Volume 20, Number 13 · August 9, 1973
The Shadow of Booker T. Washington
By Jervis Anderson
Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901
by Louis R. Harlan
Oxford University, 379 pp., $10.95
The Booker T. Washington Papers, Volume 1: The Autobiographical Writings; Volume 2: 1860-1889
edited by Louis R. Harlan
University of Illinois, 557 pp., $15.00 each
No American black leader I know of carries on the tradition of Booker T. Washington. This does not mean, of course, that echoes of his ideas are not to be heard here and there. Racial separation, for example, remains a major aim of certain groups within the black movement, although the argument made for it in recent times has been aggressive and demanding where Washington's was essentially submissive. But no black leader would dare now to endorse Washington's policies of acquiescence in segregation and disfranchisement; emphasis on industrial training in preference to higher education and equal opportunity; rejection of racial and social protest in favor of self-help, business enterprise, and political accommodation. The changes since 1915, when Washington died, or since the first three or four years of the century, when he was at the height of his influence, have made his program anathema for blacks.
Review, 3374 words
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