Booker T. Washington Papers Volume 12

About the Book

From September 1912 through March 1914, Washington continued his heavy schedule of speaking, fund-raising, race leadership, and close supervision of Tuskegee Institute. Although the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency led to the dismantling of the Tuskegee Machine's political arm, Washington remained a prominent figure in the political arena. During this period, however, freed from the constraints he had felt as presidential adviser, he became more openly critical of racial injustice. His most sweeping and direct attack appeared in "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?" published in The Century a few days after Wilson's election. In this article he criticized the continuing existence of job discrimination in the North, and of Jim Crow transportation and poor education opportunities in the South. Washington continued to advocate economic and educational means for black advancement, persuading the Phelps-Stokes Fund to finance a study of black secondary and higher education and creating in 1912 the Tuskegee Five Year Fund. Despite the changing times and gradual decline in his personal vigor, Washington's actions hardly suggested the little time he had left to live.