V. Visible and Invisible Men: The Booker T. Washington Memorial at the
Tuskegee Institute
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Sometimes
memorials remind us of the two edged sword of an otherwise commendable and
progressive social vision. The Booker
T. Washington memorial at the Tuskegee Institute is a case in point. This section of the exhibition deals with
issues related to Booker T. Washington and post civil war racial and
sectional reconciliation. If there could
be a king of reconciliation, it would probably be Booker T. Washington. Founder of the Tuskegee Institute,
believer in the value of education, unparalleled orator, Washington was a
prominent man in late 19th century America.
His most famous oration occurred on September 18, 1895, at the Cotton
States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.
Washington addressed a largely white audience, which a feat unheard of
for blacks at the time, and spoke about how black and white Americans could
heal wounds of the Civil War.[1] |
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The Booker T.
Washington Memorial could be an excellent commemoration of this speech. It is easy to imagine the eloquent man exhorting black men to
make themselves “intellectually, morally, industrially the equal of the white
man.”[2] This brief sketch of the black leader’s
beliefs underscore his insistence that the freedmen elevate themselves. His statue at the Tuskegee Institute
therefore depicts Washington pulling the veil of ignorance from the face of a
former slave, showing him how a new world, one that ignorance previously
obscured from his view. Certainly,
this memorial is altogether fitting a man who believed in education as the
salvation of the black race. Or is it? During the aforementioned oration in Atlanta, Washington spoke about not leadership, higher learning, and intellectual pursuits for blacks, but he instead urged them to be patient and wait for progress. He derided blacks who wanted to start at the “top instead of the |
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bottom” of life by gaining political office rather than working in factories and fields. He urged whites to see African Americans as brothers, both damaged equally by the same economically devastating Civil War. They were both fingers on the same hand, socially separate yet mutual in their commitment to progress.[3] Arguably,
Washington’s position promoting African American free labor constituted an
improvement for blacks of his time over what they had known before. Yet the larger point is that memorials
tend to hide the controversial aspects of our past in favor of elements that
promise to unify the memorial’s prospective audience. In Washington’s case, future students of
the Tuskegee Institute were likely to value progress and rightly so. |
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However, Ralph Ellison saw the black condition very differently in 1947 when he published Invisible Man. Ellison’s protagonist embodies the black experience in America. Throughout the book, he is a student at a black college, a factory worker, and even an activist. Yet despite his political and intellectual awakening, the invisible man never gains recognition, respect, and confidence from the larger American society. According to this unfortunate man, “My invisibility [is not] exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact.”[4] |
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The invisible man here is obviously the black man; they are interchangeable. They are ignored, no matter how capable, and cannot be taken seriously until society itself reforms. Ellison sees no possibility for elevation through learning. These two visions of the possibilities of racial equality and reunion differ dramatically. How does the commemoration of Booker T. Washington simplify the story? What purpose might that vision of Booker T. Washington serve? |
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