The three most constructive figures in the American civil rights movement were Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington (picture), and Martin Luther King Junior. I have intentionally left out from this list of three towering figures W. E. B. Du Bois. This has been intentional since Dubois was a communist who advocated for political power in a fashion that I do not believe helped the black community of his day.
Frederick
Douglass was a former slave who escaped to the north and developed into the
most captivating orator of his day. He was an advocate for abolishing slavery
before and during the Civil War and was very active for civil rights following
the war. Of course, people of our day recognize the name of Martin Luther King
Jr., with those of my age remembering his spellbinding deliveries of speeches
and sermons and his effectiveness as a nonviolent protester on behalf of black
civil rights and in opposition to Jim Crow laws. I well remember as a young
teenager the heartache I felt upon hearing of his assassination.
Between those two
towering figures was a man of unparalleled wisdom and discernment, also a
towering figure in his own right, but in a different way. While Booker T.
Washington was not an orator in the same vein as Frederick Douglass and Martin
Luther King Jr., he was a profoundly compelling public speaker. His
effectiveness as a speaker, as an educator, and as a builder of responsible and
accomplished men and women owed more to his incredible work ethic, his keen
insight into human nature, and his grasp of the most effective strategy to be
employed by the black community in the South in overcoming the racism and the
fear of the southern white majority.
I am sorry I came
to read this book so late in my life and ministry. I had the privilege of being
born in 1950 to a mother and father born and raised in the deep South, but who
had no detectable racial bias that I have ever perceived. My earliest memories
as a child were a vacation trip from the Indian reservation in South Dakota. My
dad taught high school for the Bureau of Indian affairs to my grandparents in Texas’s
panhandle. My mother, younger brother, and I rode in the car’s back seat while
my dad drove with one of his colleagues. That colleague was a black man sitting
on the passenger side in the front seat. Only later in life did I realize what
an unusual occurrence that was in 1955.
Living in Florida
from 1960 to 1965 meant that the civil rights movement unfolding in the deep
South was ever before me. I even remember another vacation, this time in 1963,
driving from southern Florida again to Texas’s panhandle, with my father
detouring through Selma, Alabama to show us where the Selma march had occurred
and explained to his two boys the significance of the March. My brother and I
were profoundly blessed to not only grow up in that era but to have the parents
that we had who displayed to us no detectable racial bias, ever.
I knew of Martin
Luther King Jr. from a boy. I learned of Frederick Douglass in high school. But
it was not until I was a young man that I heard of W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker
T. Washington, two men with radically opposing views about the strategy the
black community should adopt to gain equal footing after the Civil War and into
the 20th century.
This book is a
must-read for every black person. I think it is a must-read for every pastor.
This autobiography presents one of the pivotal figures in American history and
race relations for the half-century following the Civil War. Decide for
yourself if Booker T. Washington’s approach was the correct one. I have.
