Booker T. Washington, Builder of a CivilizationScott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
History
Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization
Scott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
African Americans -- Biography; Educators -- United States -- Biography; Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
On this occasion there were on the platform with Mr. Washington and
the officials of the fair the Mayor of Albany and members of the City
Council, while in the audience were several hundred whites on one side
of the centre aisle and twice as many blacks on the other. And Mr.
Washington would alternately address himself to his white and black
audience. He would, for instance, turn to the white men and tell them
that he had never known a particularly successful black man who could
not trace his original success to the aid or encouragement he had
received in one form or another from a white friend. He would tell
them that without their assistance his race could never have made more
progress in the last fifty years in this country than any similar
group of people had ever made in a like period of time. After he had
raised the white section of his audience to a high degree of
self-congratulatory complaisance he would suddenly shift the tenor of
his remarks and ask them why they should mar this splendid record by
discriminating against the weaker race in matters of education, by
destroying their confidence in the justice of the courts through mob
violence, and by the numerous small, mean ways in which race prejudice
shows itself and retards and discourages the upward struggle of a
weaker people. As he proceeded along these lines one could see the
self-congratulatory expression fade from the faces of his white
listeners.
He would next turn to his own people and tell them of their phenomenal
progress since emancipation and of the great and essential part they
had played in the upbuilding of the South--left prostrate by the Civil
War. One could see their eager, upturned faces glow with pride and
self-satisfaction. But suddenly he would shift the tone of his
comments and tell them how sadly those of them who were indolent and
shiftless and unreliable and vicious were retarding the upward
struggles of the industrious and self-respecting majority and how they
were perpetuating the prejudice against the whole race. And as he
pictured this seamy side of the situation one could see the glow of
pride gradually wilt from the myriads of swarthy upturned faces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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