A Chance to Make Good by Grossman James R.;Lewis Earl;Kelley Robin D. G.;

Author:Grossman, James R.;Lewis, Earl;Kelley, Robin D. G.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

This rolling school was given to the government agricultural extension service by African-American farmers of Alabama. It was named for Booker T. Washington, who helped set up the extension service.

Advising his people to “cast down your bucket where you are,” Washington urged them to remain in place both geographically and socially. He first used this phrase in a speech to a white audience in Atlanta in 1895, at the same time affirming his acceptance of Jim Crow: “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

Washington’s address (later dubbed the “Atlanta Compromise”) catapulted him into the role of spokesman for black America, as whites found him at once reassuring to them and inspiring to his people. He celebrated the small annual increases in black land ownership and offered these gains as proof that the future of African Americans lay in Southern agriculture. He promoted the values of his supporters in the business community, assuring blacks that political rights and social equality were less important than a demonstration of their importance to the Southern economy.

Washington was not, however, merely a puppet of his white patrons. Republican leaders in Washington and Northern philanthropists interested in the plight of African Americans turned to him for advice on how to direct their dollars to “appropriate” black institutions, or on which black politicians should receive the few appointments available to their race. Even powerful white Southerners would consult him (though never openly) for advice on which Negroes might be considered “safe” for appointments as public school principals or teachers.

By the turn of the century the “Tuskegee Machine” exercised considerable influence—if often indirectly—over institutions across black America. Scores of Southern private schools operated on the Tuskegee model, with principals and teachers occupying influential positions in small communities. In cities across the nation, African-American newspapers, many with direct subsidies from Tuskegee, trumpeted Washington’s successes. His National Negro Business League, founded in 1900 to encourage black enterprise (and black patronage of black businesses), grew to 320 branches within eight years. Like Washington’s other public initiatives, the league confined its political activity to the politics of advancement through individual and racial self-help. Its conventions “attended strictly to business”; electoral politics and public protest had no place on the agenda.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.