BLACK HISTORY MONTH No. 10: 12 Things to Know About Booker T. Washington

     So, of course I'd heard about Booker Tliaferro Washington. In school. Along the way. But I'd never really read about him until I was working, first, on a book about Theodore Roosevelt, and then on my book about Geo. Washington Carver a few years ago.  Booker T. W. is something of anachronism these days, even categorized, I'd say most unfairly, as an Uncle Tom.

"I have learned that success

 is to be measured not so much 

by the position that one has reached in life 

as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome 

while trying to succeed."

:Character is power."

"Few things can help an individual 

more than to place responsibility on him, 

and to let him know that you trust him."

Booker T. Washington

1.  Why should Americans know about him?  Because Mr. Washington, who began his life in slavery, became an educator, speaker, and author of great significance at a critical time in our nation's history, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.  Decades after the Civil War, racism was still rampant in America. Plenty of white citizens, particularly in what had been the Old south were doing their best, i.e. worst to keep former slaves and their children ground underfoot. How? With violence and intimidation. Keeping poor people down. Written and unwritten laws, together known as Jim Crow.

2. As was the case with Frederick Douglass and many another African American of this era, BTW's mother was enslaved. His father was a white man, a wealthy farmer or "planter" as such was known in Virginia, where BTW was born. April 5, 1856.

3. Every sort of hard, rotten sort of physical labor was the way BTW was able to work his way through African American schools, present-day Hampton University. and Virginia Union University.

4. Armed with this education, 25-year-old BTW became head of a leaky, shabby set of buildings near Tuskegee, Alabama.  It would be his job, his and his determined African American students, to turn those worn out buildings into a SCHOOL.     Which they did. 

5. One of BTW's  best known hires?  That'd be Geo. W. Carver, the "Peanut Wizard," the "Sage of Tuskegee." In 1896.  A year after the big speech BTW made in Atlanta, the speech that won him so much praise and scorn.

6. It was known as the Atlanta Exposition Speech or, by some, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, as the 'Atlanta Compromise.  Booker T. Washington delivered this address to a mostly white audience in Sept 1895.  Here is BTW's recounting of it, from his 1901 memoir, Up From Slavery.  It's a hard listen from a modern p.o.v.  In 1895, the speech made him a national popular sensation.  

He called for African Americans to be hired [rather than the immigrants who were pouring into the U.S. just then] as the humble, loyal, and hard-working people they were - who should passively accept segregation. Blacks & whites could exist together, as separate fingers on one hand.

7. BTW's pragmatic p.o.v. was highly necessary, considering all of the money he was constantly trying to raise, considering all of the favor he was actively courting from influential people, particularly white ones, ever leery of being asked to move too far or too fast from the status quo.

8. BTW was so popular that President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to dine with him at the White House. I mean, think of it: In the entire history of the slave-built place, black people were the ones who cooked and served meals and washed up afterwards.  Only fitting that a significant educator should be asked to visit with the President - but the response from the outraged South was so foul, filthy, backwards, racist. Disgusting and shocking even now to read....

9. He continued his heavy workload at the Tuskegee Institute. 

10.  Booker T. Washington lies buried there, since his death, Nov 14, 1915, when he was only 59.

11. A visit to Tuskegee University is well worth the visit: There's a handsome museum/ National Historic Site there, detailing the work of Booker T. Washington and his employee/sometime nemesis Geo. Wash. Carver.

12. There is also, in Franklin Co., VA, the Booker T. Washington National Monument.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH No. 1: 12 Cool Things To Know About George Washington Carver

"Education is the key 

to unlock the golden door 

of freedom."

"When you do the common things in life 

in an uncommon way, 

you will command 

the attention of the world."

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited 

broadcasting station, 

through which God speaks to us 

every hour, if we will only tune in."  

George Washington Carver  
1864? ~ 1943
What a cool face, no?

1. Around 1865, at the end of the Civil War, when George was an infant, night riders kidnapped him, his sister, and his mom, Mary, from their owners, Moses and Susan Carver.  They were farmers down around the village of Diamond Grove, in southwestern Missouri.  Moses got people to search for them, but only baby George was recovered.

2. No one really knows exactly when GWC was born, but we do know that poor baby George nearly died of whooping cough. This may account for his unusually high voice. Toward the end of this LINK you can hear him.

3. Not until he was a young man did George adopt 'Washington' for his middle name.

4. He was just a boy, barely into his teens, George, a very inquisitive young man, set out walking to where he could get an education, a nearly impossible thing for an African American in 1870s America.
Still, he managed to graduate from high school in Minneapolis, KS.

5.  He supported himself by doing people's laundry.

6.  George was accepted into Highland College in northeastern Kansas, then turned away because of the color of his skin.

7. For a while, in the 1880s, GWC was a Kansas homesteader, living in a sod house he built himself.

8. Eventually, GWC became the first black student at Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University). Not only did he graduate (with a degree in agriculture), GWC became a faculty member.  

