Suchergebnisse

This volume turns from emphasizing Washington's institution-building (Tuskegee Institute) to examine those writings which reveal more about the black leader's growing role as a national public figure. Volume 5 covers a period during which Washington's fortunes continued to rise even as those of the black masses, for whom he claimed to speak, declined. Though forced to adhere narrowly to the racial philosophy he had espoused in the Atlanta Compromise address of 1895, Washington nonetheless was able to involve himself covertly in matters of civil rights and politics. He used the National Negro Business League as a front for political activity. He successfully lobbied against disenfranchisement of black voters in Georgia during November, 1899. During these years Washington began behind-the-scenes civil rights activities that foreshadowed a much more elaborate "secret life" after the turn of the century. He worked with lawyers of the Afro-American Council to test in the courts the grandfather clause of the Louisiana constitution of 1898, raising money to pay the legal costs and swearing the other participants to secrecy. T. Thomas Fortune, the leading black journalist of the day, was Washington's close personal advisor as he sought to spread his sphere of influence from his southern base to northern cities. Also included are writings on the first convention of the National Negro Business League, Washington's address before the Southern Industrial Convention in Huntsville, Ala., and the full text of Washington's first book, The Future of the American Negro, published in December, 1899

Covering Washington's career from September 1895 - after the Atlanta Compromise address thrust him into prominence as the black spokesman whites were willing to listen to - to December 1898, when President William McKinley visited Tuskegee, the papers in this volume demonstrate Washington's growing fame and public acceptance. Throughout this period, although he continued his close paternal watch over Tuskegee, he became increasingly involved with the concerns of the national black community, speaking to overflow audiences of both races all over the country. This was a time of increasing racial segregation as evidenced by the landmark Plessy v. Fergusson decision, which established the "separate but equal" doctrine not only in transportation but in public accommodations and education. Washington reacted strongly to this, and several years later, in response to the rising tide of discrimination, he delivered his controversial Peace Jubilee speech, calling upon the South to bury racial and sectional prejudice in the trenches of San Juan Hill, where black and white, northerner and southerner, had united in a fight for freedom

The contrast between Booker T. Washington's private actions and public utterances continues to be revealed in this latest volume in the much-acclaimed series. Although very little changes at Tuskegee Institute during this period, Washington's leadership was faltering in the face of a virulent white racism that appeared in the North as well as the South. Still, he continued his public pursuit of and optimism for moderate solutions to racial dissension. At the same time, however, he privately redoubled his efforts to silence his black opponents, build his personal political machine, influence the black press, and maintain his autocratic rile over Tuskegee Institute

From September 1912 through March 1914, Washington continued his heavy schedule of speaking, fund-raising, race leadership, and close supervision of Tuskegee Institute. Although the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency led to the dismantling of the Tuskegee Machine's political arm, Washington remained a prominent figure in the political arena. During this period, however, freed from the constraints he had felt as presidential adviser, he became more openly critical of racial injustice. His most sweeping and direct attack appeared in "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?" published in The Century a few days after Wilson's election. In this article he criticized the continuing existence of job discrimination in the North, and of Jim Crow transportation and poor education opportunities in the South. Washington continued to advocate economic and educational means for black advancement, persuading the Phelps-Stokes Fund to finance a study of black secondary and higher education and creating in 1912 the Tuskegee Five Year Fund. Despite the changing times and gradual decline in his personal vigor, Washington's actions hardly suggested the little time he had left to live

In 1911 and 1912 Washington continued to travel, lecture, and write in America and abroad. In England and Europe he studied working-class conditions and included his observations in The Man Farthest Down (1912). During this same time period, however, he and his Tuskegee Machine suffered systematic shocks from which they only partially recovered. Washington's political role as presidential adviser declined steadily during Taft's administration. The decline itself was overshadowed, if not hastened, by Washington's involvement in a highly sensationalized incident - his brutal beating at the hands of Henry Albert Ulrich in early 1911. While this act stimulated a wave of sympathy from Washington's supporters, the circumstances surrounding the incident provided added fuel for his detractors

Washington's gradual rise to prominence as an educator, race leader, and shrewd political broker is revealed in this volume, which covers his career from May 1889 to September 1895, when he delivered the famous speech often called the Atlanta Compromise address. Much of the volume relates to Washington's role as principal of Tuskegee Institute, where he built a powerful base of operations for his growing influence with white philanthropists in the North, southern white leaders, and the black community

Normative historical narratives of Booker T. Washington continually underestimate the genius of this politically savvy educator. Despite the recent groundswell of interest in photography in the history of education, only a handful of scholars have excavated BTW's meticulously produced portraits in light of his impact on North American civil rights. Washington's images did not simply accentuate his message, they possessed an indelible mythological argument in themselves, reifying a time and place not yet achieved in full by his African-American community. While his Tuskegee Institute mostly accommodated the temperaments of White America, his photographs dissolved the very boundaries between black and white.

Here is the first of fifteen volumes in a project C. Vann Woodward has called "the single most important research enterprise now under way in the field of American black history." Volume 1 contains Washington's Up from Slaver, one of the most widely read American autobiographies, The Story of My Life and Work, and six other autobiographical writings. They are a good first step toward understanding Washington because they reveal the moral values he absorbed from his min-nineteenth-century experiences and teachers, and they present him to the world as he wished to be seen: the black version of the American success hero and the exemplar of the Puritan work ethic, which he believed to be the secret of his success. His writings served a success model for many blacks who wished to overcome poverty and prejudice