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title: "Booker T. Washington’s Challenge for Egyptology: African-Centered Research in the Nile Valley"
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authors: ["vanessadavies.md"]
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abstract: "In 1909, Egyptologist James Henry Breasted sent a letter to Booker T.
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Washington, along with a copy of an article Breasted had recently
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published in *The Biblical World*. To fully understand the short
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correspondence between the two scholars, this article delves into three
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related topics: Washington's philosophy of industrial education and its
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complementarity with the educational program of his contemporary W. E.
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B. Du Bois; Washington's prominent standing in educational, political,
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and social circles, including his professional relationship with the
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president of the University of Chicago William Rainey Harper and his
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advisory role to US president Theodore Roosevelt; and Breasted's
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perspective on race and Egyptology. Washington, unlike Breasted,
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considered connections between ancient Nile Valley cultures and cultures
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elsewhere in Africa, a point of inquiry that has recently gained
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momentum in a variety of fields. In the correspondence between
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Washington and Breasted, we see demonstrations of precarity and
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privilege as related to scientific research, an imbalance seen also in
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the infamous syphilis study carried out at Tuskegee. This article points
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out the continued need to interrogate benefit by asking who constructs
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research questions and whom does research benefit."
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keywords: ["Booker T. Washington", "James Henry Breasted", "W. E. B. Du Bois", "William Rainey Harper", "Theodore Roosevelt", "Egyptology", "ancient Nile Valley cultures", "Africa"]
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---
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In her autobiography, Mary Church Terrell recounts an event that filled
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her with such pride, she felt as though she "had grown an inch
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taller."[^1] In 1902, Prince Henry of Prussia, the grandson of Queen
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Victoria, visited the United States. Mary and Booker T. Washington were
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among the attendees at a reception held for the prince at the Waldorf
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Astoria hotel in New York City. During the event, the Prince asked to
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speak with Washington, and by all accounts, the encounter was a great
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success. The man who hosted the prince on behalf of US President
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Theodore Roosevelt described it in this way: "The ease with which
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Washington conducted himself was very striking. \[...\] Indeed, Booker
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Washington's manner was easier than that of almost any other man I saw
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meet the Prince in this country."[^2] Mary Church Terrell viewed the
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meeting similarly.
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Terrell was a social activist, working with Ida Wells on anti-lynching
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campaigns and collaborating with others to found the National
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Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National
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Association of Colored Women. What made her feel an inch taller was her
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reflection on their morning with the prince and Washington's subsequent
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lunch hosted by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. "Thus did an ex-slave
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\[Washington\] and one of his friends touch elbows and clasp hands with
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royalty, as represented by a monarchical government of Europe, and sit
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at the table of royalty, as represented by Republican America."[^3]
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Terrell's description of Washington fits well with the events of the
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following pages. He regularly interacted with ease with heads of state,
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for example, US president Theodore Roosevelt, and with other educational
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leaders, such as the first president of the University of Chicago,
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William Rainey Harper. In a brief exchange, Washington applied the same
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expert communication skills to a conversation about ancient Nubia with
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the US Egyptologist, James Henry Breasted.
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This article outlines in broad strokes Booker T. Washington's
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perspectives on education, which were shaped by his own educational
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experiences and the particular needs of the students who attended
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Tuskegee Institute, which he ran from 1881 until his death in 1915. His
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program of industrial education has often been distinguished from the
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liberal arts style of education championed by his contemporary W. E. B.
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Du Bois. In the following pages, we will see that their approaches were
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complementary, not contradictory, means of adapting and maneuvering
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within a system that was riddled with obstacles designed to hinder their
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students' success. Washington's awareness of an obstacle-ridden system
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is clear in his correspondence with Breasted who explicitly isolates
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Washington from the ancient Egyptian culture. But that was of no
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significance to Washington who, with his focus on industrial education,
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was uninterested in Breasted's esoteric considerations of ancient Nile
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Valley cultures and who, in any case, viewed the ancient Egyptians as
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unjust persecutors. The research questions that interested Booker T.
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Washington were not those that interested most Egyptologists at that
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time, although they are increasingly of interest today to scholars,
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particularly in fields adjacent to Egyptology.
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Washington found no benefit in Egyptological research for African
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descended people in the US. Nonetheless, this article points out a
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lesson drawn from his approach that is particularly urgent for our
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contemporary world. Scientific research has offered great benefits and
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also great pain and injustice, as clearly demonstrated in the
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decades-long syphilis study centered at Tuskegee that is now recognized
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as a textbook case of medical racism. Yet despite such unethical
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practices, we do not abandon scientific inquiry. Just as Washington
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weighed the benefits of Egyptology, we must interrogate the purposes and
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benefits of research questions to recognize when seemingly worthwhile
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studies actually result in harm.
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# Industrial and Liberal Arts Education
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At the turn of the century in the United States, there was discussion in
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African American communities as to the best type of education that
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should be provided for African Americans. At a very basic level, the two
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sides of the dispute advocated either for industrial education or
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book-based learning. The two people often positioned as the figureheads
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advocating for each perspective were Booker T. Washington and W. E. B.
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Du Bois, although their points of view were not as diametrically opposed
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to one another as they are sometimes presented.
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Booker T. Washington was born in Virginia to an enslaved woman named
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Jane who, after emancipation, took him and her other two children to
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live with her husband in West Virginia.[^4] They lived in extreme
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poverty, and immediately he and his older brother worked in physically
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arduous conditions to help their stepfather provide for the family. When
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neighboring families chipped in to pay a teacher to instruct members of
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the community, he continued to work during the day and completed his
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schoolwork at nighttime.[^5] From such inauspicious beginnings,
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Washington was able to secure a college education for himself, and by
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his mid-twenties, he was appointed to lead a new school that would train
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African American teachers, what is today Tuskegee University in Alabama.
