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THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

Used with permission of The David Graham Du Bois Trust, from the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst. All subsidiary rights enquiries should be directed to The Permissions Company, Inc., 47 Seneca Road, P.O. Box 604, Mount Pocono, PA 18344. © The David Graham Du Bois Trust 2011.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2011

Extract

The late Booker T. Washington may be considered in four aspects. First there can be no doubt that his chief significance lies in the fact that he cannot be considered simply as an individual but that he is so inextricably woven into the national and even world movements of his day that his death becomes historic. Again, most Colored men in America are simply “Colored.” They are submerged in a great undifferentiated group; they are not considered as individuals but are lumped together as a “race.” Mr. Washington was more than “Colored.” He was an American, and the comments upon his career tend continually to emphasize the fact that such a struggle upward against terrific odds, such indomitable persistence and versatility of expedient was peculiarly American. After Frederick Douglass, Mr. Washington was the next great exemplification and revelation of problems of race and labor in America, so significant as to go to the very core of our democracy; and finally, there is to consider Mr. Washington's own personality: the silent, watchful, cautious man, rugged, nervous, popular but unsocial, slow but tireless.

Type
State of the Discipline
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2011

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References

NOTES

1 Du Bois Review style requires the capitalization of race terms. The terms “Black,” “White,” and “Colored” were originally lower cased in Du Bois's manuscript, as were the terms “Northern” and “Southern.”

2 Du Bois used the word “walked” in the original. Changed here for clarity.