... as a result of Robert J. Norrell's new biography of the once-admired, now-maligned Tuskegee founder. In the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley writes that he's reappraised his view of Washington:
[...]
As one who came of age in 1960, who shared the movement's impatience for change, and who greatly admired Vann Woodward's work, I reflexively accepted the received opinion of Washington. Norrell persuades me that I was wrong. He has granted Washington what Du Bois, Woodward and so many others have willfully denied him: He sees Washington in the context of his own times and declines to judge him by the ostensibly more enlightened moral assumptions of our own. Certainly, Washington was not a perfect man; his fascination with politics led him into alliances and commitments of questionable value to his cause, and at times his willingness to curry the favor of whites led him into embarrassing self-abnegation. But he was the great African American leader of the day, a man who gave inspiration and hope to millions and played no small role in altering white perceptions of blacks, a remarkable accomplishment at what may have been the worst time for blacks in American history.
And in the Wall Street Journal, out today, a new piece on "The Wizard of Tuskegee":
For more on the motivation behind this trend toward reassessment of Washington's "place in the pantheon," see our post "100 Years Before President Obama," which explains the context and reprints the Prologue from Norrell's book in an effort to show why now is the time to take another look at a figure whose proper significance evades us to this day.
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Booker T. Washington's first home as a free person, in Malden, West Virginia. Photo by Frank Beard; from Booker T. Washington, The Story of My Life and Work (Atlanta: J. L. Nichols, 1901).
