Booker T. Washington Reconsidered

My former colleague Robert J. Norrell has written a thoughtful piece on Booker T. Washington for the Heartland Institute.

Norrell's book Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee also has many new things to say about the Wizard of Tuskegee. Norrell persuasively argues that Washington's self-help strategy helped to set the stage for later civil rights protests in Tuskegee.

More specifically, Norrell asserts that Washington's careful nurturing of a black middle class served to create the necessary leadership base for civil rights activism to flourish in the post World War II period. I often assign this book in my courses. It is not only well-written but offers one of the best challenge to the conventional wisdom in the field.

On closer examination, a good case can be made that Washington has a better claim than DuBois to be considered as the father of the modern civil rights movement.