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The Story of My Life & Work by Booker T. Washington Chapter: 20 Nat'l Negro Bus. League After advising carefully with some of the most successful colored men throughout the country, it was deemed by us that there ought to be in the United States some organization that would bring together annually the most substantial and successful colored men and women who are engaged in business and industrial enterprises, for the purpose of consultation and receiving inspiration and encouragement from each other, as well as for the purpose of arranging for the organization of local business leagues that would co-operate with the national organization. Accordingly, the, first meeting was called to meet in Boston, in August, 1900. The meeting was in session three days. The following is a copy of the call sent out for the meeting: "After careful consideration and consultation with prominent colored people throughout the country, it has been decided to organize what will be known as the National Negro Business League. "The need of an organization that will bring the colored people who are engaged in business together for consultation, and to secure information and inspiration from each other, has long been felt. Out of this national organization it is expected will grow local business leagues that will tend to improve the Negro as a business factor. "Boston has been selected as the place of meeting, because of its historic importance, its cool summer climate and general favorable condition. It is felt that the rest, recreation and new ideas which business men and women will secure from a trip to Boston will more than repay them for the time and money spent. "The date of the meeting will be Thursday and Friday, August 23rd and 24th, because it is felt that this is the season when business can be left with least loss. Then, too, nearly all the steamship lines and railroads have reduced their rates to Boston to one fare for the round trip for the entire summer. "Every individual engaged in business will be entitled to membership, but as far as possible the colored people in all the cities and towns of the country should take steps at once to organize local business leagues, where no such organizations already exist, and should see that these organizations send one or more delegates to represent them. "It is very important that every line of business that any Negro man or woman is engaged in be represented. This meeting will present a great opportunity for us to show the world what progress we have made in business lines since our freedom. "This organization is not in opposition to any other now in existence, but is expected to do a distinct work that no other organization now in existence can do as well. "Another circular, giving further information
as to programme and other details of the meeting, will be issued in a few weeks. All persons,
whether men or women, interested in the movement, are invited to correspond with
The number and character of the men and women who responded to this call was a surprise and a source of gratification to everyone. Representatives came from two-thirds of the States in the Union, the greater proportion coming from the South. Many of them had been in slavery during a large portion of their lives and had started in a most humble way, and in most cases in poverty, and had struggled up through the greatest disadvantages to the point where they could be classed in the world of commerce. They represented many of the commercial enterprises in which white men are engaged. There were among them bankers, real estate dealers, grocers, dry goods merchants, caterers, manufacturers, contractors, druggists, undertakers, bakers, restaurant keepers, barbers, printers, plumbers, milliners, dressmakers, jewelers, publishers and farmers. Perhaps the most gratifying feature in connection with the first session of the League was the entire absence of anything even bordering on bickering, greed for office, and "point of order." In fact, during the whole meeting, there was not a single point of order raised. The men and women composing the organization came together with an earnest purpose--that of doing something --something that would permanently benefit themselves and the race; and they would not permit anything to turn them aside from this purpose. While the League did not by any means underestimate the outrages inflicted upon the race, it was firmly of our opinion that one way to eventually end these outrages, would be to help make the Negro such a potent factor in the commercial and industrial enterprises of the community in which he lives that he would demand respect and confidence by reason of his usefulness. It is not the object of the League to, in any way, place mere national success above the high religious character and thorough mental culture, but to make commercial success a means to the promotion of these ends. The choice of officers for the League resulted in the following being elected: Booker T. Washington, President, Tuskegee,
Ala.; EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. T. Thomas Fortune, New York, Chairman;
Another very encouraging phase of the Boston meeting was the surprising number of highly successful men and women who appeared from different parts of the country, and who before had not been heard from. Many expressed the idea that the Business League had been long wanted and had in its power to do a work which no other organization could perform. The following editorials from various influential newspapers will give some of the value that was placed upon the Business League meeting: From The Outlook, New York City: "The Convention of the National Negro Business League, held in Boston last week, brought together upwards of a hundred delegates, representing over twenty different states. The members of the convention made an excellent impression upon the representatives of the Boston press, both by their appearance and the intellectual quality of their speeches. The League was organized upon the initiative of Booker T. Washington, and