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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 35. The Negro Protest - 2. The Negro Abolitionists and Reconstruction Politicians - 3. The Tuskegee Compromise
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Chapter 35. The Negro Protest 739
reaching into the present time—got under way to rationalize the national
compromise of the 1870’s.®
Northerners sought to protect their conscience partly by means of the
humanitarian work carried on by the reformers and philanthropists among
Negroes in the South. And with some valid self-righteousness the Yankees
could point out that in the North the scattered Negro population kept its
suffrage and civil liberties. But the Negro problem as a national issue was
dead in the North. In the South the protracted process of legalizing
political and social discrimination continued its course. There was nothing
left for the Negro protest but to fight a losing struggle and to go under-
ground.
3. The Tuskegee Compromise
In this great calamity for the Negro cause, Booker T. Washington
stepped forward and established himself as the national leader of a prag-
matic and conciliatory school of thought, to which a great number of
national and local Negro leaders, particularly in the South, adhered.
It is wrong to characterize Washington as an all-out accommodating
leader. He never relinquished the right to full equality in all respects as
the ultimate goal. But for the time being he was prepared to give up
social and political equality, even to soft-pedal the protest against inequali-
ties in justice. He was also willing to flatter the Southern whites and be
harsh toward the Negroes—if the Negroes were only allowed to work un-
disturbed with their white friends for education and business. But neither
in education nor in business did he assault the basic inequalities. In both
fields he accepted the white doctrine of the Negroes’ ^^place.” In educa-
tion he pleaded for vocational training, which—independent of whether
or not it be judged the most advantageous direction of schooling for the
Negroes—certainly comforted the whites in their beliefs about what the
Negroes were good for and where they would be held in the occupational
hierarchy.*^ Washington did not insist upon the Negroes rights, but he
wanted a measure of tolerance and some material assistance. Through
thrift, skill, and industry the Negroes were gradually to improve so much
that, at a later stage, the discussion again could be taken up concerning his
rights. This was Washington’s philosophy. To quote a typical statement
of his:
I believe the past and present teach but one lesson—to the Negro’s friends and to
the Negro himself,—that there is but one way out, that there is but one hope of
solution; and that is for the Negro in every part of America to resolve from hence-
forth that he will throw aside every non-essential and cling only to essential,—that
* See Chapter 20, Sections 6 and 7.
‘ See Chapter 41, Sections 4 and 5.
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