Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: From Booker T. Washington to Barack Obama

Last week marked the 107th anniversary of a symbolically important event in the history of race relations in this country. On October 16, 1901, Booker T. Washington went to the White House to have dinner with Theodore Roosevelt. It now seems like a minor footnote, a black man breaking bread with the president of the United States, but at the time the unprecedented invitation sent shock waves throughout the south. Roosevelt was not a forerunner of the civil rights movement; Georgian on his mother's side, he regarded blacks as inferior and their enfranchisement a constitutional blunder. But this asthmatic child turned muscular dynamo admired individuals who had transcended the handicaps of upbringing. Hence Washington, the self-educated former slave who founded the Tuskegee Institute, won favor in the president's social Darwinist eyes.

Politics was also at play here. According to Theodore Rex, the second volume of Edmund Morris' magisterial biography of Roosevelt, a large number of black delegates attended Republican national conventions in those days. (What a difference from the GOP in the post-Goldwater era!) Roosevelt's dominance of the party was far from secure. He had assumed office a month earlier, after the assassination of William McKinley. Sen. Mark Hanna, McKinley's right-hand man, loomed as his rival for the nomination in 1904. Washington could help Roosevelt undercut him. Amply rewarded for counseling against militancy and activism, he was the white establishment's favorite Negro. Later, in The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois would offer a pivotal critique of his accommodationist philosophy. But in 1901, no one was revered more by his own people.

Public reaction to the dinner was swift and ugly. While northern newspapers were fairly approving, those in the erstwhile Confederacy became unhinged. The n-word, Morris informs us, reappeared in editorial pages after years of disuse. Letters poured into the White House, full of bile and menace. A U.S. senator from South Carolina, fearful that blacks would now hold their heads higher, proposed a retaliatory measure: "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n****r will necessitate our killing a thousand n****rs in the South before they will learn their place again." Roosevelt got the message. A week later, at a celebration of Yale University's bicentennial attended by both men, he kept his distance from Washington. He received an honorary degree along with Mark Twain, whose opinion he solicited on the matter. The reply was disappointingly decorous. "The novelist," Morris writes, "speaking carefully, said that a President was perhaps not as free as an ordinary citizen to entertain whomever he liked."

At the Al Smith Dinner on Oct. 16, John McCain alluded to the racial dust-up. While praising Barack Obama at the end of a funny and gracious speech, he said, "There was a time when the mere invitation of an African American citizen to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. Today, it's a world away from the crude and prideful bigotry of that time. And good riddance." For a moment that night, we had a glimpse of the old McCain, the one with his dignity and self-respect still intact. He likes to call himself a "Teddy Roosevelt Republican." His tragedy is that he allowed his ambition to turn him into a Karl Rove Republican. Because of his fall from grace, however, a black man will go from being a guest at White House dinners to the host.

Comments

[Konnie]

My hope is that with an Obama presidency that all the ghosts of those slaves that built the white house, and served there will finally rest. That if a Presdient Obama heals this nation it will
send racism to the ashheap of time. That it can never be used as a wedge issue again.
That black people can have a genuine pride and someone to point out to their own black
children that if you work very hard you too can attain your dream. That ignorant white people
will relax and not be so easily goaded into fear the next time. My hope is that the media will
have to find new ways to communicate. that the pundits who were wrong will be ignored/retired
and put out to pasture after Janarury 20th. That the rightwingnuts will be marginalized and not
given the attention they crave, and only show up as jokes on late nite comedy shows.........my hope
is that a President Obama surrounds himself with the smartest and brightest - not the inside the beltway old guard that says it can only be done this way. let him make a new way.........

[Pagon]

Excellent job Ariel.

