Booker T. Washington with Robert J. Norrell | Black Intellectuals Series #3

0:00 he’s an Exemplar of what um loyal and patriotic Americans do when they are trying to [Music] advance maybe their ethnic group but also the the society at large and Washington was always

0:20 trying to at the same time that he was most keen on helping African-Americans he was always trying to make a better Nation [Music] hi this is Tony Williams Senior fellow at Bri and we’re pleased to bring you another episode in our series on black intellectuals and the africanamerican

0:41 experience we are honored to have scholar Jeff nurel who is going to discuss Booker T Washington now The Guiding question for this series is what contribution did this person make to understanding the black experience in America now Dr Robert Jeff nurel is a professor of history and Bernard Schmidt

1:03 chair at the University of Tennessee he’s the author of several books on race in America including reaping the Whirlwind the civil rights movement in Tuskegee and up from history the life of Booker T Washington uh Jeff I want to thank you very much for joining us my pleasure great uh you know the one of the reasons why I really love your

1:25 biography and you know it it weaves together uh his his thoughts on on education and politics and race uh you you do that so well but you also you know paint just a wonderful portrait of his life as the the leader uh the very busy leader of Tusk uh as well as as

1:47 well as his his personal life so all those strands are kind of woven together in a a very compelling biography so congratulations thank you for saying that yeah well uh my first question is you know Booker T Washington wrote his his famous autobiography of course Up From Slavery uh detailing his early life and education uh so how did his

2:10 formative experiences uh shape his understanding of the best means to Black progress well Washington um gives a very U clean cleans view of his background

2:32 and experience he he I won’t say he quite washes it but Washington was a superb person at public relations he understood instinctively what you should and should not say to maximize your public relations effect and uh and so Up From

2:55 Slavery is U I think of a a a really you know remarkable account of his life but it is not his whole life it’s not all that happened to them so that uh things that he saw and

3:18 experienced uh that shaped his his strategy going forward uh was not included alog together in that book and one of the interesting things was try that I I was trying to do was to square uh his Public Presentation of his

3:41 of himself with his private uh experience and so he uh he was shaped by some very positive things that he could talk about openly but also by some um trouble and things that happened to him privately that he did not

4:04 um uh he he did not present to the public so um uh Washington was shaped by um his background he was powerfully influenced by his mother uh who was determined that her

4:28 children uh were educated and had a chance to live a better life than she had as an uh as an illiterate slave woman most of her life uh and so she um he was clearly her child and um and he never forgot that

4:52 and of course his father is never really named but his father was uh in all likelihood a white man from the neighborhood they lived in in uh Virginia near near Rano and so but Washington never

5:15 discussed who his paternity on that side Washington was very resentful of people who very often said uh his genius as a as a as a lead as a um College president had

5:35 to result from the fact that his white Fraternity in Washington very much resed that and uh because for all of the aspersions cast on him uh in his life and afterward for being an Uncle Tom he was he was very much a man of of pride

5:56 in who he was as an as an African am so Washington I I encourage people to read uh Up From Slavery uh but you you know if you want a little bit more uh texture about who he was up from history is a is a is a more U detailed and and

6:21 truthful account not to say that up from history from cyber is is inaccurate it just leaves out a lot right and so and and he also you know acquired a you know A love for books and and sort of a thirst for Learning and and eventually went off to Hampton Institute right yes and and here uh I

6:45 give a lot of credit to the lady he worked for Virginia who he was in effect her house boy or Butler uh but she was so intense she was a a a New England lady from New England and her husband was a coal operator there in West Virginia so they were of

7:06 substantial means and but she really took the booker and she immediately saw his potential and she began to instruct him in all kinds of ways that benefited him for the rest of his life most uh clearly I think she is responsible for

7:28 his uh excellent verbal skills you you know he uh he spoke with sort of an accent there the recordings that are available he spoke with the accent of a of a kind of upper middle class Southerner didn’t

7:51 have many of the revealing uh uh kinds of accents of a of an africanamerican at that time because African-American accents at that time were very distinctive and and and and to our ear today would be a little bit hard to understand but Washington it was like

8:14 you were imagine you know a a planter from Virginia Street and anyway this lady who was New England from New England and no doubt spoke with a New England accent but she was such a stiffer for sise grammar and speech and pronunciation and that served him I

8:35 sered book of Washington so well in so many ways throughout the rest of your life great uh now Washington helped establish and build Tuskegee Institute into a major Center of black education and you know how does how does his work at Tuskegee reflect his views on what was important about black education and

8:57 advancement Washington came just to build essentially Elementary and Middle School which meant that he had to um he had to be able to start students at the beginning of their education he

9:18 didn’t make any apology about that you know the whole uh frequently noted that the whole of the black South was seeking education at the same time because they have been denied for throughout their history so his um his idea was education for the black masses

9:43 made as accessible as possible uh and at the same time he became a kind of uh creature uh of hostle for the promotion of black education to try to

10:04 persuade the white South that educating blacks was a good idea and this of course occurred at a time when there was intense hostility to any education any africanamerican so Washington would never openly talk about the in intense

10:25 hostility he faced he and all African-Americans face in the south from white supremacist who didn’t want any black to get any insation and that was you know an underlying structural reality that Washington struggle with his whole

