Booker T. Washington in American Memory

Kenneth M. Hamilton

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780252099229
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Since the 1960s, many historians have condemned Booker T. Washington as a problematic, even negative, influence on African American progress. This attitude dramatically contrasts with the nationwide outpouring of grief and reverence that followed Washington's death in 1915. Kenneth M. Hamilton describes how, when, where, and why Americans commemorated the life of Booker T. Washington. For months following his death, tens of thousands of Americans, especially blacks, honored his memory. Their memorials revealed that Washington enjoyed widespread national support for his vision of America and the programs that he imparted to achieve his aspirations. Their actions and articulations provide rich insight into how a cross section of Washington's contemporaries viewed him. From private messages of solace to public pronouncements, countless Americans portrayed him as a revered national icon. Among other characteristics, commemorates voiced their appreciation of his humanitarianism, humility, nationalism, perseverance, philanthropy, progressivism, spirituality, and wisdom. Washington was the leading advocate of the Yankee Protestantism Ethic, which promoted education, and personal qualities such as pragmatism, perseverance, cleanliness, thrift, and the dignity of labor among African Americans.

1. “A Great Man Fallen”

The Immediate Death Notices

Soon after Booker T. Washington's death, which occurred Sunday, November 14, at 4:45 A.M., sympathizers sent his relatives and close associates messages of solace. These notes provided numerous senders a simple way to individualize memorials for Washington. The notes expressed many of the same sentiments that audiences who attended commemorations for the late educator experienced. Many of the messages indicated that Washington's death traumatized countless number of Americans, especially African Americans. Although newspapers throughout the nation had reported his hospitalization after his collapse in New York City, November 4, 1915, Washington's supporters seemed not to be emotionally prepared for his imminent demise. When Algernon Brashear Jackson, a friend of Washington's widow, Margaret, learned of his death, she proclaimed shock “beyond measure.” Jackson claimed not to “know what to say…I am,” she went on to write, at a “loss for words.” Tuskegee instructor William H. Walcott also divulged that words failed him in trying to communicate the intensity of his shock at the news. Washington's death so stunned R. W. Thompson, an African American journalist, that he claimed to be unable to compose graceful prose. Although Louis G. Gregory, a Washington, D.C., African American attorney, could command words, he asserted that Washington's death “left him somewhat dazed.”¹

Gregory and many other devotees viewed Washington as a significant contributor to the formation of a desired American society. His death forced them to realize that they now needed to construct a vision of a new future without him. Many of them wrote notes describing various mixtures of fear, disappointment, loss, and depression. Perhaps they felt like Edythe Williams, a one-time member of the Tuskegee Institute community, who claimed that knowledge of his death so shocked her that she felt that it “effaced all other cares for the time.” On the other hand, they might have experienced feelings similar to those that Spencer Patterson, a black man living in Relay, Maryland, expressed. He wrote that after his family and he learned of Washington's passing it seemed as though we “were sitting in a lighted room and suddenly the light goes out.”²

Washington's death probably did not inspire a majority of sympathizers to experience similar feelings. Hundreds of condolers sent telegrams and letters to people closely affiliated with Washington, with his widow, Margaret James Murray Washington, receiving the bulk of these, although many sympathizers sent communiqués to members of Tuskegee Institute Board of Trustees, administration, and faculty. A few condolers directed their notes to persons closely associated with Washington who did not enjoy an official connection with the institute. Sympathizers began sending notes of solace as early as the Sunday morning that Washington died. Many of them learned of the late educator's demise through telegrams from the secretary of the Tuskegee Institute and Washington's aide-de-camp, Emmett J. Scott. He had wired a short, passionless statement that “Principal Washington died here this morning at four forty five o'clock. Funeral Wednesday morning.” A majority of the messages, however, came from people who had read newspaper accounts of the death. The Associated Press, having received confirmation of Washington's passing from Scott, informed affiliated newspapers in time for many to publish a report about it that Sunday.³

While a sizable number of the messages conveyed nothing more than the courtesy normally extended to the bereaved, many expressed their veneration for Washington, with a significant portion of the authors declaring that he occupied an important place in their lives. Even though some writers possessed a personal relationship with the late educator, the majority did not. Memories of the real or imagined roles that Washington played in the life of many of the writers helped to shape these messages. For these consolers, Washington had become a symbol of the aspirations that they held for themselves, for African Americans, or for the nation. Their expression of their grief manifested a belief that Washington's death greatly diminished the likelihood that his vision for African Americans, the South, and the nation would materialize. Writers signified that they believed that a desired cultural transformation would occur in the United States if a significant number of African Americans, especially those living in the South, would embrace the tenets of Yankee Protestants.