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Washington framed the particular advantage of industrial education over
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so-called book learning in terms of its positive impact on the lives of
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White people. As he described it in a 1903 article in *The Atlantic*,
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Black professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, and ministers, primarily
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served Black communities, but Black people trained in trades and
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business pursuits could serve both Black and White communities.
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> There was general appreciation of the fact that the industrial
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> education of the black people had direct, vital, and practical bearing
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> upon the life of each white family in the South; while there was no
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> such appreciation of the results of mere literary training. \[...\]
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> The minute it was seen that through industrial education the Negro
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> youth was not only studying chemistry, but also how to apply the
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> knowledge of chemistry to the enrichment of the soil, or to cooking,
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> or to dairying, and that the student was being taught not only
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> geometry and physics, but their application to blacksmithing,
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> brickmaking, farming, and what not, then there began to appear for the
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> first time a common bond between the two races and coöperation between
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> North and South.[^6]
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Du Bois, on the other hand, felt that higher education should not be
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focused on teaching the skills necessary to earn a living, but should
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shape students into people by teaching them how to think.
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> Teach the workers to work and the thinkers to think. \[\...\] And the
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> final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a
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> brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad,
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> pure, and inspiring ends of living,---not sordid money-getting.[^7]
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Although it may seem as though differences in educational philosophy
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separate these men's views, in fact each also supported the other's
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vision. In 1902, Washington wrote about the goal of education in a way
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that sounds similar to Du Bois's view, that education makes human
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beings: "The end of all education, whether of head or hand or heart, is
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to make an individual good, to make him useful, to make him powerful; is
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to give him goodness, usefulness and power in order that he may exert a
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helpful influence upon his fellows."[^8] In December of the following
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year, Du Bois gave a lecture in Baltimore where he expressed his
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approval for industrial training as long as it did not threaten
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book-based learning: "A propaganda for industrial training is in itself
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a splendid and timely thing to which all intelligent men cry God speed.
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\[...\] But when it is coupled by sneers at Negro colleges whose work
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made industrial schools possible \[...\] then it becomes a movement you
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must choke to death or it will choke you."[^9] Washington and Du Bois
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appreciated the value in the other's perspective, but their strategies
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emphasized a different best path forward.
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Washington and Du Bois formulated educational methodologies within
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systems that were not set up to benefit their targeted groups of
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students: people of color in the racially segregated United States. Each
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educator found ways to maneuver within that system, to carve out a space
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where their methodology might be successful without threatening the
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dominant (White) systems. Washington articulated his position in a
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speech he gave in Atlanta in 1906. He knew that people of color
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attaining education, wealth, and civil rights were seen by many White
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people as a threat to their own wealth and rights. Washington sought to
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allay those fears by assuring his audience that people of color had "no
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ambition to mingle socially with the white race. \[...\] \[or\] dominate
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the white man in political matters."[^10] Washington's separatist vision
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was at odds with Du Bois's vision of integration and was less
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challenging to White people who were wary of losing their own status in
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awarding social gains to people of color.[^11]
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Mary Church Terrell took a stance in the middle ground of this debate.
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She was born to a couple who had been formerly enslaved but achieved
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great financial success through their business ventures and were able to
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provide her with elite schooling. As an African American woman with a
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master's degree in ancient Greek and Roman cultures from Oberlin
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College, she had experienced and benefitted from a liberal arts
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education.[^12] She also had great respect for the type of education
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that Washington facilitated through Tuskegee. Her concern was that
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Washington promoted that education to the exclusion of other types of
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education.
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> I was known as a disciple of the higher education, but I never failed
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> to put myself on record as advocating industrial training also.
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>
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> After I had seen Tuskegee with my own eyes I had a higher regard and a
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> greater admiration for its founder than I had ever entertained before.
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> \[...\] From that day forth, whenever these friends tried to engage me
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> in conversation about Tuskegee who knew that 'way down deep in my
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> heart I was a stickler for the higher education, and that if it came
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> to a show down I would always vote on that side, I would simply say,
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> "Have you seen Tuskegee? Have you been there? If you have not seen it
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> for yourself, I will not discuss it with you till you do."[^13]
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Washington saw his system of industrial education as the way to prepare
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African Americans to participate in the economic systems in the United
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States from which they had been excluded for so long.[^14]
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A key to understanding the differing educational views of Du Bois and
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Washington rests in their own family situations and educational
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experiences, as well as the experiences of the students whom each
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envisioned they would be serving. As mentioned earlier, Washington's
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schooldays in West Virginia mostly consisted of him doing the schoolwork
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at night after a difficult day's work at the salt furnace or in the coal
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mines of West Virginia.[^15] With a bit of support from members of his
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community, who gave a few cents here and a few cents there, he set out
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walking, hitchhiking, and working to pay for food until he reached
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Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), where he continued to work
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to pay tuition.[^16] After completing that program and more schooling at
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Wayland Seminary (now Virginia Union University), Washington was hired
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in 1881, at about the age of twenty-five, to be the first leader of
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Tuskegee Normal (Teachers') and Industrial Institute in Alabama.
