Booker T Washington, My Larger Education, Later Autobiography

Why should we reflect on Booker T Washington’s second
autobiography, My Larger Education?
What were his memories as a slave boy before Emancipation?
Was Booker T Washington too accommodating to white
sensibilities? Why didn't he strongly condemn lynchings and
other injustices that Negroes suffered?
What were his opinions of Frederick Douglass and WEB du Bois?
What were the challenges facing black educators?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video. Feel free to follow along in the
PowerPoint script we uploaded to SlideShare.

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Booker T Washington, My Larger Education
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Booker T Washington was the leading second-generation black leader:
• Frederick Douglass, a first-generation black leader, was born a slave in 1818, was
quite a rebellious slave, who escaped from slavery in the 1830’s, becoming a
renown abolitionist orator, best-selling author, and civil rights activist.
• Booker T Washington was born a slave in 1856 and was emancipated at the end
of the Civil War. After earning a college degree, he founded the Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama, raising money and support from leading white
businessmen and philanthropists for black colleges.
• WEB Du Bois, a third-generation black leader, was born free in Massachusetts in
1868, shortly after the Civil War, but chose to attend college in the Deep South.
He was a sociology professor, studying and writing about the status of blacks,
and was co-founder of the NAACP, becoming the first editor of the organization’s
Crisis Magazine, gaining national recognition for the civil rights movement.

We reviewed the lives of these three generations of
black leaders, plus a history of slavery and slave
revolts preceding the abolitionist movement of the
1830’s.

SECOND GENERATION OF BLACK LEADERS: BOOKER T WASHINGTON
Like Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington was born a
field slave, his family lived in a one-room cabin, everyone
sleeping on the floor. He was born in a plantation in
southwest Virginia, his family was not broken up, as were
many families in Frederick Douglass’ autobiography.
Neither knew who their white fathers were. Unending toil,
dawn to dusk, was their life, the life of a slave, until his
family was emancipated at the end of the Civil War.

https://youtu.be/yxDnJ6sBoJc
Main Life Events of Booker T Washington:
• 1856: Born into slavery.
• 1865: Emancipated at the end of the Civil War.
• 1875: Graduated from Hampton University
• 1877: Reconstruction Era ends, Jim Crow
Redemption Era begins, and the rise of the KKK.
• 1881: Founded Tuskegee Institute, Macon
County, Alabama, raising funds from leading
white businessmen and philanthropists,
including Andrew Carnegie
• 1895: Atlanta Exposition Speech, Atlanta
Compromise

How does Booker T Washington
begin his second autobiography?
“It has been my fortune to be
associated with a problem, a hard,
perplexing, but important problem.
I looked upon this fact as a great
misfortune. It seemed to me a
great hardship that I was born
poor, and it seemed an even
greater hardship that I should have
been born a Negro.”

Booker T Washington continues: “Paradoxical
as it may seem, the difficulties that the Negro
has met since Emancipation have, in my
opinion, not always but on the whole, helped
him more than they have hindered him.” This
reminds us of Horatio Alger, pull yourself up
by your bootstraps, and work really hard.
“Experience has taught me, in fact, that no
man should be pitied because, every day in
his life, he faces a hard, stubborn problem,
but rather that it is the man who has no
problem to solve, no hardships to face, who
is to be pitied.”

Where Booker T Washington sees lemonade,
WEB Du Bois smells lemons, he has a very
different view of what it means to be black in
America.

WEB Dubois coined the term double-
consciousness that has been used by
American sociologists ever since. “It is a
peculiar sensation, this double-
consciousness (of blacks), this sense of
always looking at one’s self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by
the type of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity. One ever
feels his two-ness, one American, another
a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals
in one dark body, whose dogged strength
alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
WEB DuBois, Laura Wheeler Waring

Both Frederick Douglass and Booker T Washington
describe what it was like growing up as a slave. Their
experiences under slavery were similar, but their
perspectives differed greatly.

