Memorable meetings: classic White House encounters

American Visions, Feb-March, 1995 by Henry Chase

Today, Teddy Roosevelt looks down on the United States from Mount Rushmore, secure in the pantheon of America's greatest presidents. But when he became the youngest president in the country's history, after the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, he was anything but secure. At the time, Roosevelt had neither public nor party support and was by no means certain to receive the Republican nomination in 1904.

To capture that nomination, he thought it critical to win the backing of Southern Republican delegations to the national convention, delegations controlled by Mark Hanna--the man who but a year earlier had tried to prevent Roosevelt's nomination as McKinley's vice president. Vital to Roosevelt's Southern strategy was an African American who, measured against his time, wielded more influence in a white-dominated country than any black man before or since: Booker T. Washington.

A keen intelligence, pertinacity and a driving racial commitment--allied with a deference that pained him, a tactician's acute sense of the possible, and an affinity for social conservatism--had guided Washington from the dirt-floor farm kitchen of his enslaved Virginia birth to the highest reaches open to a black man in early 20th-century America. it will likely surprise most Americans today to learn that, on the very day Roosevelt assumed the presidency, he wrote to 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 together."

Washington later revealed in My Larger Education that in this meeting he encouraged the new president to appoint both black Republicans and conservative white Democrats. Washington, then the president of Tuskegee Institute, specifically suggested Thomas Jones, a former governor of Alabama, for a federal judgeship.

A few days later, the president announced Jones' selection--and received the hearty applause of Southern newspapers from Alabama to North Carolina, notwithstanding his comment that "one reason why I have appointed him is because of his attitude on the subject of lynching."

Not long thereafter, Roosevelt sought another meeting with Washington, little realizing that he was about to receive lessons both about the White House's symbolic power and about the restricted scope of a black man in white America. Simultaneously, the president also received a blow that dashed his hopes of extending Republican support in Dixie.

From its inception, the White House has functioned as far more than simply the presidential residence. With the Capitol, it is America's leading symbol--and, ironically, the most formal and conservative setting for etiquette and precedence in an informal and democratic land. It is theatrical stage and social arbiter, with the power to confer legitimacy and recognition on theretofore suspect ideas and individuals. As such, it has been a lightning rod for the nation's gradual and frequently grudging acceptance of African-American equality. And as with lightning, people have been badly burned.

When Washington returned to the capital at Roosevelt's request, he found an invitation awaiting him. It was october 16, 1901-the nation was still three days from the end of the official period of mourning for McKinley--and Washington was invited to dine with the president that evening at 8 o'clock. Although neither man paid much attention to it at the time, it was a historic occasion: the first time an African American had been entertained at the White House, as distinct from being admitted as a spokesperson or political symbol. "After dinner," My Larger Education recounts, Washington and Roosevelt "talked at length concerning plans about the South which the President had in mind."

Following the release of the White House guest list, Southern journalists based in the capital reported on the encounter with little commentary. The Memphis Commercial Appeal noted: "Washington, Oct. 16. Booker T. Washington, principal of the Negro school at Tuskegee, Ala., dined with the president this evening. ... It is understood that Washington will make a number of recommendations for appointments in the South. ... He seems to be very influential with the administration.".

This was to be the last Southern report on the meeting of the two men without extended commentary, and just about the last free of raw racial invective that shocked the North. From the Memphis Scimitar through the New Orleans Times-Democrat to South Carolina's vituperative U.S. Senator "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, the South made manifest its outrage at Roosevelt's dining in the White House with a black man. Significantly, however, there was scant objection to Washington offering the president political advice.

Even the most genteel Southern commentary was revealing. The Nashville American, for instance, calmly underscored that neither individual merit nor political constutation was at issue: "The South refuses social recognition or equality to Booker Washington not because of any hatred of him, not because of his respectability, but in spite of it. It denies him social equality because he is a negro. That is the South's reason. ... To accord social equality to negroes of Booker Washington's stamp would be a leak in the dam. it would cause other negroes to seek and demand the same recognition."