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Du Bois was born and raised in a predominantly White town in
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Massachusetts. His tuition at Fisk University in Nashville was provided
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for him through donations from a number of Congregationalist churches,
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and scholarships largely paid his way through Harvard University.[^17]
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As he later described it, the aid came him almost effortlessly, "I
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needed money; scholarships and prizes fell into my lap."[^18] With those
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experiences, as well as a stint abroad at the University of Berlin, Du
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Bois greatly benefitted from book-based learning, and he believed it
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provided the best educational tools for the next generation. He famously
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quarreled with Egyptologist Flinders Petrie because Petrie not only did
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not see the merits of book-based learning for modern Egyptians, he
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inexplicably felt it would harm them.[^19] Du Bois countered Western
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colonial attitudes in his engagement with Petrie and in his many
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publications that centered the Africanity of ancient Nile Valley
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cultures. Like Du Bois, Washington was aware of White and
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Western-centric views of antiquity. But he did not devote his energies
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to resisting such claims because Egyptology was completely irrelevant to
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his educational program.
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Because of his educational experiences, Du Bois was familiar with the
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types of students who had access to elite educations. As Washington
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describes the students at Tuskegee, they were a world away from the
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students who attended Fisk and Harvard.
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> The students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities
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> for lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies.
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> \[\...\] We wanted to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for
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> their teeth and clothing. We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how
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> to eat it properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this,
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> we wanted to give them such a practical knowledge of some one
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> industry, together with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy,
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> that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had
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> left us. We wanted to teach them to study actual things instead of
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> mere books alone.[^20]
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Tuskegee had a very different purpose and mission than an institution
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like Fisk University that Du Bois attended or Atlanta University where
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Du Bois taught because Tuskegee served a different group of students.
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The adaptive strategies that Washington and Du Bois developed to
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facilitate their students' success reflect the very different
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environments in which they operated.
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Tuskegee Institute thrived under Washington's leadership and continues
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through the present in its educational mission. Du Bois's dream of a
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liberal arts style of education widely available to students of color
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continues in many institutions, despite the fact that his own
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educational trajectory took a different turn. After holding a few
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different teaching posts, Du Bois left the ranks of faculty and became
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editor of *The Crisis*, the magazine of the NAACP. His program of
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education continued through that work and through the many books he
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published, arguably reaching a much larger audience than his university
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teaching did. Under Du Bois's leadership, *The Crisis* experienced an
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exponential growth in circulation, increasing readership by more than
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500% in the first year and again by more than 600% in the following
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seven years.[^21]
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# The Presidents of Tuskegee Institute and the University of Chicago
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Although Booker T. Washington's industrial education was far removed
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from an elite liberal arts education, Washington nonetheless had a close
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association with the president of just such an institution. The
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University of Chicago has become famous for its particular style of
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instruction that emphasizes honing analytical skills as opposed to
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parroting opinions. That educational philosophy is rooted in the
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practices of its first president, William Rainey Harper. As a teacher,
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Harper was described as instructing his students not in "what to
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believe, but how to think."[^22] Despite the clear differences in
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curricula, the industrial education offered at Tuskegee Institute found
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an ally in the University of Chicago.
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William Rainey Harper was appointed president of the University of
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Chicago in 1891, a decade after Booker T. Washington took the helm at
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Tuskegee Institute. Harper was involved in a wide-range of educational
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pursuits from laying the groundwork for today's junior college or
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community college to promoting the arts and crafts movement, which
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sought to counter the growing role of mechanization.[^23] For example,
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the Industrial Art League, a nonprofit formed in 1899, asserted "the
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educational value of the handicrafts" and valuing "quality of production
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as against mere cheapness."[^24] The five-person executive committee of
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the Industrial Art League included Chicago architect Louis Sullivan and
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William Rainey Harper.
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Washington and Harper became acquainted toward the end of the nineteenth
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century. Over the years, they had many opportunities to meet
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professionally. In 1895, Harper invited Washington to speak to the
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students of the University of Chicago. Washington recounted that he "was
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treated with great consideration and kindness by all of the officers of
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the University."[^25] In October 1898, a National Peace Jubilee was held
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in Chicago following the end of the four-month Spanish-American
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War.[^26] Harper, in his role of chair of the committee on invitations
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and speakers, invited Washington to participate. The high-profile event
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was planned to be held over the course of many days, with intellectuals,
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social leaders, and war heroes speaking at various locations around
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Chicago. Dignitaries scheduled to attend included diplomats, members of
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Congress, and US president William McKinley.
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On Sunday, October 16, Washington spoke to a huge crowd, reported to
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have numbered sixteen thousand. As he later wrote, it was "the largest
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audience that I have ever addressed," including President McKinley.[^27]
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Washington gave a historical overview touching on the service of African
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Americans to their country and thanked the president, to wild acclaim,
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for recognizing their commitment to the United States during the war.
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Two days later, Washington spoke again, that time at Chicago's Columbia
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Theater, a 600-seat venue, where he shared the stage with two esteemed
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veterans.[^28]
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In 1902, Harper was again instrumental in bringing Washington to speak
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in Chicago. The Industrial Art League, on whose executive committee
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Harper served, was building a new studio. US President Theodore
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Roosevelt did the honor of laying the cornerstone, and one of the
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invited speakers was Booker T. Washington.[^29]
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After Harper's untimely death before his fiftieth birthday, in January
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1906, Washington maintained his relationship with the University of
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Chicago through its next president, Harry Pratt Judson. In 1910, Judson
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invited Washington to speak on campus. His address in December of that
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year in Mandel Hall was entitled "The Progress of the American
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Negro."[^30] A further connection between the University of Chicago and
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Tuskegee Institute was Julius Rosenwald, head of Sears, Roebuck and
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Company, who served on the Board of Trustees of both institutions.[^31]
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In February 1912, Rosenwald, Judson, and James R. Angell, Dean of the
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Faculties at Chicago, visited Tuskegee to see firsthand the work that
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Washington was doing. The visitors approved, stating that Tuskegee was
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"one of the most practicable and successful attempts to solve the Negro
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problem in the South."[^32]
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In June 1912, six and half years after Harper's death, the University of
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Chicago honored their first president by dedicating a library named for
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him. A large group of invited guests, including Booker T. Washington and
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other leaders in the world of higher education, as well as a crowd of
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about four thousand people listened to a series of addresses on topics
|
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such as the university's libraries, its architecture, and the importance
|
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of literature (Fig. 1).[^33] *The University of Chicago Magazine*
|
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reported on Washington's presence at the event in this way:
|
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> The delegates to the dedication to the Library numbered in all sixty.
