assurance that the matter would be considered. About two years ago,
however, when Doctor Washington and Surgeon-General Gorgas met on a
train the Surgeon-General said to Mr. Washington: "The biggest man at
the canal was the Negro," and he added that when they came to the
dedication of the canal at its formal opening some Negro should have a
place on the program.
In recent years a certain section of the Republicans in the far
Southern States have tried to free themselves of the reputation of
being "nigger lovers" by vying with their Democratic rivals in seeking
to deprive Negroes of civic and political rights. Republicans of this
particular stripe are known colloquially as the "Lily Whites." In this
connection the following correspondence is of interest.
[_Copy_]
[_Personal_]
_White House,_
_Washington, March 21, 1904._
DEAR MR. WASHINGTON: By direction of the President I send
you herewith for your private information a copy of letter
from the President to Mr. ----, dated February 24, 1904.
Please return it to me when you have read it.
Yours very truly,
WM. LOEB, JR.,
Secretary to the President.
_Principal Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama._
This was the letter enclosed:
[_Copy_]
[_Personal_]
_White House,_
_Washington, February 24, 1904._
MY DEAR MR. ----: I take it for granted that there is no
intention of making the Louisiana delegation all white. I
think it would be a mistake for my friends to take any such
attitude in any state where there is a considerable Negro
population. I think it is a great mistake from the
standpoint of the whites; and in an organization composed of
men whom I have especially favored it would put me in a
false light. As you know, I feel as strongly as any one can
that there must be nothing like "Negro domination." On the
other hand, I feel equally strongly that the Republicans
must consistently favor those comparatively few colored
people who by character and intelligence show themselves
entitled to such favor. To put a premium upon the possession
of such qualities among the blacks is not only to benefit
them, but to benefit the whites among whom they live. I very
earnestly hope that the Louisiana Republicans whom I have so
consistently favored will not by any action of theirs tend
to put me in a false position in such a matter as this. With
your entire approval, I have appointed one or two colored
men entitled by character and standing to go to the National
Convention.
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
In the year 1898 the success of the suffrage amendments in South
Carolina and Mississippi in excluding from the franchise more than
nine-tenths of their Negro inhabitants inspired an agitation in
Louisiana to cut off the Negro vote by similar means, and this
agitation came to a head in the Constitutional Convention of that
year. Mr. Washington, assisted by T. Thomas Fortune, the well-known
Negro editor, and Mr. Scott, his secretary, prepared an open letter
addressed to this convention which was taken to the convention by Mr.
Scott and placed in the hands of the suffrage committee as well as the
editors of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_ and the _Picayune_, the
leading daily papers of the State. Extracts from the letter were sent
out by the local representative of the Associated Press and widely
published throughout the country. These New Orleans editors expressed
to Mr. Scott their approval of the letter and their substantial
agreement with its main features, and promised to publish it in full,
which they not only did, but accompanied it by editorial reviews. This
letter stated in part:
"The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of
the South that restriction be put upon the ballot.... With the
sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to find a way out of the
difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a
law that will provide an opportunity or temptation for an ignorant
white man to vote and withhold the same opportunity from an ignorant
colored man, without injuring both men.... Any law controlling the
ballot, that is not absolutely just and fair to both races, will work
more permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.
"The Negro does not object to an educational or property test, but let
the law be so clear that no one clothed with state authority will be
tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one interpretation
upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the
history of the South, and you will find that where there has been the
most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you will find to-day
the lowest moral condition of both races. First, there was the
temptation to act wrongly with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an
easy step to dishonesty with the white man's ballot, to the carrying
of concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the murder
of a white man and then to lynching. I entreat you not to pass such a
law as will prove an eternal millstone about the neck of your
children."
Later in the same appeal he said: "I beg of you, further, that in the
degree that you close the ballot-box against the ignorant, that you
open the schoolhouse.... Let the very best educational opportunities
be provided for both races: and add to this the enactment of an
election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination, at the
same time providing that in proportion as the ignorant secure
education, property, and character, they will be given the right of
citizenship. Any other course will take from one half your citizens
interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent
producers and taxpayers--to become useful and virtuous citizens. Any
other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of
death."
