ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606210004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KAREN ADAMS STAFF WRITER
On June 24, 1896, thunderous applause broke out at Harvard University when Booker T. Washington stepped forward to receive that institution's first honorary master of arts degree ever granted to a black person.
It was a historic moment for the man who was born into slavery in Franklin County, who walked nearly 400 miles to go to school at Hampton Institute, who was called to Tuskegee, Ala., to found one of the first black colleges in the country - and who became one of the most influential educators, authors, orators and social leaders in American history.
Newspaper accounts of that day sparkled with praise. One Boston reporter said Washington exhibited ``a genius and a broad humanity ...'' Another declared, ``No one who has followed the history of Tuskegee and its work can fail to admire the courage, persistence, and splendid common sense of Booker T. Washington.''
He was in distinguished company: Alexander Graham Bell and John Muir also received honorary degrees from Harvard that day.
In his acceptance speech, Washington stated that one of the most urgent questions for Americans was, ``How shall we make the mansions on yon Beacon Street feel and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama cottonfields or Louisiana sugar-bottoms?''
A living tribute
It is still the 19th century at the Booker T. Washington National Monument, 22 miles southeast of Roanoke, where the staff tell stories about Franklin County's famous son to more than 27,000 visitors each year.
``To think that he started with basically nothing and went on to achieve such greatness,'' said Rebecca Harriett, monument superintendent.
The monument was founded in 1957 on the site of the old Burroughs plantation. It is a peaceful, shady assembly of wooden buildings embraced by a creek and woods, where sheep, cows, ducks and geese wander about and pigs sleep in the sun. Split-rail fencing surrounds the 224-acre property. It is living history, complete with herb and vegetable gardens, a smokehouse, a blacksmith shed and a tobacco barn strung with drying leaves. Costumed interpreters depict life on the plantation throughout the year.
Most visitors are American, said Harriett, but a few foreigners, particularly Europeans, seek out the site.
``One man said he almost cried when he saw the listing of Booker as property, listed there with the cows,'' Harriett said, referring to an 1861 inventory on display.
In 1908, statesman Booker T. Washington returned to the rundown plantation where he was born and stood quietly in the grass where his cabin had been. Before leaving, he placed a rose on Mr. Burroughs' grave.
``The lack of bitterness is inspiring,'' Harriett said. ``And there certainly were reasons to be bitter.''
She said that most visitors are so moved by his story that they want to learn more about Washington and his life.
The bonds of slavery
On April 5, 1856, Washington was born a slave on the James Burroughs plantation at Hales Ford. He never knew his father, a white man from the area. He lived in a one-room cabin with his mother, Jane, brother, John, and sister, Amanda, and slept on the dirt floor. His mother, the plantation cook, served 22 people every day while scratching for enough to keep her own children fed.
Like the other slave children, Washington never knew what it was to play. Life at the Burroughs place was lean, and everybody worked: The white family members toiled side by side with their slaves.
One of young Washington's jobs was to tend the cooler at the spring, where the butter and milk were kept. He later wrote that he often sat by the spring in the shade of two tall oaks. He attributed his love of nature to that serene spot. At the monument, one of those trees still stands by the creek.
Another of his jobs was to carry the books of the Burroughs daughters as they walked to school. One glimpse of the schoolhouse convinced him that it would be paradise to be able to go there.
Washington also had to fan the flies in the ``big house'' while the Burroughs family ate dinner. In his autobiography, ``Up From Slavery,'' he wrote that he quietly absorbed every word spoken at those dinners, especially talk about freedom and war. Monument ranger Alice Hanawalt said, ``You can just see that little boy fanning the flies and learning to wear a mask'' to hide his emotions.
Shortly after April 9, 1865, a government official arrived at the plantation to read the Emancipation Proclamation to the 10 slaves. Washington's mother leaned down to her family and whispered, ``Now, children, we are free.''
The long road to school
When the family joined his stepfather in Malden, W.Va., the 9-year-old boy worked in the salt mines to help put food on the table. But more than anything, he wanted to go to school. He began his workday at 4 a.m. so he could attend school afterward.
At 16, he left for Hampton Institute in Virginia, a school for blacks that accepted poor students if they worked. He walked most of the 400 miles. When his money ran out in Richmond, he stopped to work - spending his nights under a wooden sidewalk - until he earned $80 and could go on.
Upon arrival, Washington was so bedraggled that he had to show the doubtful head teacher he could clean a classroom before she would admit him.
He studied at Hampton for three years, working as a janitor, and graduated with honors in 1875. The philosophy upon which he would later found Tuskegee Institute was forged then. ``At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance
Washington taught at Hampton until May 1881, when director Gen. Samuel C. Armstrong received a letter from Tuskegee, Ala. The writers asked him to suggest someone to start a school for blacks there. They expected a white man, but when Armstrong recommended Washington, they sent for him at once.
``He's one of our most illustrious alumni,'' said Rochelle Payne, Hampton University's public information officer. ``From the time he arrived here until he left for Tuskegee, he continued to be a leader.''
A shanty becomes a school
On the morning of July 4, 1881, Booker T. Washington stood before 30 students in a drafty shack. It was the first day of school at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Most of the students, both men and women, were schoolteachers who wanted a formal education. A few were nearly 40 years old.