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> Among those to attract the greatest attention was the representative
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> of Tuskegee Normal, Principal Booker T. Washington. Arriving late, he
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> was the only man on the platform without a gown. This deficiency he
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> supplied in the afternoon, however, without seeming to lessen the
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> interest of the onlookers in his presence.[^34]
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The magazine's remarks were reserved solely for Washington. No comment
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is made on the ceremony's other attendees. Washington would surely not
|
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have read the article, which was aimed at a reading audience of
|
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graduates and other donors to the university. Nonetheless, the snide
|
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comments seem designed to embarrass him while simultaneously signaling
|
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the superiority of the other invited guests. The author objectifies
|
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Washington by viewing him as a curiosity.
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![Booker T. Washington (far left) in procession to the afternoon Convocation at the University of Chicago, 1912. Credit: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08583, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library[^35]](../static/images/BTW-Fig1.jpg "Booker T. Washington (far left) in procession to the afternoon Convocation at the University of Chicago, 1912. Credit: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08583, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library[^35]")
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**~~Figure 1. Booker T. Washington (far left) in procession to the afternoon Convocation at the University of Chicago, 1912. Credit: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08583, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library[^35]~~**
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|
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Judson's continuing relationship with Washington is interesting in light
|
||
of Judson's poor treatment of an African American student at the
|
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University of Chicago. Georgiana Simpson, who became the first African
|
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American woman to receive a PhD in the United States, was expelled from
|
||
her campus dorm by Judson in 1907. Some White students complained about
|
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Simpson's presence in the dorm, but the Dean of Women declared that
|
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Simpson would remain in her lodging. In a shocking display of
|
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micromanagement, Judson intervened in the matter and forced Simpson to
|
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move off campus. Thanks to the recent efforts of some undergraduates, a
|
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bust of Simpson commemorating her accomplishments now resides in the
|
||
campus's Reynolds Club opposite a plaque recognizing Judson.[^36]
|
||
Judson's treatment of Simpson in light of his relationship with
|
||
Washington seems motivated by racism, sexism, and also a status
|
||
differential, where Washington, as a fellow institutional head, was a
|
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peer, while Simpson was merely a student. Set against this complex
|
||
backdrop, University of Chicago professor of Egyptology James Henry
|
||
Breasted inserted himself in Washington's world.
|
||
|
||
# Ancient Nubia in *The Biblical World*
|
||
|
||
In December 1908, Breasted published an article in a journal called *The
|
||
Biblical World*. In the article, he promoted his epigraphic work on "the
|
||
monuments of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia."[^37] Like most scholars
|
||
of that time, Breasted used the term Ethiopia to refer to the ancient
|
||
culture of Nubia, not the modern country of Ethiopia. He also discussed
|
||
various writing systems in ancient and modern Nubia and the recent
|
||
acquisition of some ancient Nubian texts. The texts were written using
|
||
Greek letters, but the language that lay underneath the letters was
|
||
largely unknown to scholars. The content was Biblical in nature, and
|
||
Breasted wrote with excitement about the possibility of deciphering the
|
||
ancient language.
|
||
|
||
Breasted believed that the ancient language, once understood, would
|
||
reveal connections between the scripts of the Nile River Valley's lower
|
||
area, most of modern-day Egypt, and its upper area, the southern part of
|
||
modern-day Egypt and northern to central Sudan. He describes the ancient
|
||
people of the Upper Nile as "neither pure negroes nor Egyptians," with
|
||
no explanation as to what either term means in a scientific sense.[^38]
|
||
In the future, when their language would be deciphered, Breasted claimed
|
||
that:
|
||
|
||
> For the first time we shall then possess the history of an African
|
||
> negro dialect for some two thousand years; for while the Nubians are
|
||
> far from being of exclusively negro blood, yet their language is
|
||
> closely allied to that of certain tribes in Kordofan \[Kurdufan in
|
||
> central Sudan\] at the present day. In the Nubians, therefore, we have
|
||
> the link which connects Egypt with the peoples of inner Africa.[^39]
|
||
|
||
Breasted's racism tinged with colonialism is on full display in this
|
||
section of the article. As he saw it, the ancient culture of the Lower
|
||
Nile was "civilized" and the ancient culture of the Upper Nile was only
|
||
civilized when it adopted Egyptian culture. Otherwise, the Upper Nile
|
||
culture was doomed, in his view, to "barbarism." "The Egyptian veneer
|
||
slowly wore off as this kingdom of the upper Nile was more and more
|
||
isolated from the civilization of the north, and it was thus thrown back
|
||
upon the barbarism of inner Africa."[^40]
|
||
|
||
Breasted used imperialistic race-based language to describe the cultural
|
||
influence that may have flowed from south to north, from "inner Africa,"
|
||
as he put it, to the Lower Nile. "When, therefore, we are in a position
|
||
to read the early Nubian inscriptions, we shall be able to compare the
|
||
ancient Nubian with the Egyptian and thus to determine how far, if at
|
||
all, the Egyptian language of the Pharaohs was tinctured by negro
|
||
speech."[^41] The word "tinctured" is associated with dyeing or
|
||
coloring. Breasted drew a color line that separated the people who spoke
|
||
the undeciphered language ("an African negro dialect") and those who
|
||
spoke the "language of the Pharaohs" (clearly "non-negro" in his view).
