Slavery by Another Name (33 page)

exponential y expanding business, industrial, and banking sectors

whose fortunes had made families such as Roosevelt's richer than

most Americans could begin to imagine.

Washington's approach appealed to Roosevelt, though, only

because the new president was unwil ing to confront the realities of

southern whites’ venom toward any African American seeking

social or political equality. Roosevelt's father was an ardent Lincoln

Republican, but his mother was born to a slaveholding family in

Roswel , Georgia, not far from Atlanta. President Roosevelt was

drawn to a view of the Civil War that emphasized the valor of both

sides, rather than the evils of whites such as his mother's family in

perpetuating slavery. Gradual change, during which no one was

forced to ful y acknowledge past cruelties to blacks, made sense to

Roosevelt. "I am con dent the South is changing," Roosevelt wrote

in a postscript to a let er to Washington in 1901.6 Roosevelt's

approach to the status of African Americans, fundamental y

acceding to the inferiority of African Americans and anticipating no

signi cant ful integration into U.S. society, would be the

conventional wisdom shared for the next six decades by the vast

majority of white Americans who considered themselves

"progressive" on race.

"I so cordial y sympathize," Roosevelt wrote, with Washington's

"purpose of t ing the Colored man to shift for himself and

establishing a healthy relation between the colored man and the

White man who lives in the same states."7 Roosevelt was thril ed

with Washington's best-sel ing autobiography, Up from Slavery,

when it appeared in 1901, with the message that quiet

perseverance and humility—rather than anger against his slave birth

—had been the keys to the author's success. Roosevelt wrote

Washington: "I do not want to at er you too much …[but] … I do

Washington: "I do not want to at er you too much …[but] … I do

not know who could take your place in the work you are doing."8

Washington's theories also corresponded to Roosevelt's benign but

seminal racism. Principles of fair play told Roosevelt that nothing

should inhibit the individuals in any group who have the ability to

achieve great success. The extraordinary achievements of black men

such as Washington were dramatic proof of this to Roosevelt. But at

the same time, Roosevelt believed that, col ectively, no one should

or reasonably could deny the obvious racial superiority of whites

over al others. Indeed, Roosevelt ultimately took the view that

even when whites most gravely abused the world's darker-skinned

races—as in the African slaving trade, the removal of native

populations in the Americas, and his own brutal suppression while

in the White House of the Philippine Islands—that the outcome was

overwhelmingly good. "The expansion of the peoples of white, or

European, blood during the past four centuries …has been fraught

with lasting bene t to most of the peoples already dwel ing in the

lands over which the expansion took place," Roosevelt said in

remarks to a group of white missionaries during his second term as

president.9

But even as the southern states used similar logic to justify the

elimination of black participation in general elections, the

Republican Party—the party of emancipation—was not yet able to

do the same. Delegations of African Americans from the southern

states—even though they could cast no more than the most scant

votes in the general elections—remained ful - edged and

prominent players in the national conventions of the Republican

Party. (Not until after 1912 would Republicans succumb and al ow

African Americans to be tossed from the party organizations of the

South.) Roosevelt turned to Booker T Washington to build his base

among black southern Republicans.

Before the day of his inauguration was over, Roosevelt had

writ en Washington to cancel his visit to Tuskegee and implore the

black leader to visit him quickly in Washington. "I must see you as

black leader to visit him quickly in Washington. "I must see you as

soon as possible. I want to talk over the question of possible future

appointments in the south exactly on the lines of our last

conversation," Roosevelt wrote.10 Washington made immediate

arrangements to see the new president.

Less than three weeks later, U.S. District Court Judge John Bruce,

the longtime federal jurist who presided over much of central

Alabama, died. Roosevelt and Washington were presented with a

serendipitous opportunity. The judgeship in Alabama could be an

early demonstration of Roosevelt's wil ingness to reward a

progressive southern white leader with an important position—

regardless of his party a liation. The policy left the smal number

of white Republicans who had hung on in the South—many of

whom continued to be viewed by other southerners as radical

carpetbagger al ies left over from the Reconstruction era—in the

cold. However, Roosevelt insisted that his cross-party appointments

go to Democrats who expressed opposition to lynching and support

for at least minimal citizenship rights for African Americans—and

most important that they had not actively supported Wil iam

Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee for president in the 1900

election.

Washington immediately recommended to Roosevelt that he

appoint as successor the state's former governor, Thomas Goode

Jones,11 the political gure about whom John W. Pace and Fletch

Turner had so vigorously faced o during Alabama's political

warfare a decade earlier.

On the surface, it was paradoxical that Washington became the

champion of former governor Jones, a Confederate veteran who

served under Thomas J. "Stonewal " Jackson and Brig. Gen. John B.

