Booker T. Washington Quotes
In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.
Washington, Booker T. Character Building. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902, p. 138.
This statement has been described by the great American scientist Stephen J. Gould as “the most famous 19th century statement of equality made by a scientist.” Humboldt was one of the great scientists of his era and personally met with Thomas Jefferson who was a great admirer of his and who had read his works. It is somewhat ironic that the German racism of the 20th century was so ignorant of Humboldt’s views even as it lauded the great German. The famous Nazi book burning scene seen in newsreels around the world actually took place outside the library of Humboldt University in Berlin.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