|
||
When he wrote of the "coloring" influence of the language of the Upper
|
||
Nile on the language of the Lower Nile, he revealed his US-American
|
||
race-based perspective, drawn from his contemporary world. Then he
|
||
incorrectly projected his contemporary Western worldview on to the world
|
||
of the ancient Nile cultures that he studied. An increasing number of
|
||
scholars are now devoting their publication efforts to correct
|
||
colonialist attitudes of this type.[^42]
|
||
|
||
# Breasted Writes to Washington
|
||
|
||
Breasted was offered a career as a faculty member when he was still an
|
||
undergraduate. Willian Rainey Harper was a professor at Yale when
|
||
Breasted studied there. Harper was planning the new University of
|
||
Chicago and learned of Breasted's interest in the ancient Egyptian
|
||
language. He encouraged Breasted to study it in Germany with the
|
||
assurance that a job would be waiting for him in Chicago when he
|
||
finished.[^43] By 1894, Breasted had completed his degree and was
|
||
teaching Egyptology at the new university, establishing himself as one
|
||
of the founders of the discipline in the US system of higher
|
||
education.[^44]
|
||
|
||
In late 1908, when Breasted's article was published in *The Biblical
|
||
World*, Washington had been head of Tuskegee Institute for nearly three
|
||
decades. He was a leader in the fight for educational and labor rights
|
||
for African Americans, an international figure who regularly interacted
|
||
with heads of state and whose professional acquaintance was cultivated
|
||
by other educational leaders like the presidents of the University of
|
||
Chicago.
|
||
|
||
In April 1909, Breasted sent a copy of his article to Washington. In an
|
||
accompanying letter, he wrote about his work on ancient Nile Valley
|
||
cultures, and he described the article as being about "a matter
|
||
concerning early history of your race."[^45] Breasted once again
|
||
demarcated "Nubian" from "Egyptian" and marked the former as belonging
|
||
to African Americans, thus excluding them from the realm of ancient
|
||
Egyptians.
|
||
|
||
In his letter to Washington, Breasted explained the importance of the
|
||
decipherment of the ancient Nilotic language in this way:
|
||
|
||
> The importance of all this is chiefly that from these documents when
|
||
> deciphered, we shall be able to put together the only surviving
|
||
> information on the early history of the dark race. Nowhere else in all
|
||
> the world is the early history of a dark race preserved.[^46]
|
||
|
||
Again, Breasted expresses a segregationist viewpoint, where he imagines
|
||
the inhabitants of the Upper Nile are members of a "dark race" as
|
||
distinguished from the people whom he imagined in the Lower Nile. In the
|
||
letter's closing, he states that he mailed the article to Washington
|
||
because "possibly one who has done so much to shape the modern history
|
||
of your race will be interested in the recovery of some account of the
|
||
only early negro or negroid kingdom of which we know anything."[^47] The
|
||
slipperiness of Breasted's argument is clear. His letter declares the
|
||
evidence to be of an "early negro or negroid kingdom," "a dark race,"
|
||
one that Washington shares, and in the article, he describes the people
|
||
of the Upper Nile as "neither pure negroes nor Egyptians."[^48]
|
||
Breasted's argument about race was based on unscientific terminology
|
||
that lacked precise definitions and resulted in prejudiced and incorrect
|
||
conclusions.[^49] The slipperiness of his arguments applies across his
|
||
publications because, as we will see below, he expresses different views
|
||
in different publications.
|
||
|
||
# Washington's Response and the Brownsville Affair
|
||
|
||
At the time that Breasted sent the article, Washington was preoccupied
|
||
with something far removed from the arcane world of ancient Nilotic
|
||
cultures. He was grappling with the aftermath of an injustice done to
|
||
black soldiers stationed in Brownsville, Texas. At the time, the
|
||
soldiers were deemed guilty without the benefit of having had their case
|
||
heard through regular legal proceedings. US president Theodore Roosevelt
|
||
refused to undo the damage to their reputations, careers, and futures.
|
||
The US Army launched subsequent inquiry that concluded in 1972 that all
|
||
of the accused people were innocent.[^50]
|
||
|
||
Roosevelt and Washington were closely connected, as Washington advised
|
||
Roosevelt on matters related to issues facing African American
|
||
communities. Roosevelt became president following the assassination of
|
||
President McKinley, two years after Washington had spoken before
|
||
McKinley and the largest audience of his career at the peace jubilee in
|
||
Chicago. About a month after taking office in 1901, Roosevelt invited
|
||
Washington to dinner at the White House. The event, aimed at securing
|
||
the support of African Americans for the new president, was also a
|
||
recognition of the acceptability in some White circles of Washington's
|
||
philosophy of "self-help and accommodation of segregation."[^51]
|
||
Nonetheless, the dinner invitation caused an angry backlash among some
|
||
White politicians and members of the press who were enraged by the honor
|
||
given to Washington.[^52]
|
||
|
||
Five years after that dinner, in November 1906, President Roosevelt
|
||
publicly announced his decision to declare, without due process, that
|
||
the African American soldiers at Brownsville were guilty of murder and
|
||
conspiracy to hide murderers. Before the public announcement, Roosevelt
|
||
relayed his decision to Washington who tried unsuccessfully to change
|
||
the president's mind.[^53] Mary Church Terrell was well placed enough to
|
||
intercede with the Secretary of War William Howard Taft to get a brief
|
||
stay of the president's order.[^54] She saw a connection between the
|
||
injustice to the soldiers and the White House dinner. "He \[Roosevelt\]
|
||
might have thought by discharging three companies of colored soldiers
|
||
without honor he would prove to the South he was not such a negrophile
|
||
as he had appeared to be."[^55] In the midst of this crisis, Washington
|
||
received Breasted's letter.
