Can't seem to shake this notion of an "Uncle Tom." I came across this review of a collection of essays entitled Uncle Tom or New Negro: African Americans Reflect on Booker T. Washington and 100 Years Later at the American Heritage website. I remember enjoying Up From Slavery very much the first time I read it years ago, as I thought it was incredible the way Washington was able to build a school at Tuskegee literally from the ground up with the students making their own bricks because of the high price charged by local contractors. Quite a metaphor in that one.
It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
Also interesting. Maybe a subscription to the new/old American Heritage is in order, too.
ReplyDeleteHis metaphor about the fingers and the hand actually remind me of Lincoln's words.
Washington's accomplishments were incredible, but he lost the PR war. Doubt he can ever be rehabilitated.
ReplyDeleteThat he was able to get money for Tuskegee college was a major feat (not fete as I first spelled it -- although I'm sure it was that, too). And those HBCUs have endured and prospered -- I would assume that's a tribute to him.
ReplyDeleteHere is a very thoughtful, and I might add guarded, critique of Booker T. Washington by W.E.B. DuBois,
ReplyDeletehttp://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/40/
It would seem that DuBois viewed Washington as an "Old Negro."