Washington had no idea whether his school would succeed. A month before, he had traveled the area and was so overcome with despair that he nearly gave up.
He wrote about the overwhelming ``work to be done in order to lift these people up. ... I wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for me to try.''
Nevertheless, he went ahead. ``I knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race,'' he wrote.
The school had only a small amount for teachers' salaries. Tuskegee needed land, buildings and funds. ``But how were we to get it?'' His subsequent request for support from Hampton was the beginning of his long, often controversial relationship with wealthy and powerful white businessmen and politicians, who would secure Tuskegee's financial future.
Barry Mackintosh, former monument superintendent and author of the National Park Service's ``Booker T. Washington,'' wrote: ``He was convinced that Tuskegee, in the deepest South, could not survive a hostile environment ... ''
Ever the pragmatist, Washington trained students to earn a living - often as teachers - and to take care of themselves. He stressed order and cleanliness in every aspect of daily life. ``I want to see you own a decent home,'' he told them.
In Washington's lifetime, Tuskegee grew from 30 students to 1,500, and most of the 107 buildings were student-built. One of its most famous teachers was George Washington Carver, who directed the agricultural program.
``There's a long-standing history of `My parents went to Tuskegee and I'm going there, too,''' said assistant archivist Cynthia Beavers Wilson.
Tuskegee will celebrate its 115th anniversary this Independence Day.
Launched into fame
In 1895, Washington gave a speech at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition that would catapult him into the public eye. He said that Southern blacks, rather than fleeing northward, should ``cast down your bucket where you are'' and draw up the riches underfoot. This statement appalled many black listeners (then and now), who felt he was telling them to accept an inferior lot.
Thereafter, Washington achieved an unprecedented level of acceptance in white society. He became the official voice of black America, serving as consultant to such figures as Andrew Carnegie and presidents Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. When Roosevelt sat down to dinner with Washington in an elegant hotel, that image was framed on many American walls as the ultimate symbol of equality.
In 1900, Washington founded the National Negro Business League to help black businessmen support each other and to act as a political entity.
`The great debate'
One of Washington's staunchest critics was black intellectual leader W.E.B. Du Bois. He felt that Washington's powerful white connections skewed his thinking: he seemed to slant his speeches and public behavior toward them, and he did not demand equality forthrightly.
He also questioned Washington's emphasis on trade education - fearing that those who followed him would become laborers for life, and that whites would see that they did. Du Bois and many others felt that Washington was denying the value of intellectual study for blacks.
Du Bois - Harvard-educated, born post-Civil War to free parents in Massachusetts - said that black intellectuals would lead the race out of darkness.
But Washington stated that his goal at Tuskegee was to educate the masses, not the elite, ``giving them standards and ideals, and inspiring in them hope and courage to go patiently forward.'' His teachers would ``return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people.''
Although his students did study such topics as biology, history and Greek, Washington felt that all the book learning in the world would do people little good if they could not earn a living and be independent.
He wrote, ``In fact, one of the saddest things I saw during the month of travel which I have described was a young man, who had attended some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a French grammar.''
There was a private Booker T. Washington, however, who used his influence secretly to change laws and make black political appointments with the help of his powerful friends. All the while, he kept his ``accommodationist'' mask on in public and never alienated his white allies.
Eric Hughes, Washington's great-grandson, said that his Aunt Portia (Washington's daughter) told him that Washington and Du Bois secretly communicated through a secretary. ``They actually supported each other, knowing that both views were important. After the Atlanta speech, Du Bois sent Booker a message congratulating him on a job well done.''
Later in life, after harsh disappointments, such as the racist overtones of the film ``Birth of a Nation,'' Washington expressed fiercer views - not unlike those held by Du Bois. His hope for black economic independence and resulting racial equality had been fractured.
Superintendent Harriett said, ``I think it's interesting that as they grew older, they started to see the other's point of view. ... Washington started speaking out. He kept thinking that things were going to get better, but they didn't.''
Likewise Du Bois began to appreciate Washington's perspective. ``They both knew that education was the true emancipator,'' said Harriet.
On November 14, 1915, Booker T. Washington died. He is buried on the grounds of Tuskegee University.
Du Bois called him ``the greatest Negro leader since Frederick Douglass and the most distinguished man, white or black, who has come out of the South since the Civil War. Of the good that he accomplished there can be no doubt
LENGTH: Long : 231 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. National Park Service History Series. Booker T.by CNBWashington in his office at Tuskegee, from ``Booker T. Washington,
An Appreciation of the Man and His Times,'' by Barry Mackintosh.
Office of Publications, National Park Service, U.S. Department of
the Interior, Washington, D.C. 1972. 2. Portion of a news clipping
from June 25, 1896. Courtesy of Harvard University Archives. 3.
Washington and his family, about 1899. With their father and
stepmother, Margaret Murray Washington, are (left to right) Ernest
Davidson Washington, Booker Taliaferro Washington Jr., and Portia M.
Washington. 4. National Park Service History Series. (headshot)
W.E.B. Du Bois. 5. iLeib Image Archives, York, Pa. Washington around
the time he attended Hampton Institute (1872-1875). 6. National Park
Service History Series. Students constructed most of the buildings
at Tuskegee. 7. Sunday afternoon band concerts on White Hall lawn
were always well-attended by Tuskegee students.