his common-sense philosophy permeated most of the addresses. Had these been made at a gathering of white leaders, they might justly be condemned as materialistic. Indeed, one of them, glorifying the 'almighty dollar' as the 'new king that has been born,' should be so condemned. But in the main the emphasis put upon the acquiring of property sprang from the desire to lift up the manhood of the Negro race; for there is a moral difference between the advocacy of money-getting to secure independence and advocacy of money-getting to secure power. Economic independence is today as much needed for the further advancement of the Negro race as was emancipation from slavery for the advance which the present generation has witnessed. Even so uncompromising an opponent of materialism as Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., recognized this and emphasized it in his address to the convention: 'The particular word I wish to leave with you,' he said, 'is this: Aim to be your own employers as speedily as possible. If you are farmers, do not rest until you control the land from which you gain your living. If you are mechanics, or traders, seek first to gain a home without a mortgage, foregoing many desirable things until you are free from debt. Independence and debt cannot long keep company. But, in the South, as in the North, possession of honestly earned property will surely bring respect and increase personal security.' Among the Negro speakers were several men who have been remarkably successful; among others, a slave of Jefferson Davis who is now mayor of his little town in Mississippi. The speeches of some of these men telling of early struggles were full of encouragement to Negroes everywhere. The fact that some Negroes have succeeded in business, as well as the fact that some have succeeded in literature and art, forces all men to distinguish between Negroes and Negroes, and opens the door of opportunity to all Negroes who aspire." From Buffalo Express: "The recent meeting of the National Negro Business League in Boston brought to public notice a new line of endeavor advocated by the leading Negroes of the country for the betterment of their race's commercial and social position. The call for the formation of the League was issued by President Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, and that it was heartily responded to by Negro business men in all parts of the country, was shown by the assembling of delegates from no less than twenty-five states. The key to the discussion during this interesting conference is to be found in the address of Prof. Booker T. Washington, who said in part: 'I have faith in the timeliness of this organization. As I have noted the conditions of our people in nearly every part of our country, I have always been encouraged by the fact that almost without exception, whether in the North or South, wherever I have seen a black man who was succeeding in business, who was a tax-payer, and who possessed intelligence and high character, that individual was treated with highest respect by the members of the white race. In proportion as we can multiply those examples North and South will our problem be solved. Let every man strive to become the most useful and indispensable man in his community. A useless, idle class is a menace and a danger. We must not in any part of our country, become discouraged, notwithstanding the way often seems dark and desolate. We must maintain faith in ourselves and in our country.' "This opens the line of work, the possibilities of which are most promising. The development of industrial life among the Negroes in the South by schools is essential to the growth of one element and is remedying the evil of idleness. The new plan goes farther and aids in developing the business instincts of the race, establishing Negroes in mercantile pursuits and in other ways making them important factors in the commercial circles of the country. Already there are many examples of the progress of the Negro in this direction. In Chicago is a large co-operative store, where groceries and meats are sold, while Philadelphia and Richmond each have a large department store conducted by Negroes. Nearly two hundred Negroes in Chicago alone are engaged in various lines of business. Still another example is found in the corporation of New Jersey of an investment and supply company in which the corporators are Negroes. This company is authorized to furnish supplies to families, establish stores, deal in real estate without limit and engage generally in commercial pursuits. It is stated in the papers that the company will carry on a portion of its business in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Wilmington, Del., and Richmond and Norfolk, Va., as well as in other places. The capitalization of this company is $75,000." From Springfield Republican: "The organization
of the National Negro Business League by the great convention at Boston, last week, was
one of the most important steps yet taken in the lifting of the Negro race to that equality proclaimed
implicitly by the Declaration of Independence and explicitly by the constitutional amendments
which followed the war. Between one and two hundred delegates were present; the South
that made the civil war for Negro slavery was well represented; New England, New York,
Pennsylvania, were now the ruling factors in this congress of men opening a new stage in the progress
of the race. They came as Americans,--and who has a better right than the Negro to that
title? A few days ago a Southern white said that the Negroes had no country, no birthright--not reflecting that he
has been given a country by arbitrament of war, and that his birthright, in
a majority of cases, was quite as clearly traceable to white ancestry as his traducer's own. But the
Negro race has been compelled to a solidarity which is rare in mixed races; the man or woman
so white that no one could guess from his hair or complexion the stain of black blood, perforce
casts in his lot with the blackest 'Afro-American'--and be it acknowledged that he does it
