Question

booker t washington has been a very controversial figure. some historians say that he was a sell-out who kissed up to white people; others say he was realistic about the situation in the south, and tried to avoid inciting white hostility. what do you think and explain why?

Answer 1

First, I consider that, in the context of the high degree of racism in force at the end of the 19th century, he was a figure of great symbolic importance. Booker was an educator and was the first black man to be received by the US president at the White House for dinner. What's more, he became the president's advisor on the racial issues that bubbled up at the time.

Obviously, Booker unleashed the anger of supremacist groups and had to deal with racism. I believe that for the time, he had a pragmatic strategy, which was to invest in the emancipation of former slaves through education and encouragement to business, entrepreneurship, etc.

What I perceive is that in his view, placing blacks in positions that would contribute to the development of the country would be an attempt to elevate the morale of this group in a society completely hierarchized by the color of the people's skin.

Answer 2

He was an educator, speaker and leader of the black American community.

Washington believed that education was the solution for the black community to ascend in the economic-social structure of the United States. He was its leader and spokesman at the national level. Although his style of non-confrontation was criticized by some he was very successful in his relationships with great philanthropists such as Anna T. Jeanes, Henry Huddleston Rogers, Julius Rosenwald and the Rockefeller family, who helped with thousands of dollars education at Hampton and Tuskegee, where he studied in his youth. They also financed hundreds of public schools for black children in the south and made donations to promote legal change on segregation and voting rights.

They nicknamed him "the great usher"