beneath the solid stretch of acre in Mississippi and Detroit
and the crown of our labor chant
a river returning to the source
A reddening dusk that will never settle on the
backs of our people
1899–1904
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
Derrick Alridge
Throughout my years of teaching courses in African American educational history and studies, I have always been excited to discuss Booker T. Washington. My excitement stems from engaging the complexity of the man and scrutinizing the ways he is presented in scholarly works and contemporary textbooks. Washington is often referred to as the “Wizard of Tuskegee.” His politics, which are described as “accommodationist,” are typically referred to as the “Tuskegee Machine.”
Typically, in my classes, some students support Washington’s pragmatic approach and his advocacy for Black people. They admire his focus on education as a means of making a living, while forgoing civil rights for the time being. Other students view Washington’s approach as representing acquiescence to white supremacy. I often agree with aspects of both viewpoints, and I try to help my students understand this complex man in the context of his time.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States perceived that it had a problem, in the form of 9 million Black Americans who sought the rights of full citizenship. The so-called “Negro problem,” sometimes referred to as the “Negro question,” was of such great concern that politicians and scholars alike examined the “problem” and proposed measures to address it. Some believed that with proper training and the passage of time, Black people could evolve intellectually to become productive members of American society. Others viewed Black people as inherently inferior and incapable of full integration into society. Among African Americans, Booker Taliaferro Washington emerged as a representative of his race who offered a pragmatic approach to addressing the “Negro problem.” He was so revered as a great “Negro” leader of his time that historian August Meier has called the period between 1880 and 1915 the “age of Booker T. Washington.”
Washington emerged on the national scene on September 18, 1895, at the Cotton States International Exposition in Atlanta. His speech, commonly known as the “Atlanta Compromise,” offered pragmatic suggestions for resolving the “Negro problem.” Washington observed that after Emancipation, Black Americans had started “at the top instead of at the bottom,” emphasizing political participation and holding seats in Congress during Reconstruction. Washington argued that instead of engaging in politics and pursuing civil rights, Black people should have pursued training in the trades and agriculture to obtain the skills to make a living.
In making his point, Washington offered the analogy of a ship lost at sea for many days hailing another ship for help, indicating that its crew was dying of thirst. Washington related how each time the crew of the lost ship called for water, the crew of the other ship replied, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The crew of the lost ship finally cast down their buckets and retrieved fresh water from the Amazon River, enabling the crew to survive.
For Washington’s audience, the lost ship represented Black America. Washington encouraged African Americans to heed the advice given to the crew of the ship: “ ‘Cast down your bucket where you are.’ Cast it down, making friends in every manly way of the people of all races, by whom you are surrounded.” He encouraged them to cast down their bucket in “agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.” Addressing whites’ fears about the commingling of Black and white people, he noted, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
When I teach Washington, I always begin with his Atlanta Compromise speech. I have read and taught the speech and heard it recited countless times over the past few decades. I consistently struggle with certain passages, particularly Washington’s statement, “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly.” While much of his message sounds like appeasement of the white South, a closer reading reveals that these are the words of an extremely pragmatic and politically astute man dedicated to the future of his race. I therefore challenge my students and myself to “step into Washington’s time.” This means remembering that in 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson had established the “separate but equal” doctrine, upholding Jim Crow laws throughout the South. Moreover, 541 African Americans were lynched between 1899 and 1904. These realities offer crucial context for understanding Washington’s views.
Though Washington published several books, I always assign his autobiography Up from Slavery as the central text in studying his life and thought. Up from Slavery reads like an inspiring Horatio Alger story, yet as Ishmael Reed notes, the story is even more impressive because Washington was born into slavery and founded a university. Published in 1901, the book recounts how Washington received no education as a slave but had vivid memories of seeing children sitting at desks in a schoolhouse. Going to school, he believed, “would be about the same as getting into paradise.”
Washington’s book recounts the valuable lessons he learned from his mother and stepfather, as well as from his own work in coal mines. He describes the lessons of tidiness and cleanliness he gleaned from Mrs. Ruffner, a woman for whom he once worked. He also tells of his odyssey traveling by foot, wagon, and car five hundred miles to the Hampton Institute; the mentorship he received from Union general Samuel Chapman Armstrong; and his founding of the Tuskegee Institute.
Each time I teach Up from Slavery, my students and I ponder how much of the book reflects Washington’s true thoughts and feelings. We consider to what extent the work might reflect a mythology of himself and of Blacks as a people that he wanted to convey to the country at that particular moment in time. In the end, we typically conclude that, like most other biographies, the book reflects both the real Washington and a mythological Washington.
In addition to Up from Slavery, I have my students read Washington’s collection of published papers, his correspondence, and passages from books about Washington. We discuss how he sometimes made jokes about Black Americans that appealed to white audiences; these jokes often chastised Black people for having an obsession with learning the classics before learning to make a living.
At the same time, it is clear that behind the scenes Washington advocated for Black civil rights. For example, he stated the following in the Birmingham Age-Herald in 1904:
Within the last fortnight three members of my race have been burned at the stake; of these one was a woman. Not one of the three was charged with any crime even remotely connected with the abuse of a white woman. In every case murder was the sole accusation. All of these burnings took place in broad daylight, and two of them occurred on Sunday afternoon in sight of a Christian church.