Booker T. Washington:
The Message, The Legacy, The Challenge

Booker T. Washington by Jerry M. Guess

The debate on how African-Americans could best secure equality in America has raged for generations. At the turn of the century two in­tellectual giants clashed over the direc­tion African-Americans should take to shake off the chains and residual effects of slavery and racial discrimination. Each of these men approached the race issue from their unique perspectives. Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Franklin County Virginia. William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born free in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, almost 2 years after slavery had ended.

In his most famous address delivered on September 18, 1895 at the Atlanta ex­position in Atlanta, Georgia Booker T. Washington sought to strike a com­promise that would placate the reac­tionary white power structure, while at the same time outline a program design­ed to lift the masses of black people who were mired in ignorance and peonage. His views must be understood against the backdrop that existed in the South where he lived and worked, and where the ma­jority of his people lived. The period of Reconstruction had ended, Federal troops had been withdrawn from the South, white supremicist groups were un­challenged, the National

Administration was hostile, Congress was unresponsive, and the United States Supreme Court was to rule in less than a year that separate but equal was the law of the land.

Washington said in part: "In all things that are purely social, we can be as the fingers, yet as one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." It was Washington's view that African­Americans must crawl before they could walk, that industrial training was more necessary than academic higher education for the masses of blacks.

DuBois felt that Washington's policy of accommodation was a sacrifice of democratic rights and that the loss of pride was useless, because southerners like "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman and Gover­nor Vandaman of Mississippi believed that God made the Negro inferior. DuBois believed that the intellectuals of the African-American community, the "Talented Tenth," had the ability to assume leadership among their race. He felt that through publicized agitation, these talented leaders could rouse the black community to protest and engage the attention of whites.

History has proven both Washington and DuBois to have had valid points of view. Washington was right when he said: "No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. " DuBois was right when he contended that, "Things come to such a pass that when any Negro complained or advocated a course of action, he was silenced with the remark that Mr. Washington did not agree."

It is easy for those of us who enjoy the security hindsight of the 1990's to view Booker T. Washington as an Uncle Tom. That view, however, neglects the realities faced by the leadership of a people without a glimmer of rights. In 1895 blacks were, by and large, a rural people. There were few schools for blacks; there were no court protections for basic human rights; former slaves were powerless against the white law enforce­ment establishment, and blacks had meager economic resources and no real politically enforceable rights.

Washington realized that what most southern blacks needed was basic training to compete for available jobs. He did not believe that we could not be engineers, physicists, philosophers, botanists, poets or historians.But he realized that in the climate that existed at that time we would not be employed in those and other academic professions. If, on the other hand, we became bricklayers, carpenters, leather tanners, coppersmiths and blacksmiths, and if we learned how to perform domestic service, we would have the dignity of work and the ability to support our families, and run successful businesses and farms.

In the years following Washington's death, he became subject to stinging criticisms by people who used a different yardstick for measuring and assessing his contributions. He was accused of sacrific­ing the political rights of African­Americans in the pursuit of his economic goals. Washington in his book Up From Slavery writes, "1 tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone would not save him, and that back of the ballot he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race without these elements could permanently succeed."

In our long struggle for equal rights, we have had to make accommodations in the pursuit of progress. Charles Houston did not attack school desegregation at the primary level in 1935. He knew that a frontal attack on desegregation at the primary and secondary level would have been fruitless and counter-productive. For that reason, the legal approach he us­ed was to lay the foundation for school desegregation by chipping away at discrimination (the separate but equal ap­proach) in higher education first.

Clarence Mitchell, the NAACP's legendary lobbyist, pointed out that the 1957 Civil Rights Bill fell far short of what the NAACP and the civil rights community wanted. It was, however, a first step so we settled for it with that view in mind. The 1991 Civil Rights Act in its final form was not the bill that many in the civil rights movement wanted. The choice was between a bill that could be passed and signed by the President or no bill at all. Yes, some activists said that if we could not get the bill that we wanted, then we should have no bill at all. For­tunately, that point of view did not prevail.

In a like fashion, Washington, like all other leaders, was forced by political realities to settle for half-a-loaf in many instances.

His record of accomplishment speaks for itself. His philosophy was flawed, but so was the philosophy of his critics.

Washington was right in his perception that it would take a long time for African­Americans to have the protected right to vote. It took 70 years for the federal government to guarantee the right of blacks in the South to vote (1965), 59 years for the courts to mandate the desegregation of public education (1954) "with all deliberate speed, " 69 years for the Congress to outlaw discrimination in public accommodations, and 73 years for a fair housing bill to be passed.

DuBois was right in his belief that economic rights devoid of political rights was hallow at best. He rightly believed that there existed within the black com­munity a cadre of well qualified leaders who could provide the leadership for the struggle. Like Frederick Douglass, he felt that there must be constant agitation if Americans were to ever receive first-class citizenship. It was this philosophy that NAACP Legal Counsel Charles Hamilton used to develop a strategy for slowly chipping away at the foundations of dejure segregation. That effort culminated the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954.

As [the 20th Century ends], the debate as to how we can best lift our brothers and sisters who have not been privileged to enter the mainstream of American life continues.

