the white press
throughout the South rang with his praises for days and weeks after
the sensationally enthusiastic reception of his speech at the
exposition should not be accepted as a desirable endorsement of the
new leader by at least a few of his own people.

A more or less conspicuous colored preacher summed up this slight
undertow of dissent when he said: "I want to pay my respects next to a
colored man. He is a great man, too, but he isn't our Moses, as the
white people are pleased to call him. I allude to Booker T.
Washington. He has been with the white people so long that he has
learned to throw sop with the rest. He made a speech at Atlanta the
other day, and the newspapers of all the large cities praised it and
called it the greatest speech ever delivered by a colored man. When I
heard that, I said: 'There must be something wrong with it, or the
white people would not be praising it so.' I got the speech and read
it. Then I said, 'Ah, here it is,' and I read his words, 'the colored
people do not want social equality.' (This man's interpretation of
this sentence in the speech, "The wisest among my race understand that
the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly,
and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will
come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather
than of artificial forcing.") I tell you that is a lie. We do want
social equality. Why, don't you want your manhood recognized? Then Mr.
Washington said that our emancipation and enfranchisement were
untimely and a mistake; that we were not ready for it. (Naturally, Mr.
Washington said no such thing.) What did he say that for but to tickle
the palates of the white people? Oh, yes, he was shrewd. He will get
many hundreds of dollars for his school by it."

Let it not be thought that this attitude represented any large or
important body of opinion among the Negroes. The great majority both
of the leaders and the rank and file enthusiastically accepted both
the new leader and his new kind of leadership. The small minority,
however, holding the view of the preacher quoted, continued to cause
Booker Washington some annoyance, which, although continuously
lessening, persisted in some degree throughout his life. This
numerically small and individually unimportant element of the Negroes
in America would hardly warrant even passing mention except that the
always carping and sometimes bitter criticism