III

Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!
* * * * * * * * *
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

BYRON.

Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American
Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Wash-
ington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals
were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial devel-
opment was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation over-
took the freedmen's sons,--then it was that his leading began.
Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite programme, at
the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed
of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was
concentrating its energies on Dollars. His programme of in-
dustrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission
and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly
original; the Free Negroes from 1830 up to war-time had
striven to build industrial schools, and the American Mission-
ary Association had from the first taught various trades; and