Frederick Douglass describes how
the slave children were fed their
meager ration of mush, which was
“coarse corn meal. It was put into
a large wooden tray or trough and
set down upon the ground. The
children were called, like so many
pigs they would come and devour
the mush.” “The child that ate
fastest got most, he that was
strongest got the best place; and
few left the trough satisfied.”
Negro quarters, Fort George Island plantation, GA 1875

Somehow, Booker T Washington spins his experience
as a slave boy as something he remembers with
fondness. He tells how his mother had to get up so
early to work in the fields that he was on his own to
find breakfast.

Booker fondly remembers, “In those days it was the
custom of the plantation to boil the Indian corn that was
fed to the cows and pigs. At times, when I had failed to
get any other breakfast, I used to go to the places where
the cows and pigs were fed and make my breakfast off
this boiled corn, or else go to the place where they were
boiling the corn” to feed to the barnyard animals.
Booker says though some may feel this “was a pretty bad
way to get one’s food,” he remembers how delicious
hard-boiled corn was, and today he smiles and says, “I
never pass a pot of boiled corn without yielding to the
temptation to eat a few grains.” He was not an Uncle
Tom’s Cabin slave; he was a happy slave.
Cotton Picker, by William Aiken
Walker, around 1900

Booker T Washington was born four decades after Frederick
Douglass, they did meet several times, perhaps they
corresponded, and Tuskegee Institute was honored to invite
Frederick Douglass to be the main speaker at commencement
and other occasions. He offers a mild criticism, he stated that
“the long and bitter political struggle in which he had engaged
against slavery had not prepared Douglass to take up the equally
difficult task of fitting the Negro for the opportunities and
responsibilities of freedom.” But then Frederick Douglass was an
orator, author, and activist, he was not an educator.

Outdoor and Indoor
Classrooms in Tuskegee
Institute, Alabama

Booker T Washington stated that “the long
and bitter political struggle in which Douglass
had engaged against slavery had not
prepared him to take up the equally difficult
task of fitting the Negro for the opportunities
and responsibilities of freedom.”

But WEB Du Bois was more of a contrarian than even Frederick Douglass,
and he was quite critical publicly of how Booker T Washington soft-
pedaled civil rights issues, perhaps he was too personal in his criticisms.
Booker T Washington was more diplomatic, in part because of his fund-
raising responsibilities for Tuskegee, which meant he was hostage to
white opinion. He feared if his comments were too controversial, that this
would dry up his funding dramatically. But being accommodating, trying
to be conciliatory rather than confrontational, was part of his personality.
In his slave autobiography, Up From Slavery, when recounting his younger
years, most of which he spent as a slave, he only attached names to
those who treated him right, those who didn’t were nameless.

In both of his autobiographies, Booker T Washington
doesn’t even mention WEB Du Bois’ name. This was
likely intentional; he didn’t want to criticize Du Bois
in print. But he does praise another white co-
founder of the NAACP, Oswald Villard, grandson of
the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. You can see
his name on the masthead of the Crisis, the NAACP
magazine under the editorial direction of WEB Du
Bois.

Booker T Washington
then sings praises of the
nascent NAACP as a
“national vigilance
committee, watching
over and guarding the
rights and interests of the
race, seeking through the
courts, through
legislation and other
means, to redress the
wrongs suffered by the
Negro race.”

In both autobiographies, Booker T Washington notes that the best
education for a black man in decades after Tuskegee was founded was an
industrial education, so the black man could learn either the trades or
how to increase the agricultural output of the land. He is critical of the
“Talented Tenth” movement that included WEB Du Bois that favored a
classical education, including learning Greek and Latin, to prepare black
leaders for a role in leading their race to greater equality in society, saying
blacks with a classical education often could only find work as Pullman
Railroad Porters.
I agree with the assessment by David Levering Lewis, biographer of WEB
Du Bois and Martin Luther King, that blacks are torn between the Booker
T Washington position of humbly proving yourself through hard work,
and the WEB Du Bois position of demanding equal civil rights.