The New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, in its editorial accompanying the
publication of this letter, said: "We have seen the corrupting
influence in our politics and our elections of making fraud an element
of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from
fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we
place in our new constitution." The same editorial further states that
impartiality in the use of the ballot can be given Negro and white man
not only "with the utmost safety," but "it would have a beneficial
effect upon the politics of the State." In fact, the press of both
North and South, both of the whites and the blacks, published this
letter with practically unanimous editorial endorsement, but in spite
of all this the leaders of the convention remained obdurate, the
immediate object was lost, and Louisiana followed the example of
Mississippi and South Carolina. No one realized, however, better than
Booker Washington that the effort was by no means in vain. Owing to
the general awakening of intelligent public opinion the convention
leaders were forced into the position of driving through the
discriminatory amendment not only in the face of the condemnation of
the better element throughout the country but even with the
disapproval of the better and leading citizens of their own State.
Shortly afterward members of the Georgia Legislature, seeking
political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of
anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate
against the Negroes of Georgia by legislative enactment just as the
Negroes of Louisiana had been discriminated against by a
constitutional amendment. This time Mr. Washington went personally to
Atlanta and appealed directly to a number of the members of the
Legislature and to the editors of the leading papers in opposition to
this bill. In an interview published in the Atlanta _Constitution_ at
the time he said:
"I cannot think that there is any large number of white people in the
South who are so ignorant or so poor that they cannot get education
and property enough to enable them to stand the test by the side of
the Negro in these respects. I do not believe that these white people
want it continually advertised to the world that some special law must
be passed by which they will seem to be given an unfair advantage over
the Negro by reason of their ignorance or their poverty. It is unfair
to blame the Negro for not preparing himself for citizenship by
acquiring intelligence, and then when he does get education and
property, to pass a law that can be so operated as to prevent him from
being a citizen, even though he may be a large taxpayer. The Southern
white people have reached the point where they can afford to be just
and generous; where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to
explain. It is an easy matter, requiring little thought, generosity or
statesmanship to push a weak man down when he is struggling to get up.
Any one can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmanship are shown in
stimulating, encouraging every individual in the body politic to make
of himself the most useful, intelligent, and patriotic citizen
possible. Take from the Negro all incentive to make himself and his
children useful property-holding citizens, and can any one blame him
for becoming a beast capable of committing any crime?"
This time the immediate object was attained. The Atlanta
_Constitution_ and other leading Georgia papers indorsed Booker
Washington's appeal and the Legislature voted down its anti-Negro
members. Be it said to the credit of the Georgia Legislature that it
has resisted several similar attempts to discriminate against the
Negro citizens of the State, and it was not till 1908, ten years after
the Louisiana law was passed, that Georgia finally passed a law
disfranchising Negro voters.
Booker Washington has been accused of not protesting against the
lynching of Negroes. In the article published in the _Century
Magazine_ in 1912, from which we have previously quoted, he said on
this subject: "When he was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks
say in a public speech that he knew of five cases during his
administration of innocent colored people having been lynched. If that
many innocent people were known to the governor to have been lynched,
it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom
the governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this
respect is true of other states. In short, it is safe to say that a
large proportion of the colored persons lynched are innocent.... Not a
few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their faces
and committed a crime, knowing that some Negro would be suspected and
mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where Negroes have
committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones
have escaped and gone on committing more crimes.
"Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of
lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged
with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored
people do not feel that innocence offers them security against
lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends to give
greater security to the criminal, white or black."
Mr. Washington often pointed out how the lynching of blacks leads
inevitably to the lynching of whites and how the lynching of guilty
persons of either race inevitably leads to the lynching of innocent
persons of both races.