proudly, for the warmest advocates of the Negro race feeling are these very persons; they rightly
feel that the African descent is the more honorable.  Shoe Shop, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.  Cooking at Tuskegee Institute, Teachers' Home Kitchen. "The convention was one of such dignity and such seriousness, such clear-headed consideration of the situation--views being taken in broader horizons than those of the 'nigger' haters,--as to win respect on all sides. And it will not be strange, indeed, it is to be expected, that the effect all over the country will be of the most valuable sort. It is scarcely possible to underrate or condemn a class of people who have so evinced their equality in what the white man especially prides himself on,--the faculty of concentrated effort, the power of organization. This has been attained by the Negro under the most adverse conditions, as we know; even when he has been most favored he has been scantily helped; be has helped himself; and his small advantages he has made the most of, proving that he has the self-same spirit and purpose that has made America, and is just as much an American and as entitled to the blessings and honors of life, as a descendant of the English Puritan or the French Huguenots, the Hollanders, the Irish, the Scandinavian and the German. And when we reflect upon the motley crowds from southern Europe that have entered our country of late years, the comparison becomes absurd. "The most interesting address was that of A. I. Hillyer, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, a prominent citizen of the National capital, who has compiled and published three editions of a directory of the 'colored business men and women of Washington,' and founded, and was first president of the 'Union League' so described. Mr. Hillyer was appointed by the United States Commission to make up the figures of the Negro exhibit at the Paris exposition, and thus he spoke with knowledge. By the census of 1890 it appears that, twenty-five years after Emancipation, the race had a representative in every business listed in the census schedules. The numbers engaged and the capital invested in many branches were not imposing, but the beginning had been made. That census showed 20,020 persons of Negro descent in business. There were agents and collectors, auctioneers, bankers and brokers (114), druggists, dairymen, dry-goods dealers, grocers, hotel-keepers, liquor dealers, undertakers, officials of banks and insurance companies, journalists and publishers, builders and contractors, photographers, market-men, printers, blacksmiths, watch and clock-makers and of course, barbers. Outside of the business list over 20,000 are to be numbered: Over 1,700 barbers; next to these in numbers caterers, hotel and restaurant men. Mr. Hillyer noted a stove foundry in Tennessee, a cotton mill in North Carolina, a carriage factory in Ohio, and several brick-making plants with large capital. He mentioned four banks, one in Birmingham, Ala., one in Washington, D. C., and one in Richmond, Va. Nor is it true that the business patronage of these and other institutions is confined to the Negro. Giles B. Jackson of Richmond, who spoke concerning the Negroes as real estate owners in that region, said that when the city of Richmond was unable, because of its poverty, to keep its white schools open, it applied to all of the white banks for money in vain. Then an appeal was made to the colored bank. 'How much do you want?' was asked. The reply was, 'Fifty thousand dollars.' 'You can have a hundred thousand,' said the cashier, and this was the sum loaned. Mr. Jackson also said that one-twentieth of the real estate in Virginia is owned by the colored people. The doings of the convention have been fair, measured by the dispatches we have published. They show an undaunted spirit in the face of all discouragements and a ready hopefulness in their achievements. It was a great project to form this League, and its principal pusher, if not its originator, was Mr. Washington of Tuskegee, the great statesman of the Negro race, and not the less great because he is working without the help of the state, and directly for his people. Not, however, solely for them; for Mr. Washington knows, as all thoughtful men ought to see, that the white races are on their trial in this matter. They have to determine whether barbarism or civilization shall rule. Much for the future of the United States depends upon the wise counsel of Booker T. Washington, who is elevating his race, and also elevating the human family itself. He is fitly chosen the first President of the National Negro Business League." One of the most interesting articles about the first session of the League was contributed by Mr. Henry J. Barrymore, to the Boston Transcript. It seems quite fairly the conclusion reached by most persons who attended the session of the League: "New Orleans, New York and Akron on the one hand; the Negro business convention on the other! It is a round-about logic--but nevertheless a good one--that answers race antipathy with commercial success. Mr. J. H. Lewis got close to the root of things when he told that convention that the Negro problem was at bottom a mercantile problem; that the business world knows nothing of color, that human selfishness, the desire of every man to get money, would eventually banish prejudice. The almighty dollar is thoroughly color-blind. Money commands respect. Rare is the merchant or manufacturer who will refuse to shake hands with a hundred thousand dollars. " 'But what hope has the Negro to succeed in business?' said Mr. Lewis. 