Although you probably wont see this in media reports, the black community's approval of belligerent racial organizations has diminished over the years while the Booker T. Washington Society is gaining support among blacks.
Although born into slavery, Mr. Washington never succumbed to self-pity, nor did he allow segregation to hold him back. His hard work and diligence not only gained him a college degree, but made him a man of unusual prominence in Southern society. In 1881, while only 25 years old, he was chosen as the first president of the newly formed Tuskegee University, which has produced numerous celebrated black graduates, and is still thriving after almost 150 years.
The Tuskegee school for educating black teachers was created in an environment of racial cooperation in Alabama. A former slave and a former slave master worked together in negotiations with a white congressman running for reelection, promising him black votes if he would use his influence to get the state assembly to provide funding for the school. As a result, in 1880, Alabama passed a law that provided annual funding for teachers salaries at the projected school. This collaborative endeavor between the races was a precursor of the conciliatory racial philosophy that Booker T. Washington encouraged.
In 1895, Booker T. Washington was invited to speak at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. In his speech, Mr. Washington presented his views on why the emancipation phase of Radical Reconstruction failed to produce the benefits that freed slaves expected. His address included this paragraph: "Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities."
Counseling his fellow blacks not to permit their grievances to overshadow their opportunities was wise advise. But in the years following Mr. Washington's speech, many white progressives were becoming infatuated with socialist, communist, and anti-imperialist political sentiments. These restless white revolutionaries felt that capitalism was preventing equality, and consequently, society must be drastically altered to eliminate economic classes. It was these white idealists, rather than responsible, concerned blacks, that were the primary founders of the NAACP; an organization that rejected Mr. Washington's cooperative approach, and implemented tactics that were militant and confrontational.
In his Atlanta speech, Mr. Washington used the phrase "the ornamental gewgaws of life." This could easily refer to flawed emancipation policies that were, in essence, only superficial political linguistics, rather than practical, common sense actions. The slaves were "legally" freed from subservience to plantation masters, but they no longer had a means of survival. So, even before Reconstruction ended, freed slaves began to realize that they had just been pawns for the manipulative radical Republicans who were temporarily controlling the Southern states.
Normally, when a war ends, the opponents sit around a conference table and negotiate the terms of surrender. But, after the War Between the States , the South was deemed a "conquered province" without rights. (Interestingly, although the Lincoln administration maintained that the Southern states had never left the Union, it also decided that the South forfeited its constitutional rights by seceding.) As the protections of the Constitution did not apply to Southern states, the military commanders occupying the region during Reconstruction had no restraints over their "management" of the area. Land was confiscated from Southern landowners and parceled out to freed slaves. This proposal is usually described by the expression "forty acres and a mule", although the plan didn't involve livestock.
Land along coastal Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, and extending 30 miles inland, was seized from Southern landowners and set aside for freed slaves. This mass of land was to be solely settled by and governed by blacks, and white folks were forbidden to settle there. Although radical Republicans pushed this proposal, many Northern politicians disapproved of the federal government's seizing and redistributing land and capital. Indeed, the Constitution prohibits the confiscation of land without compensation to landowners.
The people in the North had never been enthusiastic about the government's Reconstruction of the South. And, as Reconstruction continued, Northerners began hearing reports of escalating corruption and malfeasance occurring in the occupied Southern states. Northerners also questioned how the government could spend so much time and money on the Reconstruction experiment when economic conditions in other parts of the country were beginning to atrophy. So in little over a decade, the ignominious Reconstruction experiment collapsed, as did the radical Republican confiscation scheme. The redistribution of land and wealth might have had some chance of success in a socialist nation, but it was destined for failure in the United States.
But the slaves and their former masters exhibited a pragmatism ignored by radical Republicans and the federal government. They entered into negotiations for a mutually beneficial commercial arrangement. The result was tenant farming or sharecropping. Landowners would assign plots of their land to former slaves, as well as providing them with housing, clothing, farm implements, and seed. To reimburse landowners for land as well as other items provided, a portion of crops produced was shared with landowners.
This collaborative farming arrangement represents the essence of Booker T. Washington's philosophy: interactions between the races should be cooperative rather than adversarial. Some left-wing academics claim that this arrangement was simply a subterfuge for the continuation of slavery and that blacks were kept in perpetual debt and subservience. Actually, sharecropping worked exceedingly well, and many enterprising slaves were able to become financially independent. In fact, the system worked so well that it eventually spread to other parts of the country and lasted well into the 1940s.
Today, there are left-wing professors and black activists who still strongly promote the "forty acres and a mule" endeavor. Indeed, the concept is experiencing a revival in the push for reparations, and a legislative bill, H.R. 40, has been introduced in Congress to explore how reparations can be accomplished. Like "forty acres and a mule", reparations also involves taking wealth and assets from some, and redistributing it to others. Although the coerced redistribution of wealth is favored by President Obama, it conflicts with our Constitution, as well as our concept of private enterprise. Admittedly, there are segments of our society that want capitalism replaced with a socio-communistic political system, as was strikingly evidenced by the recent protest marches. While Al Sharpton's followers were demanding "dead cops", other marchers were calling for the overthrow of capitalism.
The disruptive onslaughts on our society by these marchers represents anarchy on a limited scale. But if they are not restrained, they will produce widespread, out-of-control lawlessness. Such chaos is what the Obama/Sharpton coterie is deliberately seeking. They will allege that society is broken (claiming that capitalism has failed) and use the social turbulence as their justification for implementing a government- controlled collectivist state.
If there was ever a time when the wisdom of a great man like Booker T. Washington was needed, it is now. We desperately need a more impartial media - One that doesn't slant all of its reports and is willing to advise the public of the positive efforts of organizations like the Booker T. Washington Society. This astute organization not only offers a healthy alternative for improved race relations, but also promotes an essential philosophy that will unite society. Nearly all news coverage focuses on groups that foment racial resentment, whereas groups that encourage racial appeasement are intentionally ignored.
