WASHINGTON : DuBOIS AND LOGAN CRITIQUE
I was relieved and glad to read that two of Dr. Booker T. Washington's most often quoted educational critics had somewhat mitigated and contextualized their vituperative, visceral criticisms of the “Sage of Tuskegee” in their later writings. I make specific reference to Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and to Dr. Rayford W. Logan.
Dr. DuBois' “Souls of Black Folks” and “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.”are two essays of 1903, which have been cited repeatedly by Washington's liberal scholarly traducers as cardinal truths.
The reader is beseeched to read both DuBois essays, as I have previously done, to fortify themselves.
In his 1925 essay, “The Negro Mind Reaches Out,” in Alain Locke's classic THE NEW NEGRO: AN INTERPRETATION (1925), Dr. DuBois reconnoiters himself with respect to Washington as he writes:
“Once upon a time in my younger years and in the dawn of this century I wrote: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” It was a pert and singing phrase which I then liked and which since I have often rehearsed to my soul and asked:—how far is this prophecy or speculation? To-day in the last years of the century’s first quarter, let us examine the matter again, especially in the memory of that great event of these great years, the World War. Fruit of the bitter rivalries of economic imperialism, the roots of the catastrophe were in Africa, deeply entwined at bottom with the problems of the color line. And of the legacy left, the problems the world inherits hold the same fatal seed; world dissension and catastrophe still lurk in the unsolved problems of race relations. What then is the world view that the consideration of this question offers?”
p. 385
My point here is that if DuBois reconnoiters DubBois' estimation of Dr. Booker T. Washington in light of supervening factual occurrences, it is obvious that today's detractors of either man must do no less! The assertion, “ The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” appears in “The Souls of Black Folk' where DuBois scolded Washington. DuBois reaffirms his earlier sentence which was true of all centuries from the 15th forward when the Portuguese began the African slave trade to Europe.
Dr. Rayford W. Logan, another Harvard Ph. D., like Dr. DuBois, who had also gained some credence by his equivalent denunciation of Washington, albeit more subtly. Logan's major work is titled, THE BETRAYAL OF THE NEGRO (1965, 1997). He says in Chapter 5, “”The Nadir Under McKinley”:
“[Grover] Cleveland's second administration was so beset with national and international problems—the Panic of 1893, Free Silver, the Populist Revolt, Hawaii, Venezuela and Cuba—that he had little opportunity to stop the steady deterioration of the Negro's status. He probably concluded that the Southern question was definitely settled when Booker T. Washington won national acclaim for his Atlanta Compromise Speech in September, 1895. In the following year the United Supreme Court consolidated the triumph of the former slave states when it sanctioned the doctrine of 'separate but equal accommodations.'”
p.79
Of note, here, is Dr. Logan's deliberate calumny on the legacy of Washington by referring to his internationally famous “Atlanta Exposition Address” as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech,” without qualification, as though Washington were a diplomat with authority to bargain away, to compromise away 'rights' of African Americans that had survived the betrayal of 1876-77, the “Civil Rights Cases” of 1883, and terrorist lynchings and land thefts. Logan's snide mockery continues into the next sentence where he implies that the “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision of 1896 was attributable also to Booker T. Washington.
As far as mitigation goes DuBois and Logan note Washington's work's awesomeness and his powerful influence on North and South. But it would belabor this disquisition unduly to do more than to note their begrudging existence which you can read yourself.
WASHINGTON : DuBOIS AND LOGAN CRITIQUE
I was relieved and glad to read that two of Dr. Booker T. Washington's most often quoted educational critics had somewhat mitigated and contextualized their vituperative, visceral criticisms of the “Sage of Tuskegee” in their later writings. I make specific reference to Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and to Dr. Rayford W. Logan.
Dr. DuBois' “Souls of Black Folks” and “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.”are two essays of 1903, which have been cited repeatedly by Washington's liberal scholarly traducers as cardinal truths.
The reader is beseeched to read both DuBois essays, as I have previously done, to fortify themselves.
In his 1925 essay, “The Negro Mind Reaches Out,” in Alain Locke's classic THE NEW NEGRO: AN INTERPRETATION (1925), Dr. DuBois reconnoiters himself with respect to Washington as he writes:
“Once upon a time in my younger years and in the dawn of this century I wrote: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” It was a pert and singing phrase which I then liked and which since I have often rehearsed to my soul and asked:—how far is this prophecy or speculation? To-day in the last years of the century’s first quarter, let us examine the matter again, especially in the memory of that great event of these great years, the World War. Fruit of the bitter rivalries of economic imperialism, the roots of the catastrophe were in Africa, deeply entwined at bottom with the problems of the color line. And of the legacy left, the problems the world inherits hold the same fatal seed; world dissension and catastrophe still lurk in the unsolved problems of race relations. What then is the world view that the consideration of this question offers?”
p. 385
My point here is that if DuBois reconnoiters DubBois' estimation of Dr. Booker T. Washington in light of supervening factual occurrences, it is obvious that today's detractors of either man must do no less! The assertion, “ The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” appears in “The Souls of Black Folk' where DuBois scolded Washington. DuBois reaffirms his earlier sentence which was true of all centuries from the 15th forward when the Portuguese began the African slave trade to Europe.
Dr. Rayford W. Logan, another Harvard Ph. D., like Dr. DuBois, who had also gained some credence by his equivalent denunciation of Washington, albeit more subtly. Logan's major work is titled, THE BETRAYAL OF THE NEGRO (1965, 1997). He says in Chapter 5, “”The Nadir Under McKinley”:
“[Grover] Cleveland's second administration was so beset with national and international problems—the Panic of 1893, Free Silver, the Populist Revolt, Hawaii, Venezuela and Cuba—that he had little opportunity to stop the steady deterioration of the Negro's status. He probably concluded that the Southern question was definitely settled when Booker T. Washington won national acclaim for his Atlanta Compromise Speech in September, 1895. In the following year the United Supreme Court consolidated the triumph of the former slave states when it sanctioned the doctrine of 'separate but equal accommodations.'”
p.79
Of note, here, is Dr. Logan's deliberate calumny on the legacy of Washington by referring to his internationally famous “Atlanta Exposition Address” as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech,” without qualification, as though Washington were a diplomat with authority to bargain away, to compromise away 'rights' of African Americans that had survived the betrayal of 1876-77, the “Civil Rights Cases” of 1883, and terrorist lynchings and land thefts. Logan's snide mockery continues into the next sentence where he implies that the “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision of 1896 was attributable also to Booker T. Washington.
As far as mitigation goes DuBois and Logan note Washington's work's awesomeness and his powerful influence on North and South. But it would belabor this disquisition unduly to do more than to note their begrudging existence which you can read yourself.
