West from Appomattox by Heather Cox Richardson

Author:Heather Cox Richardson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780300137859
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2005-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 12. In this carefully staged photograph, Quanah deliberately blended his white and Indian heritages to indicate his acceptance of white ways. A portrait of his mother, Naudah, sits prominently to the right. Research Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

A prominent rising black population encouraged the image of black advancement. This group included prosperous farmers, merchants, and professionals and was personified by Booker T. Washington. It emphasized its belief in general economic development and encouraged the idea that the race problem would be solved through individual black advancement. Born into slavery, the brilliant, biracial Washington managed to get a rudimentary education and work his way through Hampton Institute in Virginia, where his mentor, General S. C. Armstrong, recognized his potential. When Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz conceived of educating Indian youths at Hampton, Armstrong hired Washington to teach them. He acquitted himself so well that when Armstrong was asked to provide a teacher for a new school being organized for local African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama, he recommended Washington rather than the white man the school’s founders expected.

Arriving in Tuskegee in June 1881, Washington found no school buildings but plenty of eager students. He set about creating a traditional Republican free labor education for African Americans, one that would teach them the skills necessary to start at the bottom rung of the ladder of economic prosperity. He later recalled that many whites in the Tuskegee area disliked the idea of educating African Americans, for they believed that “education” for them meant only teaching them to refuse to work. “The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro,” Washington explained, “with a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid gloves, fancy boots, and what not—in a word, a man who was determined to live by his wits.’’ The white image of an educated black man had merged with the popular minstrel show character of “Zip Coon,” who was, according to the antebellum song that created him, “a larned skoler, Sings possum up a gum tree an coony in a holler.’’ By the 1880s, this character had become a barely educated freedman who disdained the fields and mines where his neighbors sweated, instead planning to vote himself economic and social benefits. Washington was determined to combat this degrading image.

Washington carefully constructed Tuskegee Institute to echo the individualist vision of the American mainstream and to override the negative image of the lazy black voter. He worked to ensure that both black and white leaders of the Tuskegee community backed the school, making it clear that his students would be prepared to work their way up in society rather than trying to jump straight into white-collar professions. He made it a point to teach his scholars the elements of mainstream culture as well as branches of knowledge. Helped by Olivia Davidson, a Massachusetts-trained teacher whom he later married, Washington taught his students, he

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