|
||
|
||
Despite the pressing nature of the aftermath of the injustice done to
|
||
the Black soldiers, Washington replied to Breasted the following week,
|
||
expressing his polite interest in the matter. He noted that although he
|
||
had not had time to acquaint himself with the ancient history of the
|
||
Nile Valley, he did mention a particular point of interest. He wrote
|
||
that "the traditions of most of the peoples whom I have read, point to a
|
||
distant place in the direction of ancient Ethiopia as the source from
|
||
which they, at one time, received what civilization they still
|
||
possess."[^56] Washington wondered if that "distant place" and the
|
||
subject matter of Breasted's article could be one and the same. "Could
|
||
it be possible that these civilizing influences had their sources in
|
||
this ancient Ethiopian kingdom to which your article refers?"[^57]
|
||
|
||
# Washington and Egyptology
|
||
|
||
Washington's correspondence with Breasted is a fascinating chapter in
|
||
histories of Egyptology and Nubiology, a chapter that needs to be
|
||
included in future histories of these disciplines.[^58] The study of
|
||
ancient Nile Valley cultures never factored into Washington's work, as
|
||
they did in the intellectual work of many other African Americans,
|
||
including Du Bois.[^59] There are obvious reasons why the topic would
|
||
not resonate deeply with Washington.
|
||
|
||
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Egyptologists had
|
||
largely agreed on a historical narrative that connected the northern
|
||
Nile Valley---in what is today the country of Egypt---with the Levant,
|
||
Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and parts of the northern Mediterranean, while
|
||
simultaneously isolating it from Arabia and parts of Africa to the south
|
||
and the west.[^60] More than reflecting any historical reality, this
|
||
one-sided isolation reflects the research interests of early
|
||
Egyptologists, their sources of funding, which were often people or
|
||
organizations interested in exploring sites associated with Biblical
|
||
stories, and the predetermined worldview that researchers brought to the
|
||
material.
|
||
|
||
In his letter to Breasted, Washington makes connections across Africa,
|
||
between the southern Nile Valley and West Africa.[^61] Research
|
||
questions like the one he posed ("Could it be possible that these
|
||
civilizing influences had their sources in this ancient Ethiopian
|
||
kingdom to which your article refers?") continue to be of interest to
|
||
scholars, although more so to scholars in fields adjacent to
|
||
Egyptology.[^62] Washington does not challenge the divide that Breasted
|
||
imagined between the northern and southern Nile Valley. His reticence to
|
||
identify with the northern Nile Valley was rooted in an entirely
|
||
different set of motivations.
|
||
|
||
As mentioned earlier, Washington was born into slavery. Because of his
|
||
experience, the Biblical story of the Exodus resonated strongly with
|
||
him. In one publication, he wrote, "I learned in slavery to compare the
|
||
condition of the Negro with that of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I
|
||
have frequently, since freedom, been compelled to compare the prejudice,
|
||
even persecution, which the Jewish people have to face and overcome in
|
||
different parts of the world with the disadvantages of the Negro in the
|
||
US and elsewhere."[^63] Where Breasted viewed the ancient Egyptian
|
||
culture as a "great civilization," Washington saw it as an unjust power
|
||
that enslaved other people. Finally, Washington's pedagogical system
|
||
focused on industrial education. Undeciphered ancient texts from the
|
||
southern Nile and the enslavers of the Jewish people in the northern
|
||
Nile Valley had no place in his educational worldview. But although
|
||
Washington never incorporated ancient Nile Valley cultures into his
|
||
work, Breasted continued to produce incorrect arguments that attempted
|
||
to divide the ancient Nile Valley along so-called racial lines.
|
||
|
||
# Breasted on Race
|
||
|
||
Breasted wrote many books on the ancient cultures of Europe, Asia, and
|
||
Africa for a general reading audience and for use in schools. His views
|
||
on the ancient people of the Nile Valley are made clear in his 1935
|
||
school textbook *Ancient Times*, first published in 1916. In *Ancient
|
||
Times* and the accompanying atlases, Breasted connects the ancient
|
||
cultures of the Near East, as it was called, and Europe to illustrate
|
||
the spread of "western civilization."[^64] In *Ancient Times*, a map
|
||
labels Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa as "Great White Race," and
|
||
the area to the south of that is labeled "Black Race."[^65] Breasted
|
||
does not provide a formal definition of race, and he sometimes treats
|
||
race as though it is tied to language or culture (both incorrect
|
||
ideas).[^66] His muddled discussion sometimes suggests that race is a
|
||
well-defined category with strict boundaries, and other times his
|
||
discussion blurs those boundaries.
|
||
|
||
Breasted's ideas about race are incorrect by the scientific standards of
|
||
today and even of his own day. Anthropologist Franz Boas (1858--1942)
|
||
offered an alternative anthropological view. "Put simply, Boas---albeit
|
||
grudgingly---attempted to extricate race relations theory from *most* of
|
||
the racist assumptions of late nineteenth-century social science."[^67]
|
||
Repeatedly in his work, Boas discussed variation, arguing that "human
|
||
beings possessed enormously varied physiques, so diverse that what at
|
||
first appeared to be easily bounded racial types turned out to grade
|
||
into each other."[^68] A racializing classification system, with its
|
||
attempt to set firm boundaries delineating different groups of people,
|
||
ignores the reality of variation in human populations.