'If you can make a better article than anybody else, and sell it cheaper than anybody else, you can command the markets of the world. Produce something that somebody else wants, whether it be a shoestring or a savings bank, and the purchaser or patron will not trouble himself to ask who the seller is. This same great economic law runs through every line of industry, whether it be farming, manufacturing, mercantile or professional pursuits. Recognize this fundamental law of trade; add to it tact, good manners, a resolute will, a tireless capacity for work, and you will succeed in business. I have found in my own experience of thirty years in business, that success and its conditions lie all around us, regardless of race or color. I believe that it is possible for any man with the proper stuff in him to make a success in business wherever he may be. The best and only capital necessary to begin with is simply honesty, industry and common sense.' This is good reasoning. "It is also both practical and practicable. Results prove it. Mr. Booker T. Washington, in his travels through widely separated regions of the United States, found so many Negroes engaged in profitable commercial pursuits that he thought the time had come to put the Negro business men on terms of mutual acquaintanceship and mutual helpfulness. Then, with that rare insight which characterizes the man's really indisputable genius, he conceived a big convention, where the Negro business world should take to itself a voice that must at once impress the white man and encourage the black man. The plan worked as per specification. Newspapers saw space in it--space, and timeliness and vital human interest, with here and there a touch of the sensational. The business Negro is, therefore, getting the public notice he so genuinely deserves. It will do us all good. "For one, it did me good. I confess I went to the Parker Memorial with ill-stifled chuckles of expectant amusement. My chuckles ceased as I entered, for there was something impressive in the splendid show of bunting, something impressive, too, in the gravity of the colored audience, and something wonderfully earnest about the big banner at the back of the stage. That banner made plain, blunt use of the word Negro. So did the speakers. Racial pride is beginning to assert itself. These men have little to say of the 'colored' people or of the 'Afro-American.' They are outgrowing all that sort of affectation. They do, however, insist that the word Negro shall be written with a capital N. And why should they not? We capitalize the Indian, the Chinaman, the Filipino; shame to withhold so small an honor from the Negro! "Another confession. I looked for the tall silk hat and the flashy suit of clothes. They were there, but not among the delegates. The silly, uneducated, shiftless Negro puts his pay on his back; the business Negro puts his pay in the bank. Here were men who had penetrated the real secret of success, men who understood that the only sure basis of progress is economic, men who would sacrifice today's indulgence for to-morrow's independence, men who cared so much for social and educational advancement that they had come to despise the puerile strut and brag of the Negro dandy. "Their faces surprised me as much as their clothes. There is a certain contemptible type of Caucasian who affects an equally contemptible inability to tell one Negro from another. At the Negro convention he would have had no excuse for such downright stupidity. No white audience ever showed a more interesting variety of feature and countenance, and yet, for all that, I thought I could class those men by types--the cake-walk Negro, the old-Confederate-Colonel Negro, and the well-to-do-merchant Negro. The cake-walk Negro--round-faced, shavey-headed, black as a coal scuttle, clad in rainbow-tinted cheap finery-- came from Pleasant street. No seat on the platform for him! the old-Confederate-Colonel Negro--gray moustache and imperial, gold-bowed spectacles and somber dress--this was the man from the South. The well-to-do merchant Negro hailed from nowhere in particular, and, save for his color, was in no striking respect very different from white men of a similar rank in the world of trade. Sometimes the color was puzzling. A gentleman from Dixie was as white as I am. A handsome fellow he was, with a firm, stocky figure and beautifully chiseled features. Readers of Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt's current series in the Transcript would view that colored Southerner with a keen ethnological interest. Which reminds me: A year or so ago I took lunch in Cleveland with Mr. Chesnutt himself. That was before his books had called world-wide attention to his color. I had read his stories in the Atlantic and said: 'Tell me, Mr. Chesnutt, how did you ever come to know the Northern darkey so well?' Mr. Chesnutt replied that he had had rather unusual opportunities for observing the Northern darkey at close range. Six months later I learned I had had the pleasure of lunching with a cultured 'Negro,' and that Mr. Chesnutt had been bubbling with merriment ever since. I did not suspect it at the time. The business convention abounded with just such unrecognizable Negroes. Under the yellow glare of the evening lights it was difficult, in many cases, to tell who was white and who was 'colored.' In fact, I began to wonder whether I was white myself. "The ear was as often deceived as the eye. Had I been blind, I should have said the speakers were white Southerners. With hardly an exception, their grammar was perfect and their pronunciation excellent. I had expected some marvelous Negro malapropisms. I heard none. I came with the writer's usual hunger for 'color,' but nothing could have been more hopelessly devoid of color than the colored congress. Those black men had even to a considerable degree, the common Caucasian foibles; uniformly, when told they had only five minutes left, they consumed four minutes at least in explaining how sorry they were that there remained but five minutes; uniformly, they wasted precious time in introducing their speeches with irrelevant stories; uniformly they put themselves at altogether unnecessary pains to explain that Boston was the grandest city in North America or anywhere else. "It pleased me to see how brave the Negro could be and how patient. I waited for outbreaks of protest against white oppression, and especially against recent white cruelty. I heard none. No one 'cried baby.' The spirit of the whole occasion was