Works of Booker T. Washington - Booker T. Washington [220]
Blacks were solidly Republican in this period. Southern states disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites from 1890-1908 through constitutional amendments and statutes that created barriers to voter registration and voting such as poll taxes and literacy tests. More blacks continued to vote in border and northern states.
Washington worked and socialized with many white politicians and industry leaders. Much of his expertise was his ability to persuade wealthy whites to donate money to black causes. He argued that the surest way for blacks eventually to gain equal social rights was to demonstrate "patience, industry, thrift, and usefulness." This was the key to improved conditions for African Americans in the United States. Because they had only recently been granted emancipation, he believed they could not expect too much at once. Washington said, "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.
Along with W.E.B. Du Bois, he partly organized the "Negro exhibition" at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where photos, taken by his friend Frances Benjamin Johnston, of Hampton Institute's black students were displayed. The exhibition aimed at showing Afro-Americans' positive contributions to American society.
While not publicly confrontational, Washington privately contributed substantial funds for legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, such as the case of Giles v. Harris, which went before the United States Supreme Court in 1903.
Wealthy friends and benefactors
Washington's wealthy friends included Andrew Carnegie and Robert C. Ogden, seen here in 1906 while visiting Tuskegee Institute
Washington associated with the richest and most powerful businessmen and politicians of the era. He was seen as a spokesperson for African Americans and became a conduit for funding educational programs. His contacts included such diverse and well-known personages as Andrew Carnegie, William Howard Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Huttleston Rogers, Julius Rosenwald, Robert Ogden, Collis P. Huntington, and William Baldwin, who donated large sums of money to agencies such as the Jeanes and Slater Funds. As a result, countless small schools were established through his efforts, in programs that continued many years after his death. Along with rich people, black communities also helped their communities by donating time, money and labor to schools. Churches such as the Baptist and Methodist also supported black schools in both the elementary and secondary levels.
Henry Rogers
A representative case of an exceptional relationship was Washington's friendship with millionaire industrialist and financier Henry H. Rogers (1840-1909). Henry Rogers was a self-made man, who had risen from a modest working-class family to become a principal of Standard Oil, and had become one of the richest men in the United States. Around 1894, Rogers heard Washington speak at Madison Square Garden. The next day, he contacted Washington and requested a meeting, during which Washington later recounted that he was told that Rogers "was surprised that no one had 'passed the hat' after the speech." The meeting began a close relationship that was to extend over a period of 15 years. Although he and the very-private Rogers openly became visible to the public as friends, and Washington was a frequent guest at Rogers' New York office, his Fairhaven, Massachusetts summer home, and aboard his steam yacht Kanawha, the true depth and scope of their relationship was not publicly revealed until after Rogers' sudden death of an apoplectic stroke in May 1909.
Handbill from 1909 tour of southern Virginia and West Virginia.
A few weeks later, Washington went on a previously planned speaking tour along the newly