We continue our on air Mosiah Sessions (to complement the community sessions (www.alkebulan.org/mosiah) with a re-examination of the legacy of the man whose message of self-reliance, as outlined in his autobiography Up From Slavery, inspired The Most Eminent Prophet and King, His Excellency Marcus Mosiah Garvey to travel from Jamaica to the USA to meet him. That meeting never took place as Baba Booker T died some months before Papa Garvey arrived. The irony is that although Marcus Mosiah Garvey, through his Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League of the World (UNIA-ACL), applied the inspiration to magnificent effect, many historians and commentators (particularly left wing ones) largely dismiss Washington as an accommodationist sell-out.Born an enslaved Afrikan in 1856, in 1881 he became the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers housed in a single room in Alabama. Under his leadership, the school acquired land and the students set about constructing new school buildings which grew into the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute becoming the leading teaching college of its time offering lessons in a range of practical and industrial subjects. He achieved national fame (and a not insignificant amount of notoriety) as a result of his speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895. Appealing to the mainly white audience for support Washington assured them: “As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours.” While in the area of social activism he offered this counsel for the Afrikan community: “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”
Of the three primary effects of the speech, the first was that white philanthropists donated millions of dollars to Washington’s cause allowing him to establish several thousand schools across the southern states of the USA. Secondly the white establishment promoted him as the“Negro leader.” But thirdly, activists like William Monroe Trotter and WEB Du Bois (although the latter initially supported him) regarded him as a “traitor” for encouraging not to be politically engaged and referred to the speech as the “Atlanta Compromise,” a term that persists to the present. However, what wasn’t widely known until Washington’s private letters were released many years later was that he secretly funded many political campaigns of the day, especially around lynching. It could be argued that Booker T was merely flattering to deceive, in order to get funding he required. Moreover, the late grandmaster teacher Baba John Henrik Clarke articulated this appraisal of Baba Washington’s legacy: “What Booker T was training for at Tuskeegee, a point we miss then and now, was nation management.”
Just two generations out of formal slavery, Booker T Washington sought to repair the damage of that “peculiar institution” through the patronage of white money to build an Afrikan infrastructure, while privately agitating for Afrikan political causes (although publicly disavowing them). Perhaps he also took into account the legacy of post-civil war reconstruction (1863-1877) that saw Afrikans politically enfranchised only for a white backlash through Jim Crow laws see it snatched away. The Garvey Movement effectively took it a stage further by eschewing white philanthropy and emphasizing self-reliance in form and essence.
Possible lessons for today’s Reparations Movement are that while skilful engagement with white society can yield results, this can only really be effective within the framework of a nation building agenda. This is a point asserted by Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka as far back as 1997 in a message at the Alkebu-Lan Family Forum entitled How Long Shall They Kill Our Prophets… The Apologise? Reparations Now:“ If we are ever to get reparations we have to have the power to enforce upon our oppressors. We’re not going to march our way to reparations, they have no conscience. Morality is valid, where the listener has a conscience. He has shown he has no conscience. We know he has no conscience because not only has he not offered to repair the damage, he’s still doing the damage. And of course power will only be obtained through the framework of nationalist Pan-Afrikanism.”
So we ask the question,
Is Booker T Washington an unsung Reparations Activist?
- Was Booker T Washington a “compromised” sellout or did he make an important contribution to Afrikan life?
- Should we seek funding from white philanthropists?
- What can today’s Reaprations Movement learn from Booker T Washington’s example?
- How will a nation building agenda be established?
Our special guests are:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and UNIA-ACL Ambassador for the UK. A veteran activist of over 30 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An Africentric Guide To Excellence.
Bro. Olatunji Heru: Veteran activist and commentator. Bro. Olatunji is the editor-in-chief ofThe Whirlwind newspaper and producer of Afrika Speaks with Alkebu-Lan.
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