Talented Tenth Niagara Movement leaders WEB Du Bois, JR Clifford, LM Hershaw, & FHM Murray at Harpers Ferry.

Booker T Washington notes that “he
used to sympathize with colored
people who were narrow and bitter
toward white people. As I grew older” I
noticed “that they did not get
anywhere, that their bitterness and
narrowness toward the white man did
not hurt the white man or change his
feeling toward the colored race, but
that, in almost every case, the
cherishing of such feelings” hurt the
colored man more than the white man.

Starting Up Tuskegee Institute in Alabama

When they were emancipated, blacks were ignorant,
illiterate, and destitute. The Freedmen Bureau assisted the
blacks in gaining an education and gainful employment, as
well as establishing hospitals and registering blacks to
vote, but the Bureau was underfunded, understaffed, and
way overextended, constantly combatting Southern
hostility and often violent KKK night riders who terrorized
blacks into submission, and the Bureau of Freedmen was
abolished after Reconstruction.

Man
representing
the Freedman's
Bureau stands
between armed
groups of
whites and
blacks, by
Alfred R Waud,
circa 1868

Freedmen voting
in New Orleans,
1867

Especially in the years immediately after the Civil War, if blacks wanted to
get ahead, they needed help from white leaders. Just like today, the
treatment of blacks varied from town to town. There were counties
where the blacks were terrorized by their white neighbors, we have
recorded several videos on counties where blacks were routinely lynched
and murdered, and there were other counties, like Macon County,
Alabama, home of the Tuskegee Institute, where life was more bearable
for the colored residents, with relatively few lynchings. Booker T
Washington stated that, unlike most other counties in the Deep South
during Jim Crow, he had no trouble registering to vote and voting in
Macon County, and I think we can believe him.

When Bookier T Washington first started
Tuskegee Institute, he immediately had to raise
funds from the white businessmen of Macon
County. He explains his pitch, “the best way to
influence the Southern white man in our
community, I have found, is to convince him
that you are of value to that community. For
example, if you are a teacher, the best way to
get the influence of your white neighbors is to
convince them that you are teaching something
that will make your students” acquire skills that
“adds something of value to the community.” I
showed them that “the presence of Tuskegee
Institute meant better farms and gardens, good
housekeeping, good schools, and law and
order.”
Booker T Washington giving a speech at Carnegie Hall, 1909

Booker T Washington describes the misconceptions of
black education that he had to counter.
• Black parents wanted their children to attend college
so they could graduate from manual labor to more
respectable occupations. The problem was that under
Reconstruction and Jim Crow, unless they became
teachers or Pullman Railroad Porters, the only jobs
available to blacks were in agriculture or the trades.
• Southern whites were “opposed to any kind of
education for the Negro.” They asked whether
Tuskegee planned to train them to be preachers or
teachers, or perhaps trained servants.
• Northern whites feared that Tuskegee would train the
Negro to be mere “hewers of wood and drawers of
water,” that they would not train the Negro to be
informed citizens participating in their community.
Original Tuskegee campus buildings on the
Miller plantation, 1882

In the final chapter, Booker T Washington cites statistics
that illustrate how meager the endowments of the
Southern Negro schools were compared to their Northern
counterparts. Around the book’s copyright date of 1911,
the combined worth of the property and endowments of
twenty-five Negro colleges in the Deep South totaled only
eight million dollars, while there were eleven Northern
colleges who individually had endowments that exceeded
this amount.

Andrew Carnegie
with faculty of
Tuskegee Institute
Booker T
Washington was a
tireless fundraiser,
at the time of his
death the Tuskegee
endowment fund at
over $1.5 million

Booker T Washington explained in his first autobiography
how Negro colleges were compelled to teach the most
fundamental life skills to freedmen who had recently been
emancipated. Most former slaves had never slept in a bed
before, most had never known what it was like to brush
their teeth. Most former slaves, particularly field slaves on
plantations, were totally ignorant of table manners,
because they literally had never eaten a meal at a table
their whole lives.

