35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Super Hero BOOKER TALIAFERRO WASHINGTON

Booker Taliaferro Washington 

At the turn of the century, Booker Taliaferro Washington was the most powerful and the most controversial Black leader of his time. Arguably no Black American, before or since, has wielded such power within the African-American community. His influence over Black leaders and white philanthropists, his disdain for criticism, his network of spies, and his power to dispense patronage funded by white philanthropists and politicians made him the most powerful Black in history. 

His supporters say he tirelessly toiled for Black pride and educational and economic advancement and that he used his influence with white industrialists to get huge amounts of money for Black colleges. His critics say he cozied up to the white power structure, using federal patronage and the favor of white philanthropists to create his own political-machine. Historians say they are both right. 

Washington was born a mulatto slave in 1856 on a small Virginia farm. He spent his early years of freedom working in coal mines and salt furnaces. He attended Freedmen's Bureau School and Hampton Institute, then a secondary and industrial school. 

In 1881, Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in the Black belt of Alabama—something many cite as his crowning achievement because of the thousands of Blacks whose careers were made possible thanks to the opportunity they were afforded at Tuskegee. The school specialized in vocational and agricultural careers—jobs non-threatening to an increasingly hostile white workforce. 

Washington spent the next 15 years building this landmark institution by accommodating local whites and raising money from northern ones, who were attracted to his emphasis on thrift, hard work, and good moral character. They viewed industrial education as no threat to southern white labor. 

At this time, militant abolitionist Frederick Douglass was deemed the most articulate Black spokesman. Douglass died in 1895, the same year that Washington catapulted into national fame with a speech known as the Atlanta Compromise Address delivered at the Cotton States and International Exposition. In his speech, Washington implied a scaling back of Black voting rights in favor of white support for Black businesses. He used the parable of the open hand and the empty bucket to illustrate his point. 

His accommodationist, self-help philosophy was clarified in his autobiography, Up From Slavery, published in 1901. The book quickly became a best-seller, and Washington became a household name. He was constantly hailed as a "credit to his race." The book even earned Washington a White House audience with President Theodore Roosevelt that same year, and he remained an important advisor to the president. 

Washington then perfected his political prowess by building an organization that more often than not yielded principle to expediency. Washington secretly funded lawyers and pressed court suits to protest segregation in public transportation and prevent Black sharecroppers from being driven from their land. He maneuvered bad situations and made them into situations that worked for him. This was perhaps his greatest skill. 

His program of industrial education and promotion of small business as the primary way Blacks could move up the ladder might have seemed pragmatic, given the racial hatred that existed at that time. But critics then and today cite it as taking people of African descent several steps backward. One critic of the Atlanta Compromise speech was noted educator John Hope. "I regard it as cowardly and dishonest for any of our colored men to tell white people or colored people that we are not struggling for equality." 

Others praised Washington's industrial philosophy. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie and feminist Susan B. Anthony were among the most prominent speakers who appeared at Tuskegee Institute. Washington's biographer, Louis R. Harlan, said that Washington never stopped working for Black pride, material advancement, and every kind of education. 

Washington's most vocal critic was W.E.B. Du Bois, who called for "ceaseless agitation" when fighting for racial equality. According to Du Bois, in his book The Souls of Black Folk, "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission." Washington's rule was "bossism." He rewarded his friends and punished his enemies. He used spies, bribes, and anything short of violence to bring down opponents, who mainly came from progressive quarters of the Black community. 

Meanwhile, poverty, lynchings, and other assaults to the human dignity of Blacks flourished at the hands of southern and northern whites, who in the 1890s began a movement to take back all the rights Blacks had achieved. 

A little known fact about Washington is that for years he secretly funded court challenges of segregated accommodations in interstate transportation and of attempts by whites to swindle Black farmers of their land. His most scathing attack on racial segregation was published posthumously. In his final years he addressed many of the civil rights questions that the NAACP had raised and he had previously rejected. In his last few years, Washington differed from their approach, not their goal. 

Washington's supporter, William H. Lewis, memorialized his mentor by saying: "He knew the Southern White man better than the Southern White man knew himself, and knew the sure road to his head and heart." At age 59, Washington died at Tuskegee in 1915. Three days after his death, one of the largest crowds in the Institute's history gathered to honor him. 

Washington's successor was Robert R. Moten, his former secretary. Moten was more accommodating to the protest movement, signaling that it had become acceptable for some of Washington's old supporters to join forces with the NAACP. Ironically, during the Depression, W.E.B. Du Bois advocated economic policies similar to those proposed by Washington. This caused a split between Du Bois and Walter F. White within the ranks of the NAACP. 

Washington will remain a controversial figure. Each community and hamlet would create their own Washington, a Black man who could speak for his community as the voice of Negro opinion. Still, Washington remains admired by many Black nationalists and Black radicals, who view him as a symbol of Black empowerment, of the philosophy of "doing for self."

From Great African Americans.  Copyright, Publications International, Ltd.