Booker T. Washington

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON was “mercilessly ridiculed” by black liberals in the North for his insistence that blacks focus on improving themselves and not on attacking whites.
In recognition of Black History Month, here is an excerpt from “Du Bois vs. Washington: Old Lessons Black People Have Not Learned,” by Ellis Washington:
Although born a slave, Booker T. Washington triumphed against an overwhelming set of circumstances to become one of the great Black educators, speakers and university builders in American history. Perhaps even more amazing is that Washington was of such high moral character as to not have any hatred or animosity toward Whites. Neither did he manifest any psychological debilitation from suffering what had to be a traumatic childhood as a slave. One of the many maxims Washington followed was that, “It is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him.” He believed that racial reconciliation could only be gained through compromise and finding common ground even among the most radical White segregationists in the South. Washington further stated in his Atlanta speech:
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.