[jeanrenoir]

Obama is indeed the man to mention in the same historical breath as Booker T. Washington, because Obama is the perfect example of Washington's dream of black Americans making it in America by sheer hard work, especially studying. Martin Luther King's crusade for racial justice involved the same dedication to sheer hard work and patient application to the task at hand. And look at all he achieved! Then, along came the idiots who gave us Black Power and "Burn, baby, burn!" inciting the riots which turned the black inner city into the bombed out "moronic inferno" Bellow called it. Now, out of the "moronic inferno" of South Side Chicago which Bellow was talking about, strides a triumphant Barack Obama, the poster man for the wages of the very hard work and academic and personal discipline preached by Booker T. Washington. For almost a century, it has been fashionable to decry Washington and praise his great rival DuBois. But who has had the last laugh now? One of the greatest things about Obama's brilliant, and crushing, campaign--worthy of that other great son of Illinois, Grant--has been the way it has brought before the American TV public so very many smart, articulate, totally with it, polished, and highly educated black commentators who have, with Obama and Michelle, helped drive a stake through the heart of the old-fashioned American racist nonsense about black intellectual inferiority. They've also demolished nonsense about how being educated and sophisticated is "acting white."

[ohioan73]

I wasn't expecting this man. He blindsided me. I had heard back in 2004 of a black man with an African name who was putting his name on the ballot in the near future. I thought: "So what?" WTF is an "Obama"?

Four years later, I can hardly believe what's happened. I dont care what color he is, but damn if I dont have a hard time holding back tears everytime I hear him speak.

I cant help but to string the images of slaves, lynchings, fire hoses, and Barack Obama into a reel of silent pride that plays over and over in my mind. There is no smug. There is no gloat. Just lightness, hope, love, solidarity with ALL Americans. I have a new found reason to be a patriot.

People may argue that black people dont love America and try to pick apart what Michelle said about being proud of her country for the first time.The truth is, you cant be proud of what you perceive as a nation of hateful, racist people. When the good people wake up from their apathetic sleep like they have done, it shatters that negative image of America because you've never seen people coming together for a cause. For anti-war sentiments and civil rights we have come together but not for something so intangible as change and hope.

Bless you all.

[t9chi]

Wonderful article!

[DeSwiss]

An excellent article. It is a history with which I am familiar, as my parents made sure that this African-American kid grew up to know about his roots and his people's accomplishments. It wasn't in our school books back then. And so for that I will be forever grateful to them.

However, I have to disagree with the idea of there actually ever being an "old McCain -- one with his dignity and self-respect still intact." His overall voting record certainly cannot be used to support such an idea. And as far as I can tell, it is only the rhetoric from himself and others that is the basis for this tale of the "Maverick."

I can't escape the notion that one just can't slip on "integrity" like it was a white-tie tuxedo suit emsemble. No matter how good one might look in it, its that person's actions which truly reflect what's inside. And while we are all of us capable of making errors in judgment, I can't give McCain a pass for his continuing flagrant race-bating and divisiveness, of which he is "proud." And through his show of an obvious contempt for us and the whole country, by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate.

[spillersgirl]

Thanks Ariel -- I learned quite a bit from your piece. I love the title! Great the way you tied everything together. I'm an Alabamian, so it's always nice to see some good news about us (Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee in Alabama!) versus the constant negative memories.

[Claude203]

By taking previously obscure events of the past and linking them to thoughtful concepts that are relevant and meaningful today, you have enabled your readers to "make history now!"

Thanks!
Claude Johnson
http:/www.blackfivesblog.com

[SeanGardner]

Very, very, very good post.

Both men, Obama and McCain, have lived on the peaks and valleys ripped straight from a great Shakespearean play. And while there is a note of profound sadness in the race baiting that has characterized McCain's Campaign, there is an unshakable hope and enthusiasm that springs from Obama's incredibly disciplined campaign.

Provided that Obama makes it (and I have every reason to believe he will), race and ethnicity will be a serious conversation in this country. Not just because the president will be an African-American, but because America is so much more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial that it was in Roosevelt and Washington's day.

Obama, who has the most diverse campaign staff in presidential history, will likely also have the most diverse White House Administration in history: whites, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Native-Americans, African-Americans - all "qualified, action-oriented, and visionary". In fact, if Obama has chances to fill say, 3 seats on the Supreme Court, I fully expect him to name a Latino and an Asian-American to the High Court. This is America, and its about time an institution as life-changing as The Supreme Court have members that not only reflect our diversity from a visual standpoint, but also from a qualitative standpoint.

I just can't wait to see how Obama does it.