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Opinions Booker T. Washington The Northern Press "Dr. Washington has often been called the leader and the representative of the Negro race in the Republic. He was a leader in a qualified sense, since he devoted his life to directing the Negroes in what he believed to be the path of progress. But he was far from being their acknowledged leader. On the contrary, very many of them, and these among the more intellectual, did not share his ideas or accept his policy. Besides these, there was a multitude of the more ignorant who were quite unable to understand either his motives or his methods, who thought him timid, and even treacherous to the race, as to some of whose wrongs he was, of set purpose and deliberately silent. It it obvious that this feeling among his fellow-Negroes was always a serious and painful element in the work that Washington had set himself to do. It was all the more so because he was himself, necessarily, the victim in a thousand ways of the rooted prejudice of race, and had to bear daily 'the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes.'" ——Times, New York City "Booker T. Washington was a great man by every account and along many lines——the leader of the Negro race throughout the world; a citizen of America, who had promoted his country's greatness by raising toward fitness for full citizenship and economic independence a people just emerged from slavery; a man whose influence was inspiring and helpful to the whole country. That a man born a slave, turned out upon the world when a child as an outcast, forced to gain his early education, a book in his hand at night while working as a boy in a coal mine, should accomplish what Washington did and reach the eminence he attained, is in itself a proof of the man's personal greatness. But the more cogent proof is found in the sum of achievement and the impulse for future progress which he has left behind. Tuskegee and its methods and ideals have affected the whole scheme and method of industrial education in this country. Created out of a wilderness by Washington's own effort, solidly succeeding against every obstacle, conquering the approbation and support of a people who at first regarded the work with deep suspicion, and building a strong foundation of hopefulness and confidence for the structure of a whole people's future. . . . "Booker Washington came, to some extent, into conflict with certain of the abler men of his own race, who thought that he showed too much humility——that he submitted too willingly to the suppression of the Negro vote in the southern states, and, by emphasizing the industrial side of the education that he supplied, consented to the relegation of his race to an inferior position forever There are some colored people today who believe that Washington helped to condemn their race to a new slavery. The answer to this charge is that the race which rises from slavery can rise only be means of economic improvement or by revolution. It must march upon the good ground of the well-ploughed field——either upon that or upon the field of battle, where its own blood is shed for victory over oppression. The upward path of the blood-stained field of revolution is forever debarred to the American Negro. There is no way for him except the field of hard work, wise work, patient work, with constant improvement at every step, and the great purpose of redemption in the beast of every black man and woman. Booker Washington knew that well, and proved his greatness by a life of consistent devotion to the ideal." ——Evening Transcript, Boston, Mass. "In Booker Washington the country loses not only a leader, but one who was in his person a real triumph of democracy. . . . "He was not the standard-bearer of a united race. It is a rare educational leader who does not compromise on some questions, and in his peculiarly trying position, where a singly false step might mean the ruining of his work——even the burning of his school——Dr. Washington did not speak out on the things which the intellectual men of the race deemed of far greater moment than bricks and mortar, industrial education, or business leagues——the matter of their social and political liberties. He was silent by choice in the face of many a crying wrong and bitter injustice, and more and more colored men came to resent it. They would not have objected had he, like other heads of schools, kept out of politics and assumed no leadership beyond that of the field of industrial training, But when they saw him, under Taft and Roosevelt, a powerful political factor in the White House; when they saw him in the attitude of a race leader forever dwelling upon the bright side of the picture and having no words of fiery indignation for injustices that cry out to high Heaven for redress, the unhappiness grew until men openly accused him of selling their birthright for a mess of pottage." ——Evening Post, New York City. "Booker T. Washington, who died yesterday, will pass into history as the ablest Negro leader of his generation. Here in the United States the Negro race has produced greater men than he——men of larger mould and more extraordinary native genius. Frederick Douglas was one. Born and brought up a slave, the latter overcame even greater obstacles than Mr. Washington had to overcome in arising to leadership. Douglass excelled as an orator. His appeal was to the emotions, to the sense of justice of a ruling race which had put shackles on the black man and had denied him the ordinary rights of a human being. He pleaded for emancipation, believing that the Negro's future here would be assured once he had the chance to be his own master, to acquire education and property and to sell his labor in an open market. "Mr. Washington's task was difficult, because conditions made it difficult."- Tribune, New York City. "Dr. Booker T. Washington's work among the members of his race was based on the belief that the Negro would win social and political advancement only after he had achieved economic independence and stability. He held that time was better spent in demonstrating the capacity of the black man in those callings that are now open to him than in seeking opportunities in fields where every factor was opposed to him. "This policy brought Dr. Washington into conflict with many other leaders of the Negroes, but he maintained it from the beginning of his work in Tuskegee. He was not less concerned with the progress of the blacks in the United States than were those with whom he could not agree as to methods; their dispute was over the means to be used, not the end to be sought. His belief was supported by the intelligent judgement of thousands of citizens who saw in Tuskegee a possible instrument for the solution of s pressing problem." - Sun, New York City. "The future is brighter because Booker Washington lived. It is brighter because he was able to penetrate the encircling blackness with a vision that brought him confidence and the will to conquer. His never failing optimism through forty years of contact with the least promising condition in American could not die with him. That personal conviction of final success for his race, in harmony even with the "white man's civilization," the more easily dominates other minds because he had held it so tenaciously. Despair knew him not in life, and in death his message will ever ring with the joy of struggle and the dauntless spirit of service."- Republican, Springfield, Mass. "He was a leader, great and inspired. White and black alike will, in the day of calm and fair judgement, count him among the prophets of his time. His greatness was that of a great purpose."- Register, New Haven, Conn. "Any one who has studied the history of the colored people for the past fifty years will realize that the race has in
