“I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise.” – Booker T. Washington
I’d love to hear a kid of whatever color say that today.
It would be easy to sum up Booker T. Washington’s views as conservative and be done with it. These days the words conservative and liberal are overloaded with meaning; the two views are very polarizing. But that’s the kind of society we live in today. Though there’s some overlap, liberals and conservatives just have different ideas about the way things ought to be.
Tomorrow I’ll participate on a panel at an event celebrating what would have been Washington’s 150th birthday (his birthday is April 5). I have conflicting information about the panel topic, so I’ll probably keep my remarks general. Basically, I will talk about how Washington’s views relate to today’s political climate.
(It’s a shame that this harridan is getting so much press. I’ll bet Booker T. Washington’s birthday and legacy won’t get a fraction of her media coverage.)
Washington, considered the “foremost black educator of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” was born a slave in 1856, and educated at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). He founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in 1881, which is still in existence as Tuskegee University. It’s obvious that Washington valued education, something you won’t find in abundance anymore.
Washington is famous for many achievements, but two of the most prominent are his autobiography, Up From Slavery, and a controversial speech dubbed the “Atlanta Compromise.”
In 1895, he spoke at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the controversial points stemming from this speech was his “Cast down your bucket where you are” refrain. Washington illustrated the idea with a “ship lost at sea” analogy. Sighting a friendly ship, the lost ship signaled for fresh water. The friendly ship repeated this response: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The lost ship finally cast down its bucket and discovered that it was floating in fresh water all along.
What did this have to do with the plight of former slaves? From the speech:
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.
Washington encouraged blacks in the audience to achieve economic progress through work (including traditional fields like domestic and agriculture) and urged whites, who were turning to immigrant labor, to hire blacks. SOUND FAMILIAR? There’s a goldmine of blogging topics on this idea alone. 
At the time, some 30 years after Emancipation, it was a big deal for a black man to speak to a mostly white audience in the South. Washington was and still is being judged for his “accomodationist” views about black progress. His chief critic, W.E.B. DuBois, believed the speech was important but came to distain Washington’s views.
DuBois urged blacks to fight for political rights; Washington urged them to focus on vocational training and work to show naysayers they could be industrious and hard-working. Washington believed that “privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”
We’re all too familiar with “artificial forcing,” especially those who had to endure the misguided and ill-conceived policy known as busing. Another treasure trove of blogging topics!
Star Parker will host a book forum tomorrow at the Family Research Council. Star will discuss her latest book, White Ghetto : How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay. See you there. 
Related post:
Sources:
- The Two Nations of Black America
- Documenting the American South
- New Georgia Encyclopedia
- National Park Service bio
Addendum: “Coincidentally,” Star Parker’s latest column is on liberal v. conservative values.
Update (4/4): I feel morally superior to people who send e-mail like the one below but who’re afraid to use their names. Whatever people say or think about me, I have the integrity to sign my name and stand behind everything I write on this blog. Ad hominem-laced e-mail is bad enough. When the man sending it is too scared to be a man and stand behind his words, well, that’s just unmasculine, which is a bad thing. If you’re a man. How do I know it’s really a man? Call it a gut feeling.
An excerpt from “Joe”:
You are a racist and a race baiter. You stand for white racism and your color makes you popular. I will forever point out racist trash like you and Booker T. Washington would be the first to call you a racist nigger
if he were alive today. The White man will pay for what he did to my people because I will forever bring up race and make him feel guilty for his sins or the sins of his fathers. [The old keeping whitey on the hook routine.]
…
Your base is white and racist and they support your lies and hate. You may as well wear a Klan mask and join other hate groups. White folks need black like you and you let them use you to spread hate and lies about blacks. Black people will never change and if I had a choice of being a convict in a jail house I would rather do that then be the white man’s nigger like you are.
Rarely do I read or hear a well-reasoned critique of my viewpoint, and such e-mail from black haters is typical. This anonymous person could have given a few examples of these “lies and hate” he drones on about. The archives go back to November 2003, for crying out loud. Oh, well. It’s easier to get into a stink than to think. This e-mail has given me something else to talk about today: the idea that I’m a self-hater and a tool for the white man, when people like this unmanly “fan” can’t see how ineffectual they are by refusing to deal with the substance of an argument and attack me instead.
Accountability requires courage, people.
