The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.1, page xvii, in Introduction, U. of Illinois Press

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INTRODUCTION the North and the South, selling from door to door such works as J. W. Gibson and W. H. Crogman, Progress of a Race, a popular black history. The general manager of the firm, John A. Hertel, a white man, was an aggressive salesman and promoter.2 The evidence suggests that Washington intended the autobiography entitled The ~ ., . ~ . , story of Sly tale and wore to ne read chiefly by Negroes rather than whites. When Hertel showed a strong interest in the autobiography, Washington employed Edgar Webber, a twenty-seven-year-old black journalist, to assist him and to be a member of the Tuskegee staff. He knew little of Webber, but all that he knew about him was favorable. Born in Mississippi, he had graduated from Le Moyne Institute and Howard University Law School. In 1 8 Webber graduated from the college department of Fisk University. He had first attracted Washington's attention in 1 s when he arranged for Washington to lecture to the Fisk University student body.3 After graduating from Fisk, Webber unsuccessfully sought the presidency of Alcorn A & M College in Mississippi. About the same time, he inquired of Washington if the Tuskegee printing department could print a textbook on civics he was writing, and applied for a position at Tuskegee. Washington was apparently impressed not only by Webber's ambition but by his literary credentials. Besides teaching law for four years at Central Tennessee College, Webber edited the Fisk Herald during his junior year, . . ~ .. O ~ , worked for a time as a regular reporter on the Nashville Daily American, and took a job with a Memphis black weekly after graduating from Fisk.4 Edgar Webber promised Washington to ''enter most heartily into the work before me.''5 After stopping by Atlanta to discuss the book with John Hertel, whose company maintained an office there, he combed through Washington's newspaper scrapbooks and copies of speeches with an impressive show of diligence. Drawing up a chapter outline of the book, he wrote a memorandum on each chapter for Washington to follow in his writing. Webber soon proved agonizingly slow in his part of the work, however, and Washington's other affairs distracted him for a year from work on the autobiography. 2 Hertel to BTW, Nov. ~ o, ~ 5, ~ 89 7, Con. ~ 3 I, BTW Papers, DLC. 3 Webber to BTW, Feb. 7, 1895, Con. 8, BTW Papers, ATT. 4 Webber to BTW, May 27, Nov. a, 1898, Con. ~64, BTW Papers, DLC. 5 Webber to BTW, Nov. 7, ~ 898, Con. ~ 64, BTW Papers, DLC. . . XV11