I recently heard a lecture in Milwaukee in which the speaker stated "Booker T. Washington was right." While suggesting valuable proposals for economic development for Milwaukee's devastated communities, the speaker went on to say he had been a disciple of Cornell West and W.E.B. Du Bois, but converted.

The comment about Booker T. Washington caused concern. So I went back to look at the philosophy and work of Booker T. Washington and the controversies that surrounded him.

Following is some historical analysis and some of my thoughts concerning the work of Booker T. Washington and its meaning today.

Washington entered Hampton Institute in 1872 at the age of 16. In 1881 he took charge of a small school in Tuskegee Alabama and began to put his theories into practice. The school became the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

He concentrated first on teaching farming and handicrafts like bricklaying, carpentry and blacksmithing. He played down the importance of history, mathematics and science and emphasized practical skills and the virtues of hard work, patience and perseverance. Later in his career he began to emphasize the importance of entrepreneurship.

Washington organized the National Negro Business League in 1900 and became its first president. W.E.B. Du Bois was also active in the League's formation. A major component of Washington's philosophy was the complete playing down of political action. The general idea was that the black community should make no serious demands upon existing political injustices.

He thought the black community could get more from the ruling landowners and industrialists by catering to them as opposed to fighting them. Consequently, he discouraged all political activity and made no sustained fight against the evils of Jim Crow segregation, disenfranchisement and lynching. In his speeches he only occasionally mentioned these outrages.

Washington had a philosophy that in all things social African Americans "can be a separate as the fingers yet one as the hand with things essential to mutual progress." He accepted the poll tax and literacy test requirements for voting, insisting only that these measures be applied fairly to both whites and blacks. Washington opposed African-American migration to the North.

The one place he consistently condemned Jim Crow practices was in labor unions while at the same time was a staunch enemy of trade unionism calling it a form of slavery which prevents a man from selling his labor as he pleases.

On Sept. 18, 1895 Washington gave a famous speech at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition where he called upon black people to "...cast down your buckets where you are." He drew this symbol from the story of a water famished ship crew off the shore of South America who when casting their buckets into the sea came up with fresh water from the Amazon River where they had thought there was only salt water.

Consequently, black people should make the best of the situation confronting them and by implication not seek relief through migration or political demands. He called upon the rulers of the South to also cast down their buckets into the rich labor source offered by the black masses instead of wasting their effort to attract white immigrants from Europe. In return Washington pledged black people would prove to be loyal workers.

W.E.B. Bois later characterized Washington speech as the "Atlanta Compromise." He described the speech calling on African Americans to "...survive through submission," asking black people to give up "...political power, insistence on civil rights and higher education."

Washington was offering the southern white landowners and industrialists of the North and South an obedient people as a work force for maximum exploitation and a cheap labor force.

Without unions, without political organization and without allies they would be helpless in the grips of an exploitive system.

All of this was done at a time in history when Jim Crow laws were being written into the laws of the South, lynching was at its high point and the black community was under constant attack.

Washington's Atlanta speech was hailed by industrialist spokesmen in the North and the South as the way of the future. Washington's popularity among the white upper classes, following his Atlanta speech, was remarkable. He was received and lionized everywhere in wealthy circles.

He became the personal friend and close associate of many multimillionaires including such figures as H.K. Rogers of Standard Oil, William H. Baldwin Jr., VP of Southern Railway, Collis P. Huntington, builder of Newport News and railway magnet. He was the guest of Andrew
Carnegie at his castle. He dined at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt and became the arbiter of all federal appointments relating to African Americans. Donations poured into Tuskegee from wealthy sources. Carnegie gave $600,000.

Washington received honorary degrees from Harvard in 1896 and Dartmouth in 1901. He went abroad being made much of by Queen Victoria of England and a long list of royalty.

The historian Saunders Redding characterizes Booker T. Washington's role as "...white America had raised this man up because he espoused a policy which was intended to keep black people docile and dumb in regard to civil, social and political rights and privileges."

Washington's program of creating a body of trained and obedient workers dovetailed fully with the interest of the big landowners and industrial exploiters of the time who were also segregationists. The wealthiest and most powerful white Americans picked Booker T. Washington as the leader of black people.

From the time of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta speech in 1895 there was a sharp rising opposition to his program. This was a time of growing struggle against the burning plagues of lynching, white riots, disenfranchisement, and Jim Crow laws.

Organizations like the National Association of Colored Men, the American Negro Academy, the National Association of Colored Women and the African-American Council, organized in 1899, demanded an end to lynching and the enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.

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