Classroom and dining room at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, 1902

The low level of education and inadequate literacy of the ordinary black
population continued to pose challenges. Many Negro colleges were
compelled to offer classes that were at the elementary school level, often
taught by teachers who were themselves poorly educated. There were no
standards in place as to what constituted a proper education, schools
were not accredited in those days. Booker T Washington laments, “In
many cases, the diploma that the Negro student carries home with him at
the conclusion of his courses is nothing less than a gold brick. It has made
him believe that he has gotten an education, when he has actually never
had an opportunity to find out what an education is.”

Teaching the trades at
Hampton Institute

Teaching the trades at
Hampton Institute
Booker T Washington laments, “In many cases, the
diploma that the Negro student carries home with
him at the conclusion of his courses is nothing less
than a gold brick. It has made him believe that he has
gotten an education, when he has actually never had
an opportunity to find out what an education is.”

Lynching, White-Capping, and Black Suffrage

In his prior autobiography, Booker T Washington includes obligatory paragraphs
where he briefly condemns lynching and supports black suffrage. In My Further
Education, his references to lynching are just as sparse. He mentions that there was
one lynching in Marshall Country, Alabama since the Civil War, but then immediately
extols how so many successful black professionals had white businessmen friends
who helped them on their road to success. There is also a harsher paragraph that
describes how a large portion of the black population in some counties in
Mississippi were driven out by “white-capping organizations,” which is another word
for lynching parties, but that there were other parts of Mississippi where blacks
were treated as well as in any other part of the country. Indeed, both the black
journalist Ida B Welles and WEB Du Bois publicly called out Booker T Washington for
his failure to strongly condemn lynching, which was running rampant in the Deep
South, and also Mid-West.

Theodore Roosevelt & Muckraking Reporters
Booker T Washington was
impressed by the frankness of
President Theodore Roosevelt,
he says that “I have often been
amazed at the absolute
directness and candor of his
speech. He does not seem to
know how to hide anything. In
fact, he seems to think aloud.”
“What people describe as
impulsiveness in him is nothing
else but quickness of thought.”

These were the days of the muckraking journalists, whom
Roosevelt depended on to help raise awareness of reform issues
he wished to confront. Booker T Washington observed that
Roosevelt kept in “personal touch with the brightest newspaper
men and magazine writers of the country.” Often, he was
surrounded by a dozen reporters, he would talk to them “frankly
and freely about governmental matters, and his plans and
policies.” He noticed that Andrew Carnegie shared his conviviality
with reporters.

Booker Washington and Theodore Roosevelt at Tuskegee Institute, 1905

Booker Washington and Theodore Roosevelt at Tuskegee Institute, 1905
Booker T Washington observed that Roosevelt kept in “personal touch with
the brightest newspaper men and magazine writers of the country.” Often,
he was surrounded by a dozen reporters, he would talk to them “frankly
and freely about governmental matters, and his plans and policies.”

Soon after he became President, Theodore Roosevelt
casually invited Booker T Washington to dinner at the
White House. Both were stunned by the violent
reactions to this simple dinner invitation by the rabid
Deep South segregationist press, who were aghast
that a black man would be permitted to dine with the
President’s family , including his wife and children!

Booker T Washington was
perplexed by the controversy this
Presidential dinner stirred up, as
he remembers, “on previous
occasions, I had taken tea with
Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle;
I had dined with the governors of
nearly every state in the North; I
had dined with President
McKinley in Chicago; and I had
dined with ex-President Harrison
in Paris, and with many other
prominent public men.”
Robert Ogden, Senator Taft, Booker T Washington and
Andrew Carnegie, Tuskegee Institute's 25th anniversary

Deep South segregationists would never
forget that Roosevelt once hosted a black
man at a Presidential dinner. Booker T
Washington was later puzzled why an
ordinary Southern white man once called
him the greatest man in the country. When
he objected, pointing out that President
Roosevelt was the greatest man in the
country. The white man replied that he
“used to think that Roosevelt was a great
man until he ate dinner with you. That
settled him for me.” White House Portrait of Theodore
Roosevelt, by John Singer Sargent, 1903

