The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.3, page 200, Dec. 1891, 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 and in cementing, not tearing asunder the friendships of the blacks and whites. I can remember how, not many years ago, the wisdom of Gen. Armstrong's plan of industrial education found many doubters at the North and many opposers at the South Furlong the most prominent colored men. But now, as the results begin to manifest themselves, how happily has all this changed? What would have been the result supposing that the education of the negro had gone on without industrial training? Without my words you understand better than I that the effect of mental development is to increase one's wants, & sensitiveness to bring about an unrest. General Armstrong saw that there would be danger to the peace of the whole South unless while his wants were being increased by mental training, industrial training at the same time increased his capacity to supply those increased wants. He saw too that the negro must be prepared to live side by side of his white brother of the South' and that industrial education would create the desire for ownership in land and the ability to! develop industries that would make the negro a producer as well as a consumer industries that would make the white man dependent on the black man for something instead of all the dependence being on the other side. He saw as this development went on that it would bring about, as it is doing, an interdependence of the races; that their material and business interests in those Southern communities would become so linked together, so interlaced, that the interests of the two races would be identical, and that instead of strife there would come peace and union. He also saw that it was through such development, such union, that we must finally look for the solution of the political and social troubles that are so far from being settled in the South; and that industrial education would, in the near future, destroy the idea of labor being degrading that has held back and retarded like a nightmare, the progress of both races in the South, and would soon make them see in labor a privilege and blessing instead of a curse. From the first, in this matter of education at the South, we have had your help and the struggles of the colored people themselves. We are now gradually gaining one other element of strength, ~ mean the interest and co-operation of the best class of Southem white people. As Hampton, Tuskegee, and other Institutions have been able year coo