9.  Though GWC specialized in agriculture and botany, he was an accomplished musician and a painter. In fact, a couple of his paintings were displayed at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893.

10.  The world famous speaker, activist, and educator, Booker T. Washington hired GWC as a professor at his Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama.

11.  Of course charismatic GWC, the "Peanut Man,"  is known for his experiments with peanuts, as a way to help southern farmers break their soil-killing addiction to raising cotton and nothing but cotton. He even testified to his findings before the U.S. Congress. But Geo. Wash. Carver earned national fame for his methods of treating and easing the suffering of those, such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who were crippled by polio.

12.  After Dr. Carver (not a real doctor, but GWC was called that out of respect for his life of learning and teaching) passed away on January 5, 1943, a National Monument was dedicated to him - the first such honor for any American who had not been a U.S. president. You can experience the George Washington Carver National Monument,  part of the National Park Service, at Diamond, MO, GWC's birthplace. It is well worth the visit.  And the charismatic man himself is well worth the knowing.

To read more about GWC, there are plenty of fine books, but please DO check out mine: The Groundbreaking, Chance-Taking Life of GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER and SCIENCE and INVENTION in AMERICA.    

78

So. Here I am, I and Grace, my little red hoopie, as we appeared in Veda Jones's driveway in Joplin, Missouri, this past weekend, on my way over to the little town of Diamond. What's there? A beautiful museum, well worth the visiting, The George Washington Carver National Monument. It's got a peanut warning on the front door - made me smile.

The "Peanut Wizard" was born thereabouts in the early spring of 1865. For a bit more about Dr. Carver - really, a tremendous individual, you may well wish to read today's posting on the I.N.K. blog. Now, as for Interesting Nonfiction for Kids, I must go and, with luck and the continued application of the seat of my pants to the seat of this chair, write some.

81

So, was it a rainy day like today, on this day in 1452, when Catarina gave birth to her son, Leonardo? The records say that it was Piero da Vinci who fathered the child upon her, the child who'd grow up, drawing as angels would if they cared to. Ah well, happy happy to Leonardo da Vinci, the original Renaissance Man, on the 559th anniversary of his birth. And to another painter, whom I saw walking about (at the art supply store where I worked), before he kicked the bucket -after all, sensational it would be if I saw Thos Hart Benton after he passed on. Not so by the way, not three blocks away from where I'm here typing is a most glorious mural of his - gosh, the COLOR! - up at the HST Presidential Library. Do see it if you haven't.

Now, off I go to southern Missouri, to another artist's old stomping grounds, to the birthplace of George Washington Carver. I'm to be talking about him tomorrow. I'll be sure to tell whomever shows up that there was far and away more to the gent than peanuts and that he deserves to be known and admired, as more than some quaint, peanut-butter-scented Black History Month icon.

A seeker after attention he was, but his sights were, for sure, set upon Truth.

8th of November

Miss Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta was not the most brilliant writer in the world, but readers seldom realized it once caught by the charm, dash, & drama of Gone With the Wind. She was born 110 years ago today in the still-recovering, not-so-very-damned Sunny South. I seem to remember (from that that swell TNT documentary) that she was known as Peggy to her friends. She shared a birthday with Bram Stoker (b. 1847) of Ireland, another popular author, just for you to know; and Jack Kilby, b. this day in 1923. To my knowledge, I'd never heard of J.K. until I was working on my book about the artist/teacher/agriculturist/self-styled 'kitchen chemist' Geo. Washington Carver (far & away more than some peanut butter enthusiast trotted out once a year for Black History Month), but Kilby invented the 'integrated circuit' (as well as the sort of calculator one could actually hold in one's very own hand),w/o which I'd not be sitting here typing this on this device, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

It's Patti Page's birthday, too, b. on Peggy Mitchell's 27th birthday (She'd already begun writing her masterpiece.) Patti Page's folks named her Clara Ann Fowler. Anyway, when I was in kindergarten, she was my very favorite singer. I remember thinking that her voice wasn't all breathy and "powdery" like other singers.

A Pair of Adventurous Souls

So, an adventurous soul : That would be Margaret Fuller, born this day 200 years ago. I know this because I clicked into Rob Velella's splendid American Literary Blog. Pay it a visit and you'll be well-rewarded, if only by learning more about today's Birthday Woman. http://americanliteraryblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/bicentennial-of-margaret-fuller.html

I would not consider myself to be an adventurous soul, but I've written about a few. One of them, Geo. Washington Carver began his adventuring in an ill-favored fashion [to enslaved parents living in a time of war] not so far from today's destination: Joplin, MO. Before I head down the road I'm going to dip into my encyclopedia and see what is written there about Miss Fuller. I'll visit this swellegant site, too: margaretfuller.org/ I intend to ponder Miss. F. & Mr. GWC as I aim my hoopie down the highway. Good people to think about, good people waiting for me at the end of today's road. I call that a fine adventure.