distinctly hopeful. Regarding material advancement as the basis of every other sort of progress, the convention listened eagerly to every account of Negroes, once poor, who had built houses, bought land, opened places of independent business and established solid bank accounts. Repeatedly it was pointed out that men born slaves had actually become rich; also that the total material progress of the Negro race had been accomplished in only thirty-five years--a happy augury for the future! Such utterances called out tumultuous cheers, mingled with the shrill 'rebel yell' of the Southerners. Yet there was scarcely any tendency to indulge in racial self-laudation. More than once the speakers insisted that the commercial superiority of the white man must be frankly recognized and that the Negro must learn to copy the white man's methods. In general, the convention depreciated the Negro's desire to flatter the Negro. 'Far from that, let us look the conditions honestly and courageously in the face. Let us say the things that will help our people, whether those things are pleasant or otherwise.' To be sure, a good many of those beneficial deliverances were sheer platitudes, but the Negro race is in need of platitudes. It is fortunately developing a relish for platitudes. It has reached that stage of moral and intellectual evolution where it has come to realize the vital importance of plain, home-spun, brown-colored truths. It is laying the basis for its social philosophy by making sure of its axioms. "Supposably, an enormous fund of emotional dynamics was walled in and roofed over at the Negro convention. Nevertheless the convention left the impression of a deliberative council seriously at work. Somebody says the best test of the earnestness and intelligence of an audience is to see how the audience acts when a little interruption occurs. The convention was put to that test. In the midst of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison's stirring address, the fire company, stationed just across the way, responded to an alarm. There was pandemonium in the street below, but not an eye left the speaker. Just once the convention lost complete control of itself. A tall, slender youth had spoken some moments in a vein so modest that the chairman interrupted: 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'the speaker hasn't much to say for himself, so I'm going to put in a word of my own. I can't help it. That man, gentlemen --that man there was in the front of the charge at San Juan!' At that the air seemed suddenly to be composed of equally active parts of handkerchiefs, hats and hilarious cheers. The slender youth bowed acknowledgments and said his speech ought to take a military turn, but that he hesitated to say the thing he had in mind. 'It was not a pleasant thing.' "'Say it out!' yelled twenty voices. "So he said it out. He was disappointed in Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, said he, had slandered the Negro soldier; and there was really no braver soldier in the world. The Negro never flinched, never retreated. 'Why, gentlemen, way back in the old days there was a Negro in the fight. And as for what Col. Roosevelt says about Negro soldiers being dependent upon white officers, I'll tell you the truth. There wasn't any officer in control on San Juan Hill--or rather, every Negro private was a Negro captain!' "Then I knew what Stephen Crane meant by 'red yells.' But this, as I say, was an isolated instance of rampant emotionalism. The uproar was not repeated. And think what the orderly, decorous, well dressed, educated assemblage represents? Think of the change brought by thirty-five years of Negro progress--slaves, freedmen, laborers, capitalists, reformers, leaders of a struggling race, and all in scarcely more than a generation of time! Think of the millions who are still coming up, the millions who have in them the possibilities of success, the millions whom we must judge by the standards of the business convention, and not by the standards of the criminal courts. The convention, now that it has come and gone, leaves a memory of heroic hopefulness and patience, not unmingled with pathos. It was significant and altogether appropriate, that a Negro singer (on Thursday evening) should have sung the 'Recessional' with its double refrain, 'Lord God of hosts, be with us yet!'" After considering the matter carefully it was decided to make the League a permanent organization that should meet annually. The second session was held in Chicago, Illinois, August 21, 22 and 23, 1901, and was even more largely attended than was the first meeting. This meeting was made noteworthy in one respect by the result of the following telegram of congratulation from the late President of the United States: "CANTON, OHIO, August 22, 1901. "PRESIDENT BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,
"I have received your recent letter, but regret that I will be unable to accept your kind invitation to attend the meeting of the National Negro Business League, to be held in Chicago this week. Please accept for yourself and those assembled my best wishes for the advancement and prosperity of your race. "WILLIAM McKINLEY." The second meeting was free, as was the first one, from those unseemly and useless parliamentary wrangles which too often mar the character of public meetings among our people. The second meeting was composed, as was the first, of hard-headed, earnest men and women who met for a purpose and were determined that success should crown their efforts. The following programme will give some idea of the scope and character of the Chicago meeting:
Wednesday, August 21, 10 A. M.Meeting Called to Order. Invocation. Address of Welcome, on behalf of the State, Address of Welcome, on behalf of the City of Chicago, Address of Welcome, on behalf of the Colored Business Men The President's Address. Appointment of Committees, The Business League of Virginia, Business Features of the Order of True Reformers, What the Twin-City Business Association is Accomplishing, Can the Negro Succeed as a Business Man?
