in an arena seating more than five thousand people,
which was given for the occasion by its white owner.

To one of these Louisiana audiences Mr. Washington said: "Both races
in the South suffer at the hands of public opinion by reason of the
fact that the outside world hears of our difficulties, of crimes,
mobs, and lynchings, but it does not hear of or know about the
evidences of racial friendship and good-will which exist in the
majority of communities in Louisiana and other Southern States where
black and white people live together in such large numbers. Lynchings
are widely reported by telegraph. The quiet, effective work of devoted
white people in the South for Negro uplift is not generally or widely
reported. The best white citizenship must take charge of the mob and
not have the mob take charge of civilization. There is enough wisdom,
patience, forbearance, and common sense in the South for white people
and black people to live together in peace for all time."

In short, Booker Washington met race prejudice just as he did all
other difficulties, as an obstacle to be surmounted rather than as an
injustice to be railed at and denounced regardless of the
consequences.

CHAPTER SIX

GETTING CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE

One secret of Booker Washington's leadership was that he always had
his ear to the ground and his feet on the ground. Some one has said
that "a practical idealist is a man who keeps his feet on the ground
even though his head is in the clouds." Booker Washington was that
kind of an idealist. He kept in constant and intimate touch with the
masses of his people, particularly with those on the soil. Like the
giant in the fable who doubled his strength every time he touched the
ground, Booker Washington seemed to renew his strength every time he
came in contact with the plain people of his race, particularly the
farmers. No matter how pressed and driven by multifarious affairs, he
could always find time for a rambling talk, apparently quite at
random, with an old, uneducated, ante-bellum black farmer. Sometimes
he would halt the entire business of a national convention in order to
hear the comment of some simple but shrewd old character. He had a
profound respect for the wisdom of simple people who lived at close
grips with the realities of life.

At the 1914 meeting of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee,
Okla., a Mr. Jake ----, who had started as an ignorant orphan boy,
delighted Mr.