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
was held on the third of the month, and when I reached
Cambridge I found that in addition to the members of the
colored club, the Mayor of the city and a number of Harvard
professors, including President Eliot, had been invited; and
I could go on and state case after case. Of course, if I
wanted to make a martyr of myself and draw especial
attention to me and to the institution, I could easily do so
by simply writing whenever I receive an invitation to a
dinner or banquet that I could not accept on account of the
color of my skin.
Six years ago at the Peace Jubilee in Chicago, where I spoke
at a meeting at which President McKinley was present, I took
both luncheon and dinner in the same dining-room with
President McKinley and was the guest of the same club that
he was a guest of. There were Southern men present, and the
fact that I was present and spoke was widely heralded
throughout the South, and so far as I know not a word of
adverse comment was made. For nearly fifteen years the
addresses which I have been constantly making at dinners and
banquets in the North have been published throughout the
South, and no adverse comment has been made regarding my
presence on these occasions.
Practically all of the invitations to functions that are of
even a semi-social character are urged upon me by Northern
people, and very often after I have refused to accept
invitations pressure is brought to bear on special friends
of mine in order to get me to accept. Notwithstanding all
this, where I accept one invitation I refuse ten; in fact,
you have no idea how many invitations to dinner I refuse
while I am in the North. I not only do so for the reason
that I do not care to excite undue criticism, but for the
further reason that if I were to accept any large proportion
of such invitations I would have little time left for my
legitimate work. In many cases the invitations come from
people who do not give money but simply want to secure a
notoriety or satisfy curiosity.
I have stated the case as I see it, and with a view of
having you think over these matters by the time that we
meet.
[Signed] BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
There were two particularly notable occasions upon which Mr.
Washington unwittingly stirred the prejudices of the South. The first
was when in 1901 he dined with President Roosevelt and his family at
the White House; the second, when four years later he dined with Mr.
John Wanamaker and his daughter at a hotel in Saratoga, New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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