Evening, Session, 8 P. M.The Negro Women's Business Club of Chicago and its Achievements, . . . . . Mrs. Albreta M. Smith, Chicago, Ill. Merchandising, . . . . . Charles Banks, Clarksdale, Miss. The Grocery Business, William Oscar Murphy, Atlanta, Ga. The Hampton Building and Loan Association, Negro Business Enterprises, of Mobile,
Thursday, August 22, 10 A. M.The Drug Business, . . . . . Dr. Willis S. Sterrs, Decatur, Ala. Mistakes to be Avoided, . . . . . S. R. Scottron, Brooklyn, N. Y. Merchant Tailoring, . . . . . L. G. Wheeler, Chicago, Ill. Colored Business Women of the East,
The Game and Poultry Business, Dress-making and Millinery, Mrs. Emma L. Pitts, Macon, Ga. Representing the Kansas City Coal and Feed Company, and The
Wyandotte Drug Company, NO NIGHT SESSION.--A banquet was tendered the officers and delegates of the National Negro Business League by the citizens of Chicago, Thursday evening, August 22d, at First Regiment Armory, Sixteenth and Michigan Boulevard.
Friday, August 23, 10 A. M.Carriage Manufacturing, . . . . . F. D. Patterson, Greenfield, Ohio. Real Estate, . . . . . J. C. Napier, Nashville, Tenn. The Negro in Insurance, . . . . . W. F. Graham, Richmond, Va. The Negro as a Silk Operative, The Negro Publishing House, . . . . . R. H. Boyd, Nashville, Tenn. Catering, . . . . . C. H. Smiley, Chicago, Ill., Jno. S. Trower, Philadelphia, Pa. Report of Officers. Report of Committee,
Evening Session, 8 P. M.The Negro as a Manufacturer and Jobber, The Logic of Business Development, The Founding of a Negro City, . . . . .S. L. Davis, Hobson City, Ala. The reception tendered the members of the League by the citizens of Chicago at Armory Hall brought 2,500 of the most intelligent and cultured colored people that it has ever been my privilege to meet in any part of the country. I am sure that no one could have come in contact with those attending the reception and have sat for three days' session of the League without being convinced that the race has made tremendous progress since the days of slavery. The present officers of the National Negro Business League elected at Chicago, August 23d, are as follows: President--Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee,
Alabama; First Vice-President--Giles B. Jackson, Richmond, Virginia; Second Vice-President
--Mrs. D. R. Robinson, St. Louis, Missouri; Third Vice-President--Charles Banks, Clarksdale,
Mississippi; Recording Secretary--Edward E. Cooper; Corresponding Secretary--Emmett
J. Scott, Tuskegee, Alabama; Treasurer--Gilbert C. Harris, Boston, Massachusetts; Compiler--S.
Laing Williams, Chicago, Illinois; Registrar--P. J. Smith, Jr., Boston, Massachusetts; Executive
Committee--T. Thomas Fortune, Chairman, New York; Dr. S. B. Courtney, Boston, Mass.;
T. W. Jones, Chicago; George E. Jones, Little Rock, Ark.; N. T. Veler, Brinton, Pa.; W. L.
Taylor, Richmond, Va.; T. A. Brown, San Francisco, Cal.; J. C. Napier, Nashville, Tenn.; M. M.
Lewey, Pensacola, Fla.  Young Women at Work in the Sewing Room, Tuskegee Institute.  Girls at Tuskegee, Engaged in (Horticulture) Gardening. |
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