In preparing to discuss in my class the contrasting ideological positions of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, I was struck by the differing attitudes towards the past both men presented, and I decided to show a little bit of D.W. Griffith's notorious Civil War/Reconstruction epic The Birth of a Nation, to offer some insight into the "southern mindset," a mindset that Washington understood more intimately than Du Bois, who was born in the north after the war's end.
In his famous Atlanta Exposition speech, Washington called for greater emphasis on opportunities for blacks in trade and industry -- at the expense of legal political enfranchisement and higher education. His belief was that in a real meritocracy, opportunities would about for the recently freed black people through the encouragement of business and labor relations that would remove prejudice. Through direct experience rather than legal mandates can racism be overcome. His characterization of the "Negro race" living in the South strikes one from our era as incredibly servile and historically naive: to the whites who must still live with newly freed people, he reminds 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
defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and
religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both
races one.
Washington's image of the slave-master relationship in the antebellum south is not unlike the picture that Griffith paints in his 1915 film. The son of a Confederate Army officer, Griffith sought to re-tell the drama of the war from the Southern point of view. Drawing from the Reverend Thomas Dixon's "historical" romance The Clansman (He was probably more familiar with Dixon's own stage adaptation than the original novel), Griffith told the tale of war and reconstruction as it affected both the nation at large and the lives of two families, close friends but on opposite sides of the war. The image of the Cameron family plantation in South Carolina is one of great repose and harmony. The slaves after all get TWO hours for dinner after working twelve! And they bow and scrape and are respectful, and the master and his son treat them all so kindly.
Washington insists that although the legal relationship has been altered -- the whites down own the blacks anymore -- the close bonds will remain, the freed blacks will not harbor resentment. But Du Bois, in his sociological classic The Souls of Black Folk, outlines the history of slave revolts dating back to colonial times. The harmony presented in Washington's speech glosses over the real tensions that had existed since the first Africans were forcibly brought to the other side of the Atlantic.
Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" also takes on an attitude that is eerily similar to those that have long been held especially in the South since before the war and long after the Civil Rights movement succeeded in the sixties to receive the legal protections that Washington said they would earn -- the key, however, is that it must be achieved through merit, not through "outside forcing." And that's been at the heart of the difference between Federalists and States' Rights activists (and all its variations) since 1787.
If the organizers of the Exposition had been "forced" to include a Negro exhibit, Washington says, they would have chafed at having to do so. But it means more that they did so out of a genuine interest rather than having to follow the rules or the law. This same logic holds in terms of civil rights and protections. It's is "better" if the South gives the rights of enfranchisement on its own terms rather than having the federal government -- and remember Reconstruction was very much an occupation of the South by the US Army -- force it upon them.
Why does Washington hold this view? He considers the actual experience of Reconstruction, claiming that many of the newly freed blacks were simply not "prepared" for full civic participation. Of course it was natural to seek full political power, but Reconstruction has not resolved all of the issues of black-white relations. Obviously the economic shock to the South -- which no longer had a supply of free labor, and also had much damage to its landscape and infrastructure during the war -- created a sense of anxiety, one that Griffith's film places squarely among the southern whites, who saw the Radical Republicans "forcing" equality upon them.
The leader of the Radical Republicans is the patriarch of the other central family in the film, Austin Stoneman, who is marked as deformed: he has a clubfoot, is often ill, and as it turns out engages in a sexual relationship with his mulatto housekeeper. (Keep in mind, this is 1915: the film is nowhere near as explicit about this affair.) In helping the Blacks gain political control of the legislation, Stoneman precipitates the chaos of "wild" black men who vote for the right to marry white women and sets the final wheels in motion for the birth of the Klan, whose purpose was to protect white femininity as much as to regain political control. The images of the corrupt and crooked black and mulatto leaders -- and their white northern associates -- were very much a part of the Southern imaginary long after the war's end, and were part of that imaginary at the time of Washington's speech.
As I said, Washington's perceptions were rooted in a history that preceded him and has still been part of our discourse today. The creation of the Constitution sought to balance the rights of individual states with the need for a strong national government to protect the new nation's borders in case England tried to re-take the former colonies (a legitimate fear in 1787). The southern states in particular wanted much more sovereignty and gained political power within the national government. How to count the slaves as part of the population to determine how many seats each state got in the House and how to calculate property taxes all had to take into account the situation in powerful slave states like Virginia (which also agreed to give up part of its land to create the District of Columbia).
As the country expanded, debate raged as to whether or not to allow the new territories and states self-determination on the slavery issue; this was a central focus of one of the most famous debates between Lincoln and Douglas. As American Apartheid was finally declared unconstitutional, the governors of southern states blocked doorways to public schools and universities to prevent black students from attending, believing that each state was sovereign on the subject of education. Much of the resistance to the Civil Rights movement came from the notion that the south was being forced into giving Blacks their full rights. "Wait," apologists for segregation kept telling Dr King, and as he rightly pointed out, "wait" often really meant "never." (That Du Bois better understood the realities of what would happen following the Atlanta Compromise than Washington has been borne out by much of American history in the first half of the 20th century.)
And the issue of States' Rights remains a major discourse in race relations and other matters. Attacks on Affirmative Action often echo the same sentiments that Washington lays out about artificial forcing. The images of chaos Griffith shows of blacks getting "free stuff" from the government and the cynical political manipulation as part of that echoes the attacks on Welfare since Reagan and echoed again in Mitt Romney's "47 percent" speech and Bill O'Reilly's observation after the election that those who voted for Barack Obama "want free stuff." In other issues, states create all kinds of rules restricting the fundamental right of choice for women as given in Roe v. Wade. We continue to debate how much government is really needed.
As a Black man stands before both houses of Congress to deliver a State of the Union address, we can see that Washington's America has changed, but Washington's ideas have not simply vanished.
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