Along with their grief, well-wishers expressed sympathy and appreciation for Washington and his accomplishments. Shaped by individual and group memories of Washington, the collage of communications portrayed the late educator as one of the most accomplished leaders of his day. Within this comprehensive collective image emerged a picture of the leader of a long-term movement to transform the culture of the people living in the South, especially African Americans. Although the words Yankee, Protestant, or ethic didn't appear, many of the notes strongly indicated that they believed that Washington sought to inspire southern blacks to embrace and emulate the values and behaviors commonly reflected in early-twentieth-century secularized New England. While these principles included asceticism, calling, charity, humility, perseverance, pragmatism, and sobriety, Washington and his supporters placed significant emphasis on cleanliness, education, efficiency, honesty, orderliness, promptness, service, steadiness, thrift, systematic work, and the dignity of labor.⁴

For generations, New Englanders had dispatched religious and secular missionaries of the Protestant ethic throughout North America. During the antebellum years, many of these culture warriors promoted tenets that included a society without enslaved workers, embracing instead free labor. Most proponents of the Yankee Protestant ethic, however, wanted primarily to contain slavery, rather than eliminate it. After the Civil War, thousands of advocates of the ethic relocated to the former Confederacy. Teachers, three-fourths of them women, made up a significant portion of these evangelicals. Many of them, blacks as well as whites, left the North with the intention of transforming an intensely race-conscious, manual-labor-despising, aristocrat-dominated population into southern Yankees. During their preparation to teach freedmen, officials at Oberlin College, an institution that promoted the Yankee Protestant ethic, told students that they must convert and puritanize the South.⁵

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Although southern whites as a group rejected the missionaries’ efforts at transforming them, these agents of the Yankee Protestant ethic did not retreat. They instead concentrated their evangelical efforts toward reshaping the South's African American population. They wanted blacks to internalize the principles and become, in their worldview and actions, as much like white middle-class New England Protestants as possible. Schools became the primary means for them to realize their quest. Under the auspices of several freedmen's aid societies, like the Congregational Church–affiliated American Missionary Association (AMA), and with the aid of the federal government, they operated hundreds of schools. Using these institutions as bases of operations, the New England Freedmen's Aid Society sought to recruit “enough teachers to make a New England of the whole South.” The society, the AMA, and the several other northern philanthropic associations, sponsored both black and white missionary teachers who taught thousands of former slaves and their children for several decades after the Civil War. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that these instructors fought “the most wonderful peace-battle of the 19th century.” He contended that New England gave “the freed Negro, not alms, but a friend, not cash, but character.”⁶

That is what Washington received at the Hampton Institute. As James D. Anderson convincingly argues in his insightful and path-breaking study of southern black education, Armstrong believed in white supremacy. He held that blacks did not possess the moral character to participate on an equal footing with whites in the body politics. There is no extant evidence that Armstrong's students internalized those ideas. Even Washington, Armstrong's alleged foremost disciple, participated in West Virginia conventional politics soon after he graduated from Hampton. Nor did Armstrong's racist worldview inspire Washington not to vote or seek the franchise for all black men while he headed the Tuskegee Institute. Washington associated with both black and white politicians. They assisted him with his efforts to produce a cadre of black culture warriors who would spread, primarily among African American schoolchildren, the tenets of New England.⁷

Teachers at the Hampton Institute also greatly impressed Washington. He once proclaimed, “No one can pass from here [Hampton Institute] without being a better man, a better woman, because of the sweet, strong influence gathered on these grounds.” Even though Washington as a student had a relationship with Nathalie Lord that seemed closer than the one he had with Armstrong, he publicly credited the institute's principal with contributing much to his worldview. Along with the residual influence of Ruffner, the Hampton Institute staff successfully converted Washington into a southern black Yankee Protestant evangelist. Their teachings significantly contributed to his desire to become a proponent of middle-class New England values. He became the most effective African American teacher of the tenets, and a large plurality of his mourners praised him for his efforts.⁸

