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.

Women's History Month No. 31

Do you recognize this lady? You can tell by looking that her's was an earlier era and so it was. She was born on 27 March, 1899. 113 years ago, when Civil War veterans still sat on park benches, nursed old wounds, and thought about how grand, how heartstopping-dreadful it all was. When Theodore Roosevelt had reason to grouse about being buried in the Vice-Presidency. When my long-gone grandma was a leggy six-year-old with her dark curls twisted in a braid.

This lady was quoted as saying, "Fame was thrilling only until it became grueling. Money was fun only until you ran out of things to buy." And famous she was. Rich she was, and sought after. Click HERE and see what all those people out there in the dark saw when they watched flickering images of Gloria Swanson.

Come to think of it, I talked with someone today, someone much younger than I am. Someone who never heard of Sunset Boulevard! But then again, I'll bet there were times when Grandma upset her elders, sent their eyes rolling heavenward, left them feeling old when she confessed she'd never heard of, oh I don't know -

Lydia Thompson.

Me neither! until a minute ago anyway..

Women's History Month No. 21

"A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."

"My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths."

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, "First Lady of the World" Oct. 11, 1884 ~ Nov. 7, 1962

Look at those eyes; very blue they were. These images here are my two favorite pictures of Elliott (charming drunkard, alas) & Anna Roosevelt's daughter, Theo. Roosevelt's (that "steam engine in trousers," as Mark Twain, no fan of the imperialistic President, not at all, referred to this most interesting American ever.), favorite niece, FDR's valiant, albeit grudge-bearing, far-traveling wife; and the complex mother of Anna, James, Franklin Jr., Elliott, & John; first cousin, too, of the very beautiful, but rather nasty & sharp-tongued "Princess Alice" Roosevelt. I had the privilege of writing about Eleanor Roosevelt in several of my books: Rabble Rousers: 20 Women Who Made a Difference, Franklin & Eleanor, and Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women.

How I loved reading about this thoughtful, compassionate, and complex woman [and her whole family, for that matter]! This writer, politician, and humanitarian. She and her husband were some pair of complicated coconuts, I swear.

So. I read once the reason why this hot and miserable time of year is called the 'dog days,' and I might wax on a bit about that if I called that reason to mind, but I can't and anyway, wax would melt on such a day as this. Eggs will fry on sidewalks. Dogs and small children, left in cars by the criminally forgetful, stupid, cruel &/or heedless will die. When I walk downstairs it's as if I'm descending into cool - water? cloud? Let me merely say that it's cooler downstairs and dreadfully warm outdoors because it is August - but is it warmer for deeper, systemic reasons? A question worth the pondering, but not here, not by me, not just now. I always find myself thinking of summers in the city, the sufferings in the brick bake ovens fitted out w/in as apartments. Of hot horses and mules, heads down, sides heaving, plodding down sun-baked roads. Of workers, having no choice but to slave away in fields of hay or cotton or tobacco, or quarries w/ broiling sun glaring off white stone. Women in limp dresses gone dark with sweat, damp hair pulled up & away from red, streaming faces, working away in a hot kitchen made hotter by the stove because there's canning to be done, cooking to be done, washing to be done. How lovely those old photographs look, of folks out on their porches of a summer evening, women & girls in their white cotton dresses, men & boys in shirt sleeves, back, say, when Wm. McKinley or Theo. Roosevelt was in office. My grandmothers were dark haired young ladies then. Way later on one of them, Sadie, told me that the only good thing about the good old days was that they were gone. Hmm. One big opera it all is, I reckon. We take the smooth with the rough, the bitter & the sweet, and the cool sweet days then the too damned cold/too bloody hot, steamy old dog days in their season. Turn around twice & it'll be Halloween; twice more & it'll all be over.

Another Miraculous Deal

So, okay, today's the 255th anniversary of Nathan Hale. Patrick Henry, another storied hero of our nation's war for independence, was given death on this day, 211 years ago, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Diego Rodriguez Silva y Velazquez, glorious Spanish painter. And oh yeah: this is my 11/12 birthday, one month out from the start of my 60th year. My eyes: they roll heavenward. All of this, especially the latter, pales next to the thunderous events of this day, 66 years ago, on coast of France.

Inevitable though it was, the actual date a closely held secret and dependent upon all manner of weather and logistics, but what an heroic and horrific deal it was when Allied forces invaded Europe. Among them was 56-year-old General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.. His lionheart was dicky and he was plagued with arthritis, thanks to his injuries in the Great War (to End All Wars), but TR's eldest cub was there. His Medal of Honor citation explains better than I ever could what he did there at Normandy, shortly before his death of a heart attack, on the 13th of July.

"For gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the callof duty on 6 June 1644, in France. After 2 verbal requests to accompany the leadingassault elements in the Normandy invasion had been denied, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt'swritten request for this mission was approved and he landed with the first wave of the forces assaulting the enemy-held beaches. He repeatedly led groups from the beach, over the seawall and established them inland. His valor, courage, and presencein the very front of the attack and his complete unconcern at being under heavy fire inspired the troops to heights of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Although the enemy hadthe beach under constant direct fire, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt moved from one locality toanother, rallying men around him, directed and personally led them against the enemy.Under his seasoned, precise, calm, and unfaltering leadership, assault troops reducedbeach strong points and rapidly moved inland with minimum casualties. He thuscontributed substantially to the successful establishment of the beachhead in France."

G.H. of the P.

What you read here below is an excerpt from my new little book, Grab Hold of the Past. What's it about? I'm glad you asked. It's my personal take on history, the writing of it, envisioning long-lost moments, as I've done in many a picture book and illustrated biography of such people as the remarkable naturalist, historian, writer, rancher, explorer, soldier, civil servant, big game hunter (don't much approve of that), dad, youngest President ever, diplomat, Theo. Roosevelt; and brilliant, talkative, and tubby John Adams, mighty under-appreciated, Founding Father-wise, stuck as he was between those tall, taciturn, handsome Virginians. You know who I mean. I stuffed this little book with useful, informative, and/or amusing, time-sucking weblinks, plus loads of quotations. Here's my favorite:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." L. P. [Leslie Poles] Hartley (1895-1972)

Oh wait - I love this one, too:

"There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday."

Robt. Nathan (1894-1985)

AIl of our moments and stories are part of us, how and who we are. Might as well dance with the tales that took us here.
We embody the memories of friends, conversations, the books we’ve read, the movies that have spilled over us in the dark; home-places, classroom embarrassments, the scents of bread baking, pencils sharpened. Being woke up by howling night-owl babies, sitting with little brothers in the back of a station wagon, watching stars appear in a deepening blue night sky framing the Technicolor rectangle of a drive-in movie. That’s history, too.
I can’t help thinking of all those people back upstream, who played their scenes earlier on. They lived out their lives in worlds where flame was all there was to keep them from freezing in the dark. They depended on horses or their own two legs to get them from one place to another. Maybe they got dressed up once or twice to get their photographs taken. We look at them looking back at us from across a canyon of years that gets wider with every tick of the clock. … You are – we are – in fact, a symphonious concoction of elements, a complex, nature-nurture combo reflecting your place and time. So it is for every individual who’s ever drawn breath. And so it is for a country. More than borders and banners, any nation is a combination of all of the stories of all of the people who’ve lived in that land all down the years of the living past.