In every generation of our national life, from Phillis Wheatley to
Booker Washington, the Negro race in America has succeeded in bringing
forth men whom the country, at times spontaneously, at times in spite of
itself, has been impelled to honor and respect. Mr. Washington is one of
the most striking of these cases, and his autobiography is a partial
history of the steps which made him a group leader, and the one man who
in the eyes of the nation typified at present more nearly than all
others the work and worth of his nine million fellows.
The way in which groups of human beings are led to choose certain
of their number as their spokesmen and leaders is at once the most
elementary and the nicest problem of social growth. History is but the
record of this group leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its
type and history! And of all types and kinds, what can be more
instructive than the leadership of a group within a group - that curious
double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advance
be relative retrogression? All this is the social student's inspiration
and despair.
When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a
people, their attitude is ever one of determined opposition to, and
conquest of, natural forces. But when to earth and brute is added an
environment of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group
may take three main forms: a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt
to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater group; or,
finally, a determined attempt at self-development, self-realization, in
spite of environing discouragements and prejudice. The influence of all
three of these attitudes is plainly to be traced in the evolution of
race leaders among American negroes. Before 1750 there was but the one
motive of revolt and revenge which animated the terrible Maroons and
veiled all the Americas in fear of insurrection. But the liberalizing
tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought the
first thought of adjustment and assimilation in the crude and earnest
songs of Phillis and the martyrdom of Attucks and Salem.
The cotton-gin changed all this, and men then, as the Lyman
Abbotts of to-day, found a new meaning in human blackness. A season of
hesitation and stress settled on the black world as the hope of
emancipation receded. Forten and the free Negroes of the North still
hoped for eventual assimilation with the nation; Allen, the founder of
the great African Methodist Church, strove for unbending
self-development, and the Southern freedmen followed him; while among
the black slaves at the South arose the avenging Nat Turner, fired by
the memory of Toussaint the Savior. So far, Negro leadership had been
local and spasmodic; but now, about 1840, arose a national leadership -
a dynasty not to be broken. Frederick Douglass and the moral revolt
against slavery dominated Negro thought and effort until after the war.
Then, with the sole weapon of self-defense in perilous times, the
ballot, which the nation gave the freedmen, men like Langston and Bruce
sought to guide the political fortunes of the blacks, while Payne and
Price still clung to the old ideal of self-development.
Then came the reaction. War memories and ideals rapidly passed,
and a period of astonishing commercial development and expansion ensued.
A time of doubt and hesitation, of storm and stress, overtook the
freedmen's sons; and then it was that Booker Washington's leadership
began. Mr. Washington came with a clear simple programme, at the
psychological moment; at a time when the nation was a little ashamed of
having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes and was concentrating its
energies on Dollars. The industrial training of Negro youth was not an
idea originating with Mr. Washington, nor was the policy of conciliating
the white South wholly his. But he first put life, unlimited energy, and
perfect faith into this programme; he changed it from an article of
belief into a whole creed; he broadened it from a by-path into a
veritable Way of Life. And the method by which he accomplished this is
an interesting study of human life.
Mr. Washington's narrative gives but glimpses of the real struggle
which he has had for leadership. First of all, he strove to gain the
sympathy and cooperation of the white South, and gained it after that
epoch-making sentence spoken at Atlanta: "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 " (p. 221). This conquest of the
South is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington's career.
Next to this comes his achievement in gaining place and consideration in
the North. Many others less shrewd and tactful would have fallen between
these two stools; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from
birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the
spirit of the age that was dominating the North. He learned so
thoroughly the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism and the
ideals of material prosperity that he pictures as the height of
absurdity a black boy studying a French grammar in the midst of weeds
and dirt. One wonders how Socrates or St. Francis of Assissi would
receive this!
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with
his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature must
needs make men a little narrow to give them force. At the same time, Mr.
Washington's success, North and South, with his gospel of Work and
Money, raised opposition to him from widely divergent sources. The
spiritual sons of the Abolitionists were not prepared to acknowledge
that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and
self-sacrificing souls, were wholly failures, or worthy of ridicule. On
the other hand, among his own people Mr. Washington found deep suspicion
and dislike for a man on such good terms with Southern whites.
Such opposition has only been silenced by Mr. Washington's very
evident sincerity of purpose. We forgive much to honest purpose which is
accomplishing something. We may not agree with the man at all points,
but we admire him and cooperate with him so far as we conscientiously
can. It is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power, that,
steering as he must amid so many diverse interests and opinions, he
to-day commands not simply the applause of those who believe in his
theories, but also the respect of those who do not.
Among the Negroes, Mr. Washington is still far from a popular
leader. Educated and thoughtful Negroes everywhere are glad to honor him
and aid him, but all cannot agree with him. He represents in Negro
thought the old attitude of adjustment to environment, emphasizing the
economic phase; but the two other strong currents of feeling, descended
from the past, still oppose him. One is the thought of a small but not
unimportant group, unfortunate in their choice of spokesman, but
nevertheless of much weight, who represent the old ideas of revolt and
revenge, and see in migration alone an outlet for the Negro people. The
second attitude is that of the large and important group represented by
Dunbar, Tanner, Chesnut, Miller, and the Grimkes, who, without any
single definite programme, and with complex aims, seek nevertheless that
self-development and self-realization in all lines of human endeavor
which they believe will eventually place the Negro beside the other
races. While these men respect the Hampton-Tuskegee idea to a degree,
they believe it falls far short of a complete programme. They believe,
therefore, also in the higher education of Fisk and Atlanta
Universities; they believe in self-assertion and ambition; and they
believe in the right of suffrage for blacks on the same terms with
whites.
Such is the complicated world of thought and action in which Mr.
Booker Washington has been called of God and man to lead, and in which
he has gained so rare a meed of success.
W. E. Burghardt Du Bois.
Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga.
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