In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited his friend and prominent African-American conservative, Booker T. Washington, to dine with the Roosevelt family at the White House.
And the furor that rose up after this dinner was so intense, so relentless, so merciless that Roosevelt promised that he’d never let another African-American eat at the White House again, and no President invited an African American to dine at the White House again for the next three decades.
White Supremacists were so incensed about this dinner that Roosevelt’s people had to assure them that Booker T. Washington never used the bathroom.
Yes, they wanted to know that.
In order to downplay the event, Roosevelt’s people lied and said that it wasn’t a “dinner”, it was a lunch.
No luck.
As it turns out White Supremacists didn’t much care for the distinction.
When that didn’t work, Roosevelt’s people went further and said that Washington never actually entered the dining room, he was hungry and someone brought him a plate. When they didn’t buy that either, they changed the story again and again to the point where at the end no one would hardly admit that there was any food on his plate at all.
White Supremacists at the time believed that when you invited a man to your home to eat you were granting permission for this man to romantically pursue your daughter.
So, taking all of this to its natural conclusion, by inviting Washington over to share a meal, the President was offering Washington his own daughter.
It got so ridiculous that Roosevelt had to claim that no Roosevelt women were present during the meal.
On the front page of The Missouri Sedalia Sentinel, on October 25, 1901, a poem was published entitled “Niggers in the White House,” which ended by suggesting that either the Roosevelt’s daughter should marry Booker T. Washington or Roosevelt’s son should marry one of Washington’s relatives, because evidently in southern heritage anytime you have a meal at someone’s house you’re also being invited to sleep with their kids.
Again, who knew?
Here are the last three passages.
I see a way to settle it
Just as clear as water,
Let Mr. Booker Washington
Marry Teddy’s daughter.
Or, if this does not overflow
Teddy’s cup of joy,
Then let Miss Dinah Washington
Marry Teddy’s boy.
But everything is settled,
Roosevelt is dead;
Niggers in the White House
Cut off Teddy’s head.
Senator James K. Vardaman, of Mississippi, known as The Great White Chief, famous for saying that “If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy” this piece of work complained that the White House had been, “so saturated with the odor of nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable.”
Which is interesting because the “odor of nigger” must’ve not been so bad when Vardaman was a child being breastfed from an enslaved African woman’s breast, and when slaves cooked his meals and cleaned his home.
He must’ve just been used to it then, I guess.
Senator Benjamin Tillman, of South Carolina another great American, and apparently a whiz with numbers did the quick math in his head and said, “we shall have to kill a thousand niggers to get them back in their places.”
White Supremacists wanted a pound of flesh for this.
As far as White Supremacists were concerned, Washington was not innocent in all of this.
Washington, who was born a slave and still lived in the South, knew full well what he was doing when he accepted the invitation from the President.
After the dinner an assassin was hired by White Supremacists to travel to Tuskegee, Alabama to murder Washington.
Sadly, Washington was pursued by assassins for agreeing to have dinner in the White House with Roosevelt for the remainder of his life. He died at the age of 59 of hypertension with a blood pressure TWICE that of a normal healthy person.
I guess living with knowledge that assassins are trying to kill you will do that to a person.
That is a high price to pay for Mock Turtle Soup, Boiled Fillet of Veal, Potatoes à la Delmonico, Fried Egg Plant & Mashed Squash, Olives, Saucer Puddings and Apple Snow Crisp Cookies. Of course, depending on who you talk to, Booker T. Washington didn’t eat any of this, his plate was empty.
From Roosevelt’s perspective he saw first-hand just how vicious White Supremacists could be, even before they could troll behind the anonymity of the Internet. Roosevelt saw himself being openly criticized in ways that borderline blatant disrespect that are common today, but not at all common at the turn of the 20th century, particularly for a President of the United States. Insulting cartoons were published about him in newspapers throughout the south that no one would’ve published before, and these continued for the remainder of Roosevelt’s presidency.
In fact Edith Roosevelt was still being asked about this dinner 30 years later.
Here are the facts. Roosevelt and Washington had a meeting.
Because the meeting was going to be late in the afternoon Roosevelt suggested, “Why don’t we make it a dinner?”
That’s it.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Yes, Booker T. Washington ate at the White House with the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.
No Theodore Roosevelt didn’t ask Booker T. Washington to sleep with his kids.
I do not want you to miss the irony that all of this was happening to Booker T. Washington who was one of the most politically and socially conservative African Americans during his day.
Understand that other than being Black, which I concede is a deal breaker for them, there wasn’t much that a White Supremacist didn’t like about Booker T. Washington.
Washington advocated surrendering African American’s right to vote in exchange for allowing Blacks access to a basic education, to own their own businesses, and ensure due process within the legal system all things already guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
So the fact that they liked him politically and still hired people to murder him and talked about him like he was no better than an animal was devastating to him.
“It is my opinion,” W.E.B. Dubois said of Washington “he died a sad and disillusioned man who felt he had been betrayed by White America. I don’t know that, but I believe it. he [Washington] saw the Negro’s problem from its lowest economic level. He never really repudiated the higher ends of justice which were then denied.”
The story of Booker T. Washington is a cautionary tale, particularly for Black Conservatives who think that they can gain favor with White Supremacists by offering them their neck on a block if they promise to make it painless.
If you want to know how deals with White Supremacists are going to turn out, just look at how they honored all of their deals with Native Americans.
A non-White person can’t make a deal with a White Supremacist in good faith.
White Supremacists view themselves as having an inherent right to dominate non-Whites in every way. It is impossible to make a deal with someone who sees themselves as operating under two totally different sets of rules.
One for them and one for YOU.
So as soon as it’s no longer in their interest to honor a deal with a non-White person, they simply won’t. Period. There is no law, even ones that they draft themselves that they feel that they are bound to respect. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney used those very words in the Dred Scott case in 1853, “regarded as beings of an inferior order, altogether unfit to associate with the white race … and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Like Maya Angelo said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, an unapologetic White Supremacist was often accused by his critics of attempting to use the authority of the United States Supreme Court to, once and for all, legalize slavery throughout the United States.
But before he could finish his mission the American Civil War happened.
Taney died on October 12, 1864 at the age of 87, ironically the very same day that his home state of Maryland passed an amendment abolishing slavery.
Whether or not that killed him is a matter of debate.
President Lincoln respected him so much that Lincoln made NO public statement regarding Taney’s death.
Which is another example of how silence can say so much.
Washington did return to the White House after this, as Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington had developed an actual friendship, although Washington never again visited outside of normal business hours. Usually in the morning, after they would’ve eaten breakfast and left before anyone could accuse him of eating lunch.