There are a number of voices beckon­ing the race to march to the drumbeat of this or that drummer. Like the Washington-DuBois debate, there is like­ly some merit to be found on every side of the "progress argument." There are those who feel that our salvation rests in gaining political power. There is another school of thought that advocates economic empowerment. Both of these divergent philosophies have merit, but in and of themselves are insufficient. If, when we wake up tomorrow we discovered that we had the "right" African-American president, that a ma- jority of the 435 members of Congress were African-Americans, and that the "right" majority of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court were the "right blacks," our problem as a race would still be with us.

Dr. William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago, one of the most influential sociologist's of this generation, points out that the odds of the truly disad­vantaged pulling themselves up by their bootstraps if they want to are overwhelm­ingly stacked against them. It would still take years to reverse the current trend in the decline of black males receiving doc­toral degrees in math. (According to a re­cent study conducted by Morgan State University in 1990, only four African­Americans received doctorates in math from U.S. universities). According to the same study, between 1975 and 1990, the number of black males receiving doctoral degrees overall declined from 650 in 1975 to 320 in 1990. The median wealth would still be $43,280 for white households and $4,170 for blacks, and according to a Census Bureau survey 29 percent of African-American households reported that they had no wealth, (mean­ing that they owned no assests or that their liabilities exceeded their assets). Two-thirds of black children would con­tinue to live with one parent, most likely the mother. Although African-Americans represent more than 12 percent of the U.S. population, they would still own less than 2 percent (425,000) of the nation's businesses, and own less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the nation's capital stock. We would still spend 94 percent of our in­come with those outside of our communi­ty, and beg foreigners to provide us with jobs and respect in places of business in our community. A disproportionate number of us would still be in prisons (black males represent 6 percent of the United States population, yet we con­stitute 49 percent of the federal prison population; as high as 60 percent in some states), or on the welfare rolls and counted among the unemployed.

Obviously, no one in his or her right mind believes in 1992 that political em­powerment and social rights alone will bring about first-class citizenship. Pre­judice and mcism remain active ingre­dients on the landscape of this and every other society in the world. These are sicknesses like cancer for which there is today 00 cure, but we must continue to spend time in the laboratories of social and psychological research to find an ef­. fective form of treatment and hopefully eventual prevention.

Those who argue that the economic route alone is the path that we should follow have an equally flawed philosophy. With nearly 1/3 of our population mired in poverty and valleys of hopelessness, motivation and help are needed. It is not enough to tell youngsters in school that if they just work hard they can succeed. Too many of these young people have never had a role model who made it the old fashioned way. They have only known welfare and dependence. Others, the children of the working poor, see their parents going to work every day yet not being able to make ends meet. Somehow, the cycle of gloom and doom must be broken. It is not enough to en­courage African-Americans to go into business if they cannot find the necessary capital to get started because of the illicit practice of redlining by the majority banks.

As was the case in 1895 when Washington delivered his Atlanta ad­dress, the plight of African-Americans does not lend itself to simplistic answers. There is no one right way to attack the remaining problems that we face. We must have both social justice and economic parity. It is not enough to have the right to buy a hotdog at a lunch counter; we need the money to purchase the hot-dog. As Reverend Joseph Lowery, President of the Southern Chris­tian Leadership Conference says, "It's all right to be able to check in to a hotel, but you need to be able to pay the bill upon checking out."

We need to take a careful look at education. The old formulas, in many in­stances, have failed. We need to be open to new options and alternatives. In a rapidly changing service- oriented socie­ty, we need to re-evaluate many of the views we have held for decades about vocational education. This comes with recognition of the fact that all of our young people will not want to or are capable of obtaining a college education. Opportunities in steel, auto manufactur­ing and textiles are gone, possibly forever. There are jobs available in com­puter science, the building trades, elec­tronics, auto mechanics, word process­ing and other avenues that do not require a college degree.

Next, we need to be open to ideas that encourage and support African-American development. If others can make a liv­ing selling goods and services to our communities so can we.

We need to stop the name calling, and the labeling of those whose life ex­periences leads them to have a different approach to the dilemma we face. We need to stop labeling people Uncle Toms or sell-outs, those who lost their hearts and souls or have forgotten where they came from. None of us have a lock on knowledge. God did not give any of us infinite wisdom or omniscience.

We have made tremendous progress during the 20th century. That progress was slow, assiduously fought for, and purchased by the blood and sweat of un­told thousands. If we had followed the DuBois approach and the Washington ap­proach without distractions, we would be much closer to real freedom than we are today. Our hope is that before the first haIf of the next century, we will have learned the lessons of history, and will have decided that progress is much more important than catchy slogans and half­baked solutions.

Despite all of the problems which face us, I remain optimistic. I believe that African-Americans have the ability, the courage and the tenacity to win the seemingly impossible battle. We have over­come slavery: we defeated Jim Crow and we can defeat his first cousin, James E. Crow, Esq. To do so, we must help lift those who have been left behind, those who have been locked out or have stayed out of the banquet halls of opportunity. Washington and DuBois faced a for­midable external enemy. Little by little we have chipped away at an old order.

Now we face the internal enemies of self hatred, self doubt, indifference and intolerance of the views and ideas of each other. We have in our hands the ability to defeat apathy, despair and hopelessness. The only question remaining is: do we have the will?

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