Buffalo soldiers of the 25th Infantry, some wearing buffalo robes, Ft. Keogh, Montana, 1890
Black Buffalo Soldiers and Brownsville Affair

The minor civil rights gestures of the Roosevelt Administration were overshadowed
by the tragic Brownsville Affair. The army foolishly transferred a battalion of black
Buffalo soldiers from Nebraska to the Deep South segregationist town of
Brownsville, Texas. The residents did not want these soldiers in their town, after
many racial incidents one or more of the soldiers lost their temper, shots were fired
into buildings, a saloon keeper was killed, and the chief of police was grievously
injured. There were conflicting accounts, the townspeople probably shot back, and
may have provoked the incident.
The battalion refused to give up the guilty soldiers, so President Roosevelt
dishonorably discharged the entire battalion, which prevented them from
reenlisting and from civil service positions. The future President Taft, who was the
Secretary of War under Roosevelt, eventually persuaded Roosevelt to soften his
position, he revoked the provision preventing the discharged soldiers from civil jobs
with the government and allowed individual soldiers who could prove they were not
involved to be reinstated.

Buffalo
Soldiers of
the U.S.
10th
Cavalry
Regiment
who were
taken
prisoner
during the
Battle of
Carrizal,
Chihuahua,
Mexico in
1916

Buffalo Soldier Monument, Ft Leavenworth, KS, and at El Paso, in Fort Bliss.

Booker T Washington also remarked that
President Roosevelt’s harsh and unjust
orders against the entire Buffalo soldier
company in the Brownsville Affair
damaged his reputation with the black
community. He explains, “at the time this
famous order was issued there was no
man in the world who was so beloved by
Negroes as Colonel Roosevelt.” “He was
their idol.” But immediately, after “this
order, the songs of praise of ten million
Negroes were turned into a chorus of
criticism and censure.” Roosevelt
managed to alienate both blacks and
Southern segregationist whites.

DISCUSSING THE SOURCES
Although I am quite the fan of Booker T Washington, as I am of
all three of the generational black leaders, this collection of
lectures did not resonate like WEB Du Bois’ collection of essays,
Soul of Black Folk. Rather, the overdose of platitudes in this
book can lead to a bad case of indigestion. Perhaps this feeling is
due to my hindsight knowing how many lynchings and injustices
blacks suffered for a century afterwards under the Jim Crow
regime, not just in the Deep South, but everywhere in America.

Booker T Washington had a bad habit of telling stories of
ignorant black folk that I know his white audiences must have
really guffawed over, like his description of how a black preacher
described how the Israelites were able to cross the iced-over
Red Sea to the other side, but the ice broke under the weight of
the chariots of Pharaoh and his army, and they drowned in the
ice-cold Red Sea. One college educated young Negro objected to
the story, pointing out that the geography of Egypt meant that it
was impossible that the Red Sea could ice over that close to the
equator.

Moses parting the
Red Sea, by Hans
Jordaens, 1643

Booker T Washington had the old
minister replying, “Now I’se been
expecting something just like this.
There’s always some fellow ready
to spile all the theology. The time
I’se talkin’ about was before they
had any jogerfies or ekators
either.” Perhaps this pandering to
white sensibilities was as insulting
to blacks of his time as well as
those in our time. Booker T. Washington giving speech in New
Orleans, 1915

But today’s cold hard truth is that if blacks work for a
company where they are a solid minority, they need to
develop a thick skin and work hard, not insisting on their
civil rights every single day, but saving their grievances for
well-chosen occasions when their complaints would be
the most effective. The tension blacks face between the
accommodationist position of Booker T Washington, and
the activist position of WEB du Bois will likely continue for
many generations more.

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Booker T Washington, My Larger Education, Later Autobiography

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