|
||
|
||
> The skeletal concept of "race" depended and depends on arbitrarily
|
||
> defined, well-marked anatomical complexes or "types" which had by
|
||
> definition little or no variation. However, modern population biology
|
||
> has demonstrated that *variation* with *geographically* defined
|
||
> breeding populations, or those more related by ancestry, is the rule
|
||
> for human groups.[^69]
|
||
|
||
The confusion arises because variation in physical features became the
|
||
basis for "race" and was used to classify humans, but humans defy
|
||
classification because of variation.
|
||
|
||
> Here the phrase "concept of race" refers to the biological idea as
|
||
> found in science texts in its most idealized form, namely that
|
||
> biological human population variation can be, or is to be partitioned
|
||
> into units of individuals who are nearly uniform, and that there is
|
||
> greater difference between these units than within them. This concept
|
||
> implies or suggests/emphasizes between-group discontinuity in origins,
|
||
> ancestral and descendant lineages, and molecular and physical traits,
|
||
> implying the opposite for within group variation. The human reality is
|
||
> different.[^70]
|
||
|
||
Two people who may appear to be different based on physical features may
|
||
not actually be different when examined at a genomic level. Furthermore,
|
||
there are more similarities between human population groups than there
|
||
are differences.
|
||
|
||
No such border (or color line), like the one that Breasted drew on the
|
||
map, exists in reality. That becomes quite clear when considering where
|
||
such a line would run.
|
||
|
||
> There seems to be a problem in understanding that human genetic
|
||
> variation cannot always be easily described. Genetic origins can cut
|
||
> across ethnic (sociocultural or national) lines. At what village along
|
||
> the Nile valley today would one describe the "racial" transition
|
||
> between "Black" and "White"---assuming momentarily that these
|
||
> categories are real? It could not be done.[^71]
|
||
|
||
Not only does such a line on a map not exist in reality, but the very
|
||
idea of separating the Nile River Valley in the way that Breasted
|
||
imagined is nowhere reflected in the ancient material. The
|
||
"racialization of Nubia and Nubians as 'black' in contrast to Egyptians
|
||
\[is incorrect\], implying an essentialized racial divide between Egypt
|
||
and Nubia that would not have been acknowledged in antiquity."[^72]
|
||
Because the material record does not provide the separation that
|
||
Breasted's theory requires, he had to resort to an inaccurate
|
||
description of the geography. He argues that the culture in the northern
|
||
Nile Valley was isolated from the rest of the landmass. Breasted
|
||
incorrectly describes the Nile River Valley in this way:
|
||
|
||
> It \[his area labeled "Black Race"\] was separated from the Great
|
||
> White Race by the broad stretch of the Sahara Desert. The valley of
|
||
> the Nile was the only road leading across the Sahara from south to
|
||
> north. Sometimes the blacks of inner Africa did wander along this road
|
||
> into Egypt, but they came only in small groups. Thus cut off by the
|
||
> desert barrier and living by themselves, they remained uninfluenced by
|
||
> civilization from the north.[^73]
|
||
|
||
This incorrect characterization ignores the fact that the area now known
|
||
as the Sahara was not always a desert and ignores the existence of oases
|
||
that continue in the present to facilitate movement across dry
|
||
areas.[^74] Breasted himself makes that point in an earlier publication
|
||
when he describes the desert around the Nile River Valley. "Plenteous
|
||
rains, now no longer known there, rendered it a fertile and productive
|
||
region."[^75] In that case, he used the disciplinary boundaries set up
|
||
by the university to separate those ancient people from the ones he
|
||
studied. For him, humans living in the Nile Valley area in the
|
||
Paleolithic "can not be connected in any way with the historic or
|
||
prehistoric civilization of the Egyptians, and they fall exclusively
|
||
within the province of the geologist and anthropologist."[^76] With that
|
||
comment, Breasted dispenses of any evidence that predates the era he
|
||
wants to discuss, namely, predynastic and dynastic Egypt. Having
|
||
dismissed that evidence, Breasted then incorrectly contrasts a
|
||
"civilized" lower Nile Valley and a "barbaric" upper Nile Valley, a
|
||
contrast that reflects more about the world of his day than the ancient
|
||
world he imagined he was describing. As Stuart Tyson Smith put it:
|
||
|
||
> The implied contrast between primitive and barbaric Nubians conquering
|
||
> their more sophisticated northern neighbor serves to reproduce and
|
||
> perpetuate a colonial and ultimately racist perspective that justified
|
||
> the authority of modern Western empires, in this case over "black"
|
||
> Africa, whose peoples could not create or maintain "civilized" life
|
||
> without help from an external power.[^77]
|
||
|
||
Breasted's segregation of the Nile Valley based on an nonexistent color
|
||
line was founded on the mistaken idea that differences in physical
|
||
appearance among humans correspond with differences in language or
|
||
culture. That simply is not true, nor is it true that differences in the
|
||
human genome correspond to linguistic or cultural differences.[^78]
|
||
|
||
Breasted's conception of races rested on many incorrect ideas, two of
|
||
which I will touch on here. Breasted's discussion intimates that there
|
||
is such a thing as a "pure" race, meaning, a group of people who are so
|
||
isolated from other people that they have bred only with each other
|
||
since the beginning of time.[^79] Knowledge of human migrations easily
|
||
disproves such an outdated concept.[^80] At a more local level, evidence
|
||
to the contrary is easily seen within families, when certain traits are
|
||
expressed or not expressed in various family members.