Messages of sympathy to close associates of Washington did not directly promote the late evangelists’ objective. Sympathizers, however, wrote notes that provided substantial evidence that Washington and his missionary efforts had positively resonated with a sizable and diverse segment of the nation's population. These notes of solace indicated that Washington had enjoyed a significant reservoir of goodwill and biracial support. Hence, it is easy to imagine that the massive outpouring of sympathy reinforced the commitment of the Tuskegee movement's remaining leadership to continue to fight the culture war that Washington had led for much of the previous twenty years.

Margaret, Emmett, and other individuals closely associated with the late educator received messages from people in every region of the nation. Blacks and whites, rich and poor sent the numerous messages mourning the death of Washington. Well-wishers living as far south as Ocala, Florida, and as far north as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sent correspondence. They came from the far western regions of the United States, as well as from the most eastern portion of the nation. During the immediate weeks following the passing of Washington, citizens living in every identifiable geographical area of the country sent one or more expressions of solace to someone intimately identified with Washington.⁹

Even a few condolers living abroad contributed to the massive number of sympathy notes. Margaret received letters from Canada as well as the West Indies. In a message from Winnipeg, Canada, E. M. Henderson lamented, “I am very sorry to note, the lost [sic] to us of our Leader The Hon. B. T. Washington.” Allerta E. Allwood and several Tuskegee graduates living in Kingston, Jamaica, sent acknowledgments. Other West Indians wrote to Scott, including Jerome B. Peterson, a resident of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Cuban residents Guillermo Kessel, Jose A. Manroque, and Narciso Nodarsy. Despite Washington's previous visits to Europe and his contacts with Africans, apparently no messages came to the Tuskegee Institute from either of those two quarters. This is noteworthy since Washington visited Europe extensively twice; he had corresponded with a number of Africans, he had over the years enrolled a few students from Africa, and a small number of its African American graduates had relocated to the continent.¹⁰

Foreign as well as domestic writers used their notes as tools of comfort. Sympathizers sought to reassure Washington's bereaved family and friends that they had recognized his passing and that his death caused them emotional pain. Along with the other death rites, these notes helped reassure Washington's survivors that, despite the man's death, the community at large would continue to embrace them. Although a significant number of the messages declared enduring support for the ideas and objectives that the late educator promoted, the messages primarily provided Washington's loved ones with emotional support during their period of mourning.¹¹

Authors informed Margaret, his widow, that they felt sympathy for her loss. The famous songwriter and arranger John Rosamond Johnson and his wife, Nora, offered their “Deepest Sympathy.” A similar expression of condolence came to Margaret from Harriette (Hattie) B. Sprague on behalf of her and the other granddaughters of Frederick Douglass. In a telegram to Margaret and family, Sprague extended the granddaughters’ sincere sympathy in their “hour of great bereavement.” A closer acquaintance, Mary E. Josenburger of Fort Smith, Arkansas, declared to Margaret that her heart went out to her “in this terrible bereavement.” Margaret also received a number of condolences from her husband's associates, including Harold Peabody, who told Margaret that his friendship with Booker T. Washington inspired him to ask her to accept his “sincerest sympathy in” her “great loss.”¹²

A group of writers informed Margaret that they shared her pain, wanting to reassure Margaret that she did not grieve alone. While these messages probably did not diminish her grief, they perhaps lessened her sense of loneliness. Lillian V. Ramsey Mines, a resident of Prescott, Arizona, and the daughter of Julius B. Ramsey, the longtime commander of cadets at the Tuskegee Institute, proclaimed that she shared Margaret's “moment” of sorrow. Acting on behalf of the members of the predominately white Newport (NJ) Union Congregational Church, the Reverend Clifford L. Miller conveyed the same message to her. Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, reported to Margaret that he felt “too sad to attempt words of consolation for” her.¹³

