turned to the Abolition movement as a final refuge.

Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and self-

development dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the

leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance,

and John Brown's raid was the extreme of its logic. After the war and emancipation, the great

form of Frederick Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host. Self-

assertion, especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass came

Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of

greater social significance, Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.

Then came the Revolution of 1876, the suppression of the Negro votes, the changing and shifting

of ideals, and the seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass, in his old age, still bravely

stood for the ideals of his early manhood,—ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on

no other terms. For a time Price arose as a new leader, destined, it seemed, not to give up, but to

re-state the old ideals in a form less repugnant to the white South. But he passed away in his

prime. Then came the new leader. Nearly all the former ones had become leaders by the silent

suffrage of their fellows, had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually, save

Douglass, little known outside their race. But Booker T. Washington arose as essentially the

leader not of one race but of two,—a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro.

Naturally the Negroes resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which surrendered their

civil and political rights, even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic

development. The rich and dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race problem,

but was investing largely in Southern enterprises, and welcomed any method of peaceful

cooperation. Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington's

leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed.

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but

adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual

economic development, and Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes an economic cast,

becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to

overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are

coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore

intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the

Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given

impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high

demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all

the Negro's tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission

is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such

crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people

who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.

In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr.

Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,—

First, political power,

Second, insistence on civil rights,

Third, higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial

education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been

courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for

perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In

these years there have occurred:

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.

3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.

These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings; but his

propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question

then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in

economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the

most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct

answer to these questions, it is an emphatic NO. And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple

paradox of his career:

1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly

impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend

their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.

2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic

inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.

3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher

learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day

were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.

This triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of

colored Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through

Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge; they hate the

white South blindly and distrust the white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite

action, think that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United

States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually made this programme seem

hopeless than the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the

West Indies, Hawaii, and the Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe from

lying and brute force?

The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said little aloud.

They deprecate the sight of scattered counsels, of internal disagreement; and especially they

dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a general discharge

of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless, the questions involved are so

fundamental and serious that it is difficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W.

E. Bowen, and other representatives of this group, can much longer be silent. Such men feel in

conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:

1. The right to vote.

2. Civic equality.

3. The education of youth according to ability. They acknowledge Mr. Washington's invaluable

service in counselling patience and courtesy in such demands; they do not ask that ignorant black

men vote when ignorant whites are debarred, or that any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage

should not be applied; they know that the low social level of the mass of the race is responsible

for much discrimination against it, but they also know, and the nation knows, that relentless

color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro's degradation; they seek the

abatement of this relic of barbarism, and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all

agencies of social power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ. They advocate, with

Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro common schools supplemented by thorough industrial

training; but they are surprised that a man of Mr. Washington's insight cannot see that no such

educational system ever has rested or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped

college and university, and they insist that there is a demand for a few such institutions

throughout the South to train the best of the Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and

leaders.

This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward the white South;

they accept the "Atlanta Compromise" in its broadest interpretation; they recognize, with him,

many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment, in this section; they know

that no easy task has been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But,

nevertheless, they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in

indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising

uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging

their fellows to do the same, but at the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to

their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility.

They do not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come

in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a

trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is

not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for

a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the

contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to

modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as

well as white boys.

In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their people, even at

the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a

heavy responsibility,—a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the struggling masses, a

responsibility to the darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American

experiment, but especially a responsibility to this nation,—this common Fatherland. It is wrong

to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply

because it is unpopular not to do so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between

the North and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep

congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that

reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men,

with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really

men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by

all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T.

Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest

of disaster to our children, black and white.

First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of

Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for

it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South

toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not "solid";

it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for

supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn

the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,—needs it for the

sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and

moral development.

Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in

all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his

competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace

in his upward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help him to

rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to

protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the money-

makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country

districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to

disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are

easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and

prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against "the South" is unjust; but to use the

same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas

Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of

thinking black men.

It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has

opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the

Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in other

ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate

happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct

impression left by Mr. Washington's propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present

attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro's degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of

the Negro's failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his

future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-

truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are

potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro's position; second, industrial and common-school

training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by

higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was

possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great

truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that

unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative

of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.

In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised.

His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro

problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators;

when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend

not our energies to righting these great wrongs.

The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full

duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in

guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by

diplomacy and suaveness, by "policy" alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this

country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward

movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington

preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and

strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God

and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice,

North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating

effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter

minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly

oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the

world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers

would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that

they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."