Booker T. Washington to Charles W. Chesnutt, 6 December 1907
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Parker House, Boston, Mass.Dec. 6, 1907.1 Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt. Williamson Bldg., Cleveland, O. My dear Mr. Chesnutt:-
I have just read your letter to Mr. Browne2 regarding the interpretation which you put upon Mr. Carnegie's3 remarks based upon my position bearing upon the franchise, and also what you say regarding my onw position.4 I confess that after reading your letter I have almost reached the conclusion that it is impossible for me to ever get my thoughts regarding the franchise through the brains of any human being; whether the trouble is with my thoughts or with the brains of the other felow I am not prepared just now to state, but there is trouble in either one or the other direction.
In your letter you say: "On one point, however, I do not at all agree with Mr. Carnegie or with Dr. Washington, whom he quotes, in holding it 'the wiser course'5 to practically throw up the ballot, or the demand for it."6
In the first place, Mr. Carnegie has said no such thing. I have never said no such thing. If you can put your finger or eye on a single sentence in all my writing that will bear out this statement, I will agree to send you a first class Alabama possum for your Christmas dinner.7 Suppose you re-read what Mr. Carnegie has said. I feel quite sure that when you wrote Mr. Browne that there was something in the lake breeze which was troubling your brain. I have said, and do so now, that to any people living under a republican form of government the ballot is a consideration of the very highest importance, and there is no disagreement between you and me as to the importance of the ballot; however, perhaps, we do not agree as to the methods of attaining to the permanent and practical
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use of the ballot. Some of our people maintain that the ballot is a matter of first consideration in our present condition. This I do not agree with. Practically you do not agree with their clnte ntioncontention. Practically, the matter of earning your daily bread and banking your money is a matter of the first consideration. You vote perhaps once in two years. The average brother in the North does not vote even that often, but you earn you’re daily bread once every day in the year, excepting Sundays. The matter of the next consideration to you ais the education of your children, something that you put into pratice every week in the year. The next is the matter of attending church, or "should be" with you, something that you practice every week in the year. If the ballot were a matter of first consideration, one would vote every day in the year instead of spending his time in the laying of an economic foundation every day in the year. Take the people of the Republic of Liberia,8 they might vote every hour ad every day in every year.9 At the end of the period they would not have improved their economic condition nor moral status before the world one iota. There is something deeper in human progress that the mere act of voting, it is the economic foundation which every race has got to have. But I shall not burden you further. We will try to thrash this out when we meet again.
I think after Mr. Browne and Mr. Carnegie have gotten through trying to weave your ideas into the address you will be satisfied with the changes.
Yours truly, BTCorrespondent: Booker T. Washington (1856–1913), one of the most well-known Black activists of the early 20th century, was born into slavery in Virginia. In 1881, he became the president of what would become the Tuskegee Institute, advocating widely as a speaker and writer for technical education for Blacks, whose entry into American industry and business leadership he believed to be the road to equality. His political power was significant, but because he frequently argued for compromise with White Southerners, including on voting rights, he was also criticized by other Black activists, especially by W. E. B. Du Bois.
1. The Parker House Hotel in Boston, MA, opened in 1855 and hosted many celebrity guests throughout the 19th and early 20th century. The original building was demolished in the mid-1920, to be replaced by a new structure that is still used as a hotel. Booker T. Washington stayed there multiple times beginning in 1907. [back]
2. Hugh M. Browne (1851–1923) was a Black civil rights activist, teacher, and inventor. Educated at Howard University, Princeton University, and in Europe, he taught in Liberia in the 1880s and at Black colleges in the United States from the 1890s until his retirement in 1913. He was an ally of Booker T. Washington but advocated for both academic and industrial education. He was secretary of the Committee of Twelve and corresponded with Chesnutt about Committee matters. [back]
3. Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), born in Scotland and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania, was one of the wealthiest men in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An industrialist and well-known philanthropist supporting education, the arts, and to some extent social equality, around 1900 he began to support Booker T. Washington's endeavors at the Tuskegee Institute (including financing a Carnegie Library on its campus) and beyond. He was the major contributor to support the printing of pamphlets disseminated by the Committee of Twelve—including his own speech on The Negro in America (1907). [back]
4. Chesnutt addressed the question of the franchise and suppression of the Black vote in the South often, including in his 1903 essay "The Disfranchisement of the Negro." [back]
5. It is possible that the original speech by Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) on "The Negro in America" used this phrase and that Booker T. Washington is directly quoted in it. But as printed in the pamphlet the passage has slightly different wording, possibly in response to Chesnutt's criticism, since he was invited to suggest revisions to Hugh M. Browne (1851—1923) before the Committee of Twelve published it. The pamphlet passage reads: "Booker Washington contends that good moral character and industrial efficiency, resulting in ownership of property, are the pressing needs and the sure and speedy path to recognition and enfranchisement. A few able negroes are disposed to press for the free and unrestricted vote immediately. We cannot but hope that the wiser policy will prevail" (Andrew Carnegie, The Negro in America: An Address Delivered Before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, 16th October 1907 [Cheney, PA: Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Interest of the Negro Race, 1907], 22). [back]
6. Booker T. Washington is quoting from Chesnutt's November 21, 1907, letter to Hugh M. Browne (1851—1923), which Browne had passed on to Washington. [back]
7. The Virginia opossum, a marsupial native to much of the United States, was a common meat consumed on feast-days for Black and White Southerners into the 20th century. It was often associated with Southern rural, and in particular African American, and it was often part of racist stereotypes. In 1901, there were many references to opossums in the hostile press coverage of Booker T. Washington’s dinner with President Roosevelt. [back]
8. The Republic of Liberia was founded in 1847 by African Americans and with involvement from the American Colonization Society. It was recognized by the United States in 1862. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Liberia was under pressure from European nations that wanted to colonize the area. Booker T. Washington took an active interest in the country and used his influence on its behalf. President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Ernest Lyon (1860—1938) as U.S. consul and minister to Liberia (1903–1911) on Washington's recommendation. In the summer of 1907, Washington began to lobby Presidents Roosevelt and later William Howard Taft for American intervention in Liberia, with some success. The Tuskegee Institute hosted a Commission from Liberia in the summer of 1908 and facilitated their negotiations with U.S. officials. [back]
9. The Republic of Liberia's original 1847 constitution was modelled on the U.S. constitution (and was recognized by the U.S. in 1862), but specifically restricted citizenship to "people of color," and in Article 1, Section 11, included voting rights "for every male citizen, of twenty-one years of age, possessing real estate" (Constitution of 1847, first printed in 1848, here quoted from Charles Henry Huberich, The Political and Legislative History of Liberia [New York : Central Book Co., 1947], 2:852–864). However, Liberian citizenship only included Americo-Liberians until 1904, and neither women nor the Indigenous male population were granted the right to vote until the mid-20th century. [back]