Emmett Scott received the second greatest number of messages. Many people correctly believed that Scott, as Washington's aide-de-camp and his primary functionary within the movement, had suffered an irreplaceable loss. Perhaps that is what Lyman Beecher Stowe, an author, editor, and grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, had in mind in offering Scott his “Keenest Sympathy.” R. W. Thompson, the president of the National Negro Press Association, explicitly declared that he knew what the death of Washington meant to the secretary. Charles H. Moore, a renowned North Carolina educator and former National Negro Business League (NNBL) organizer, had firsthand knowledge of the nature of Scott's association with Washington through his duties with the NNBL. His insight into their relationship led Moore to assert that “I am somewhat in a position to sympathize with you. As you were close to him and entered into his soul and thoughts as only a few had the opportunity.” That visible relationship also inspired William H. Davis to portray Scott as a child of Washington. This resident of Washington, D.C., praised Scott for being “our honored leader…a son so loyal and so helpful.”¹⁴

In their praise of Booker T. Washington, black condolers often recognized him as the paramount leader of black America. According to a note that Cal F. Johnson, a Knoxville, Tennessee, resident penned, Washington achieved the status of African Americans’ “most noted leader.” Echoing the same sentiment, John M. Gandy, a prominent member of the Negro Organization Society of Virginia and a Petersburg resident, declared Washington the “most distinguished leader” of the race. Energetic is how Henry Plummer Cheatham, an African American former congressman from North Carolina remembered Washington, proclaiming him black peoples’ “truest and liveliest leader.” R. C. Hintone, a resident of Thomasville, Arkansas, added the adjective “greates [sic]” in his note declaring Washington the “truest Leader of his day.”¹⁵

Margaret and Scott, as well as other members of the Tuskegee Institute community, received notes of condolence from a variety of persons who wrote on behalf of various African American groups. In a message to Margaret, troopers of the predominately African American Ninth U.S. Cavalry, one of the famous Buffalo Soldier units, proclaimed Washington the “foremost leader” of the race. A committee of African Americans in Des Moines, Iowa, made the same declaration in their note. The group included Samuel Joe Brown, a Phi Beta Kappa, and an attorney. He served as both the president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and as secretary of the local NNBL chapter. Representatives of the Indianapolis Colored YWCA, and the members of the Birmingham, Alabama, chapter of the Knights of Phythias, a predominately black fraternal society, all declared Washington the leader of black America. Members of the United Woodsman Benefit Association of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, called Washington “the greatest leader of our race.” A telegram from the members of the Hotel Brotherhood U.S.A. placed Washington within a global context. They proclaimed him the “worlds [sic] leader of his race.”¹⁶

Numerous black theologians also declared Washington the leader of African Americans. More than any other segment of African Americans, preachers understood leadership and many of them recognized it in other people. Although Washington alleged in an article published in the August 14, 1890, issue of the Christian Union that “three-fourths of the Baptist ministers and two-thirds of the Methodists are unfit,” many African American preachers seemed not to have allowed his criticism to lessen their assessment of his leadership. While the Reverend S. W. Bacote, a Kansas City, Missouri, resident and the editor of the African American–oriented National Baptist Yearbook, proclaimed Washington an “ideal leader” of black people, G. W. Robinson, the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in El Paso, Texas, suggested that the late educator had no peers. A communication from the Reverend R. S. Stout, the minister of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, declared that Washington had become black people's “greatest leader.” Squire J. Channell, a prominent African Methodist Episcopal Church preacher, asserted that Washington ranked as one of the world's “greatest leaders.”¹⁷

In addition to African American ministerial groups, several different denominations’ laymen associations recognized Washington's leadership of black people. Members of the Southwest Georgia African Methodist Episcopal Church Conference told Margaret that Washingt...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• 1. “A Great Man Fallen”: The Immediate Death Notices
• 2. A Symbol of America: Obituaries and Other Published Memorials
• 3. “Taps”: The Funeral in Tuskegee
• 4. “A Debt of Gratitude”: Tributes across the Nation
• 5. “Sermon Tonight on Booker T. Washington”: Months of Commemorations and Eulogies
• 6. Gone but Not Forgotten: Eulogies and the Sanctification of Washington
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Index
• Illustrations
• About the Author