The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.12, page xviii, in Introduction, U. of Illinois Press

The page presentation framework of the Booker T. Washington papers is designed to provide researchers worldwide with searchable access to the thousands of pages comprising the fourteen volumes, most of which are out of print. Adapted from the National Academy Press's Open Book framework, this framework allows searching down to the page level, provides sorting of search results chronologically, enables easy navigation across multiple volumes, and allows page-by-page local printing (via PDF) of every page.

[ Top of Page ]

[ Home ]

[ Contact Us ]

[ Help ]

OCRed data provided for searching only.
The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON papers Charles Anderson had enough influence in New York to wage a successfuT campaign to clefeat for election one of the judges who had voted to dismiss the assault charges against Henry A. UIrich, Wash~ngton's assailant in ogre. Washington employed an agent to spy upon and try to frustrate Chief Sam, leader of a back-to-Africa movement. As Washington dropped out of politics and was free of the constra~nts he had felt as a presidential adviser, he began to speak more publicly and forthrightly about racial inequities. At the Black Belt Fair In Demopolis, Alabama, in September 19~2, and again in The Independent about a week later, he dealt with the gross inequalities In public school expenditures for the two races. In November egos, only a few days after the presidential election, he published in The Century his most comprehensive and direct criticism of American racial ~njustice, ''Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?'' He answered simply, ''No,'' but then proceeded to elaborate the job discrimination in the North, and the Jim Crow transportation and unequal educational opportunities of the South. Washington sent marked copies of this article in Aged to nearly every railroad official in the country, and followed this in 19~4 by urging all black organizations to observe Railroad Day by complaining to their local railroad officials about racial discrimination on their lines and in the railroad waiting rooms. In other ways also, Washington made clear a change of emphasis in race relations. He expressed to Oswald Garrison VilIard his d~sappointment at the segregation of federal office buildings under the Wilson administration, and Villard used his statement in a letter of complaint to Wilson. He urged black Georgians to resist the new Atlanta residential segregation ordinance, publicly deplored labor union exclusion of blacks from employment, opposed a rural Iandsegregation scheme proposed by Clarence Poe of the Progressive Farmer, redoubled his public letters opposing lynching, and encouraged such relatively liberal white southerners as Benjamin F. Riley, Willis D. Weatherford, and Quincy Ewing. None of this was enough to appease ViDard and his allies in the NAACP, however. Viliard spoke of Washington's cowardly silence in the face of injustice as proof of his unfitness as a race leader. While Washington's utterances did have a more critical tone, he continued to give priority to the economic and educational means of black progress. He persuaded the Phelps-Stokes Fund to finance a ... XVlll