Let it not be supposed that Booker Washington confined his
condemnation of lynching to the comparatively safe cover of the pages
of an eminently respectable Northern magazine. Some years ago when he
was on a speaking trip in the State of Florida two depraved Negroes in
Jacksonville committed an atrocious murder. The crime aroused such
intense race feeling that Mr. Washington's friends foresaw the
likelihood of a lynching and, fearing for his safety, urged him to
cancel his engagements in Jacksonville, where he was due to speak
before white as well as black audiences within a few days. This he
refused to do and insisted that because there was special racial
friction it was especially necessary that he should keep his
engagements in the city. While he was driving to the hall where he was
to address a white audience the automobile of one of his Negro escorts
was stopped by a crowd of excited white men who angrily demanded that
Booker Washington be handed over to them. When they found he was not
in the car they allowed it to pass on without molesting the Negro
occupant, who enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence and respect
of both races in the city. What they would have done had they found
Booker Washington one may only conjecture. At about the same time the
Negro murderers were captured. The howls of the infuriated mob on its
way to the jail to lynch the accused murderers could be heard in the
distance from the hall where Mr. Washington spoke. Without referring
in any way to the event which was taking place at the time Mr.
Washington, to the alarm of his friends, launched into a fervid
denunciation of lynching and ended with an earnest and eloquent appeal
for better feeling between the races. Instead of his words breaking up
the meeting in a storm of anger and rioting, this audience composed of
Southern whites and colored people vigorously applauded his
sentiments. Undoubtedly they were applauding not so much the views
expressed as the courage shown in expressing them at that place and
under those circumstances.
A somewhat similar experience occurred on a recent speaking tour which
he and a party were making through the State of Louisiana. He was
accompanied by a company of Negro leaders, including Major Moton of
Hampton, who has since become his successor as Principal of Tuskegee
Institute. They were in a portion of the State notorious for its
lynchings of Negroes. No one who has ever seen Major Moton, or knows
anything about him, would think of accusing him of timidity or
cowardice. But when they went before a white audience in this
particular district he urged Mr. Washington as a matter of common
prudence to "soft pedal" what he had to say about lynching. Just as in
Jacksonville Mr. Washington did just the opposite, and made his
denunciation particularly emphatic, and just as in Jacksonville there
was the same applause and apparent approval of his views.
Booker Washington also protested that in the matter of public
education his people are not given a square deal in parts of the
South, particularly in the country districts. He continually
emphasized the relation between education and crime. Other things
being equal the more and the better the education provided the less
the number and seriousness of the crimes committed. Also he pointed
out that the neglect of Negro school facilities injures the white
citizens almost if not quite as much as the Negroes themselves. And
conversely that good school facilities for the colored children
benefit the whites almost as much as the Negroes. He also insisted
that quite aside from all moral and ethical considerations Negro
education pays in dollars and cents. As illustrating the relation
between Negro education and crime or rather lack of Negro education
and crime he related this incident in an article entitled, "Black and
White in the South" published in the _Outlook_ of March 14, 1914: "A
few weeks ago three of the most prominent white men in Mississippi
were shot and killed by two colored boys. Investigation brought to
light that the two boys were rough and crude, that they had never been
to school, hence that they were densely ignorant. While no one had
taught these boys the use of books, some one had taught them, as mere
children, the use of cocaine and whiskey. In a mad fit, when their
minds and bodies were filled with cheap whiskey and cocaine, these two
ignorant boys created a 'reign of murder,' in the course of which
three white men, four colored men, and one colored woman met death. As
soon as the shooting was over a crazed mob shot the two boys full of
bullet-holes and then burned their bodies in the public streets.
"Now this is the kind of thing, more or less varied in form, that
takes place too often in our country. Why? The answer is simple: it is
dense ignorance on the part of the Negro and indifference arising out
of a lack of knowledge of conditions on the part of the white people."
He then pointed out that the last enumeration in Mississippi, where
this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent. of the colored
children had had no schooling during the past year. That in Charleston
County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro education,
there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2;
for the colored child $3.12; in Abbeville County $11.17 for the white,
69 cents for the colored child. This 69 cents per capita expense was
incurred by maintaining a one-room school for two and one-half
months, with a teacher paid at the rate of $15 a month. In another
county the Negro school was in session but one month out of the
twelve. Throughout the State, outside the cities and large towns, the
school term for the colored children is from two to four months. Thus
200,000 colored children in South Carolina are given only three or
four months of schooling a year. "Under these conditions it would
require twenty-eight years for a child to complete the eight grades of
the public school.... But South Carolina is by no means the only State
that has these breeding spots for ignorance, crime, and filth which
the nation will sooner or later have to reckon with."
In the article in the _Century Magazine_ from which quotations have
already been made Mr. Washington cites this statement made by W.N.
Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida,
in explanation of an analysis of the sources of the school fund of the
State: "A glance at the foregoing statistics indicates that the
section of the State designated as 'Middle Florida' is considerably
behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual
plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of Negro education,
and a general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause.
The following figures are given to show that the education of the
Negroes of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that
section one cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is
the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of
protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that
citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the
backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to
the presence of the Negro, but that the presence of the Negro has been
actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools."
Mr. Sheats then shows that the cost of the Negro schools was $19,467,
while the Negroes contributed to the school fund in direct taxes,
together with their proper proportion of the indirect taxes, $23,984.
He concludes: "If this is a fair calculation the schools for the
Negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4,525 for
Negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted
to the white schools."
Mr. Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools at Wilson, N.C., is
quoted as demonstrating that had there been expended upon the Negro
schools the Negro's proportionate share of the receipts from indirect
taxes, as well as the direct taxes paid by them, $18,077 more in a
given year would have been expended on colored schools in Virginia,
$26,539 more in North Carolina, and $141,682 more in Georgia. These
figures would seem to show that in these States at least the Negro
schools are not only no burden upon the white taxpayers but that the
colored people do not get back in school facilities the equivalent of
all they themselves contribute in taxes.
In the matter of passenger transportation facilities Booker Washington
protested that injustice is done his people by most of the railroads
of the South, not in providing separate accommodations for blacks and
whites, but in furnishing the Negroes with inferior accommodations
while charging them the same rates. This injustice causes, he
believes, more resentment and bitterness among his people than all the
other injustices to which they are subjected combined. The Negro or
"Jim Crow" compartment is usually half of the baggage car which is
usually inadequate for the traffic, badly lighted, badly ventilated,
and dirty. The newsdealer of the train uses this coach and increases
the congestion by spreading his wares over several seats. White men
frequently enter this compartment to buy papers and almost always
smoke in it, thus requiring the colored women to ride in what is
virtually a smoker. Aside from these matters the Negroes rarely have
through cars and no sleeping, parlor, or buffet cars, and frequently
no means of securing food on long journeys since many if not most of
the station restaurants refuse to serve them.
In the _Century_ article Mr. Washington thus quoted the experience of
a sensible and conservative Negro friend of his from Austin, Texas--a
man of education and good reputation among both races in his native
city: "At one time," he said, in describing some of his travelling
experiences, "I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the
keeper of the restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out
of the window. He refused, and I had to travel a hundred miles farther
before I could get a sandwich. At another time I went to a station to
purchase my ticket. I was there thirty minutes before the ticket
office was opened. When it did finally open I at once appeared at the
window. While the ticket agent served the white people at one window,
I remained waiting at the other until the train pulled out. I was
compelled to jump aboard the train without my ticket and wire back to
get my trunk expressed. Considering the temper of the people, the
separate coach law may be the wisest plan for the South, but the
statement that the two races have equal accommodations is all bosh. I
pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair or a lavatory, and
rarely a through car. I must crawl out at all times of night, and in
all kinds of weather, in order to catch another dirty 'Jim Crow' coach
to make my connections. I do not ask to ride with white people. I do
ask for equal accommodations for the same money."
Booker Washington was of course obliged to travel in the South almost
constantly and to a great extent at night. He nearly always travelled
on a Pullman car, and so when not an interstate passenger usually
"violated" the law of whatever State he happened to be passing
through. The conductors, brakemen, and other trainmen, as a rule,
treated him with great respect and consideration and oftentimes
offered him a compartment in place of the berth which he had
purchased.
Pullman cars in the South are not as a rule open to members of the
Negro race. It is only under more or less unusual conditions that a
black man is able to secure Pullman accommodations. Dr. Washington,
however, was generally treated with marked consideration whenever he
applied for Pullman car reservations. He was sometimes criticised, not
only by members of his own race, but by the unthinking of the white
race who accused him of thus seeking "social equality" with the white
passengers.
The work he was compelled to do, however, in constantly travelling
from place to place, and dictating letters while travelling, made it
necessary that he conserve his strength as much as possible. He never
believed that he was defying Southern traditions in seeking the
comfort essential to his work.