Booker T. Washington Defense

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In Defense of Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington's legacy is a troubled one. Dubois was right to say, "When Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our higher minds" (afro 1). But can we really fault Booker T. for being misguided and flat-out wrong? Washington is not the first successful, insufferable man in America who rose from abject poverty to a life of bourgeois comfort, who then assumed that everyone else could too, if only they did as he did. This is not sycophancy. This is a classic case of projection and denial: myopic projection of his own …show more content…

Washington was able to secure a position as principle of a new school for African Americans in Alabama. The lessons he learned personally at Hampden Washington incorporated into the curriculum at Tuskegee, much to the chagrin of his 24/7 brick-making, day-laboring pupils, who mistakenly thought they were going to receive a good education. (But this method worked for Booker T., thus it will work for them, or get out, was his motto.) His marked hostility toward the black church is more a reaction to what Booker feels is an unnatural Enthusiasm (in contrast to the austere Northern Protestantism in which Washington was raised), than it is a condemnation of his own …show more content…

Without warning the one "called" would fall upon the floor as if struck by a bullet, and would lie there for hours, as if struck by a bullet. (39)

The staid doctrine of Northern Protestantism, taught by dour Hamden school teachers, would surely teach Washington that this sort of religious expression was inappropriate and blasphemous. In his chapter 'Working with Others,' Booker T. learned the "proper" Calvinist use of the Bible during his second year at Hamden, under the tutelage of Miss Nathalie Lord: "when I am at home, no matter how busy I am, I always make it a point to read a chapter, or a portion of a chapter, before beginning the work of the day" (32). (The emphasis here is on

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