10:46 career so tusky Institute he created as a kind of symbol of um the ability of African-Americans to learn the ass the ability of African-Americans to provide an education for their children and to some extent for African-Americans to

11:07 acquire white support for that mission uh and uh this was a he had no more fundamental desire in his set of Ambitions than that now he wanted African-Americans have the right to vote and he worked on that all through at the same time but for him the

11:31 twin education was really the more fundamental thing and the thing that he uh believed uh was in greatest jeopard right and and you kind of alluded to this but you know Washington often had to walk a fine line among different audiences um for example you

11:52 know uh you know many blacks wanted to seek an education and progress on the other hand as you said white Southerners were were scrutinizing him and Tusk and trying to prevent that white philanthropists were were willing and and donated money uh and also you know as you detail on the book there were

12:12 many black critics who were contending for leadership of of of the black community in America so so how does he navigate all these different groups to achieve his goals uh and and you know sort of overcome these constraints uh that that him as a public figure

12:34 well um he overcame them when he did overcome them and he didn’t all um by paying close attention to uh you know the people uh who with whom he was contending so that um he he had to watch

12:57 all the time these really dangerous white supremacist and he encountered them in every state and once he became a kind of national celebrity in 1895 then they all aimed at him and tried to take him now I’m talking about people like Tom hefin in

13:20 Alabama um Tom Watson in Georgia uh the novelist Tom they’re all Tom Tom Dixon in North Carolina the toms were all out for him and they had a special hatred of Washington because they had a sense that

13:43 his desire was so fundamentally a challenge to white supremacy that he had to be he had to be knocked down Washington understood that he never he never willingly took them on one to

14:03 one he always was working kind of by slide of hand about reing them the people the white supremacist who were uh who were against education and then and and became essentially uh enemies of of

14:24 Washington so he he did he did a whole lot on the African-American side now this was the one uh that I guess was the most controversial in terms of my trying to explain Washington in a different way was that uh the the general sort of

14:50 uh opinion among historians was at least when I started working on this was that Washington was an unpopular fellow among his his fellow African-Americans because most people agreed with wb2 boys that Washington was

15:10 really an Uncle Tom who was a uh siant to to the rich white people who did not want blacks to get education and um I I I thought that was the the wrong interpretation it was very interesting to try to sort out how

15:30 Washington dealt with uh people like good boys and and there were there were many others as well who essentially agreed with the boy uh but what I realized over time was that the average black person in the South appreciated what Washington was trying

15:52 to do and if Washington dissembled or misled or Li a little bit to white folks in order to preserve himself to preserve his institution they understood that they didn’t they didn’t have the same kind of hostility to to Booker that dubo

16:13 had and that people in Du Bo the circle have so it was quite interesting to try to sort that out the criticism of them and uh so I’m not sure I I I did persuade all that many people that

16:33 Washington was in fact a pretty popular guy in uh amongst his constituency but I I was I was fully persuaded of excent and and you argue that you know Washington steaming accommodationist stance in in in

16:54 speeches such as the Atlanta Exposition address actually belii how much he did publicly and and also privately to challenge segregation lynching disfranchisement defunding of public schools and and the host of other injustices that were going on at the time can you explain the the dichotomy

17:15 between the the image and and the reality Washington was a superb guy at public relations and um he he he understood that um uh there were ways to say things that

17:36 would not um create uh controversy and there were ways to say things that would and so he he essentially tried to steer clear of creating controversy um but that didn’t mean that he ever really agreed to the

17:57 disfranchisement of African-Americans he didn’t it didn’t mean he he went along with the denial of Education to black people he never did that um and uh he never uh consented to lynching he always condemned that so

18:20 that if you actually read the record very carefully you didn’t find I never I didn’t find much evidence that he was meing mou about you know the matter of life and death education ignor ignorance uh participation in democracy

18:41 or denial which is he was he was on the right side of every one of those issues and if you read his spe if you read his speeches carefully you will see you know plenty of evidence of his being a stand up gu you read his interviews with Journal and he was constantly interviewed by journalist you see him

19:02 sticking up on the right side of all of that the final question uh is a big one but we have just a few minutes what was Booker T Washington’s contribution to understanding the black experience in America a wise historian once said the lessons taught aren’t always the lessons

19:22 learned and Washington was really trying to teach a lesson that black people are good and their Royal patriotic Americans and their good neighbors and they are have made good contributions to this nation and they will make better contributions if they’re given education

19:43 and a chance to make a living chance to vote and all of the all of the regular things that Americans yeah so that um he’s an Exemplar of what um loyal and patriotic Americans do when they are trying to

20:05 [Music] advance maybe their ethnic group but also the the society at large and Washington was always trying to at the same time that he was most keen on helping African-Americans he was always trying to make a better Nation he knew it would be a better Nation if if Americans were

20:27 fairer in their treatment of black people and he tried to explain to to whites that it would it was in their interest to be decent to black people and not to be ugly and disparaging as people were all around him the time

20:50 so um I think that was uh maybe it’s as a as a symbol of um how one advances progress in America that I think is was his Rous contribution okay excellent jefff I want

21:11 to thank you very much for joining us uh up from history uh is is really an excellent biography and and I really recommend it thank you T great and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please check out our other installments in the series Black intellectual and the African-American experience our

21:31 previous series on the Cold War and the presidency and our upcoming series on pivotal battles in American history thank you for joining us