Gordon, and who was present at Lee's surrender to Grant at

Appomat ox. He was reputed to have carried the white ag of

southern surrender. Jones's successful gubernatorial bids in 1890

and 1892 were based primarily on the interests of wealthy white

plantation owners—men who abused African American laborers on

a greater scale than any other whites. During those campaigns he

a greater scale than any other whites. During those campaigns he

was a vocal critic of black political power. Nonetheless, Jones was

also the cynical y wil ing bene ciary of his faction's reliance on

coerced or falsified votes cast in those years by thousands of blacks.

Yet Washington and Jones had been secret al ies for years—even

as Jones was manipulating black votes in the 1890s.12 It is also

possible that as a result of Washington's secret in uence, some of

the thousands of Jones votes cast by blacks and long assumed by

historians to be fraudulent, were in fact legitimate.

But Washington knew that as an o cer in the state militia in

1883, Jones also had cal ed out troops to prevent a lynching. He

had spoken publicly on many occasions of the importance of

respecting other new rights granted to freed slaves by the

amendments to the U.S. Constitution passed in the 1870s. As

governor, he blocked e orts to divert funds for black schools to

white ones. At the same time, Jones maintained his base of support

with the state's business elite by cal ing out troops to suppress a

major strike by newly unionized miners in the 1890s.

Over the years, Jones appeared to have moderated even further

on race. More recently, he had been a delegate to the just

completed 1901 Alabama constitutional convention. The document

agreed to at the meeting and later rati ed, which would govern

Alabama for the duration of the twentieth century and into the

twenty- rst, nal y eliminated virtual y al vestiges of the electoral

and civil rights given to blacks after emancipation. But Jones de ed

the political winds of the day, vigorously pushing for one of the few

measures approved that bene ted blacks, a law al owing for

impeachment of any sheri who al owed a prisoner to be seized by

a lynch mob. Jones also opposed e orts to eliminate al black

voting and to require that public schools for African American

children be funded only with those taxes col ected from blacks.

Jones quietly strategized with Washington throughout the

convention, consistently engaged in a tone of equals, addressing the

black leader with the honorific "Dear Sir."13

On the day after Judge Bruce's death, and only two weeks after

On the day after Judge Bruce's death, and only two weeks after

Roosevelt had been sworn in as president, Washington sent a let er

through an aide imploring the new chief executive to name Jones

as the new federal judge in Alabama. "He stood up in the

constitutional convention and elsewhere for a fair election law,

opposed lynching, and has been outspoken for the education of

both races," Washington wrote. "He is head and shoulders above any

of the other persons who I think wil apply to you," Washington

wrote to Roosevelt on October 2, 1901.14

Roosevelt took the advice and appointed Judge Jones less than a

week later. The decision elicited the e ect Roosevelt hoped for.

Many southern whites were impressed by the president's

wil ingness to turn to one of their "best men" for a critical federal

position, despite Jones being a prominent Democrat. Newspapers

in the region hailed the move.

Ten days after the appointment, the president was informed that

Washington was in the capital city. He insisted that the black

educator come to a private dinner at the White House with the

Roosevelt family. It was a dizzying sequence of events for

Washington and other African Americans who shared his belief that

accommodating discrimination while incremental y working to

reverse it was the best route to black freedom. Here was proof, it

seemed. Regardless of the struggles stil faced by the majority of

slave descendants, black men of accomplishment could rise to

unprecedented levels of influence.

Blacks had visited the White House before, and prior presidents

had sought the advice of black men. But never had a black man

appeared to be among the very most in uential gures in a

president's execution of so critical a task as selecting federal of icials

in an entire region. Yet more astonishing was that the white

president who had taken his advice won accolades for the resulting

decision. Black men could not be the leaders of whites in this

regime, but they could quietly wield great in uence as to who the

rulers would be. Now, the president wished his African American

counselor to openly sup with himself, his wife, and his children—

making no ef ort to conceal the event or minimize its significance.

making no ef ort to conceal the event or minimize its significance.

Roosevelt had no hint of the reaction that would ensue.

Notwithstanding Washington's national fame and his widely known

view that blacks should in most regards accept their legal y inferior

position in the South, word that "a Negro" had dined at the same

table as the president, his wife, and his children—violating one of

the most sacrosanct protocols of southern racial custom—provoked

a sensational backlash.

U.S. senator Ben "Pitchfork" Til man of South Carolina sput ered:

"Now that Roosevelt has eaten with that nigger Washington, we

shal have to kil a thousand niggers to get them back to their

places." The Memphis Press Scimitar cal ed the evening meal "the

most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any

citizen of the United States." The Rich-mond News declared that

Roosevelt "at one stroke and by one act has destroyed regard for

him. He has put himself further from us than any man who has ever

been in the White House." The governor of Georgia, Al en Candler,

said, "No southerner can respect any white man who would eat

with a negro."15

Laced throughout the vili cations was the implicit or explicit

message that Roosevelt's decision to al ow Washington to share his

personal dining room amounted to an endorsement of sexual

relations—and predations— between black men and white women.

"It is simply a question of whether those who are invited to dine are

t to marry the sisters and daughters of their hosts," said Governor