|
||
|
||
> Defining a population as a narrow "type" logically leads to procedures
|
||
> such as picking out individuals with a given external phenotype and
|
||
> seeing them as members of a "pure race" whose members all had the same
|
||
> characteristics. This would imply that the blond in a family of
|
||
> brunettes was somehow more related to other blonds ("Nordics") than to
|
||
> immediate family members.[^81]
|
||
|
||
Breasted himself evidently realized that point. In his 1905 book *A
|
||
History of Egypt*, he describes the ancient Egyptians in a way that
|
||
belies the strict border delineated on his map. The book would be
|
||
republished in a second edition just two years after the passage cited
|
||
above and would be unchanged from the original edition, indicating that
|
||
Breasted continued to hold to this view in the late 1930s.
|
||
|
||
> Again the representations of the early Puntites, or Somali people, on
|
||
> the Egyptian monuments, show striking resemblances to the Egyptians
|
||
> themselves. \[...\] The conclusion once maintained by some historians,
|
||
> that the Egyptian was of African negro origin, is now refuted; and
|
||
> evidently indicated that at most he may have been slightly tinctured
|
||
> with negro blood, in addition to the other ethnic elements already
|
||
> mentioned.[^82]
|
||
|
||
Breasted's dismissal of an "African negro" origin of Egyptians aligns
|
||
with his racializing map in *Ancient Times*. But in the description
|
||
above, he allows (again using the word "tinctured") for some "negro
|
||
blood" in the Egyptian population. By the standards of the US society in
|
||
which Breasted lived, such an allowance would discount Egyptians from
|
||
being White.
|
||
|
||
In his map, Breasted mistakenly depicted race as existing according to
|
||
strict geographical boundaries, and in the passage above, he blurred
|
||
that strict boundary line. The fuzziness of his racialized dividing line
|
||
in the Nile Valley brings to mind Bernasconi's interpretation of race as
|
||
"a border concept, a dynamic concept whose core lies not at its center
|
||
but at its edges and whose logic is constantly being reworked as the
|
||
borders shift."[^83] Bernasconi argues that in the United States, race
|
||
should be seen as a "fluid system that never succeeded in maintaining
|
||
the borders it tried to establish, but whose resilience came from the
|
||
capacity of the dominant class within the system to turn a blind eye to
|
||
their inability to police those boundaries effectively."[^84] The idea
|
||
of race as a fluid system can be seen in these ideas of Breasted's. One
|
||
of the discipline's founders literally drew a color line across the Nile
|
||
Valley (the map) even when by his own account (the text quoted above)
|
||
people's features blurred that line due to what he called "ethnic
|
||
elements" among Egyptians. On a macro scale, the discipline of
|
||
Egyptology in the US did the same. Despite the fact that one of the
|
||
discipline's founders made these statements, the discipline continues to
|
||
"turn a blind eye," having distanced itself from the statement without
|
||
formally acknowledging its role in promoting such racist ideas.
|
||
|
||
Breasted's second incorrect idea is his failure to explain how early
|
||
humans who settled in Europe became "White." His narrative makes it seem
|
||
as though they simply appeared in Europe, already White.[^85] To account
|
||
for Egypt's place in a sphere dominated by "Europe" and described by him
|
||
as "White," Breasted produces a convoluted argument that ignores the
|
||
very evidence that he has laid before the reader. "In North Africa these
|
||
people were dark-skinned, but nevertheless physically they belong to the
|
||
Great White Race."[^86] With that illogical statement, Breasted opens
|
||
the doors of his "Great White Race" to "dark-skinned" people. What then
|
||
closes the doors to other dark-skinned people, such as those who
|
||
inhabited the space he labeled "Black Race"? The answer is found in
|
||
Breasted's view of "civilization," which for him was very much a White,
|
||
Western, male-dominated space, something that he incorrectly felt was
|
||
off-limits to other parts of Africa.
|
||
|
||
# Breasted on Civilization and Women
|
||
|
||
Western imperialism is on clear display in Breasted's 1926 book, *The
|
||
Conquest of Civilization*. The title of his book signals his
|
||
evolutionary view of human sociocultural development. Reflecting on
|
||
history, Breasted sees a "*rising* trail" that "culminated in civilized
|
||
man," and he repeatedly contrasts that trajectory with "bestial
|
||
savagery," the earlier state of humans.[^87] When Breasted referred in
|
||
his book title to civilization as conquering, he was not speaking
|
||
metaphorically. His narrative romanticizes "great men" carrying weapons.
|
||
In his preface, Breasted gazes over the plain in present-day Israel
|
||
where his Rockefeller-funded excavations occurred. He glowingly recalls
|
||
the Egyptian king Sheshonq who raided Jerusalem in tenth century BCE and
|
||
the 1918 victory of the English Lord Allenby over Ottoman forces.[^88]
|
||
The types of actions that constituted civilization and civilized people,
|
||
in Breasted's view, included acts of violence, theft, invasion, and
|
||
subjugation of others. Breasted does not question who comprises
|
||
"mankind" or whether the "progress" that some modern humans had achieved
|
||
positively impacted others.[^89]
|
||
|
||
Breasted's worldview was impacted by colonialism, sexism, and racism. In
|
||
the first edition of his textbook *Ancient Times*, Breasted paints a
|
||
negative picture of the women of early human history. He blames the loss
|
||
of an idyllic male hunting fantasy on a physically overwhelmed
|
||
"primitive woman." "Agriculture \[...\] exceeded the strength of the
|
||
primitive woman, and the primitive man was obliged to give up more and
|
||
more of his hunting freedom and devote himself to the field."[^90]
|
||
|
||
Breasted reveals a similar lack of regard for contemporary women in a
|
||
letter to his patron, John D. Rockefeller. In the letter, Breasted
|
||
thanked Rockefeller for his "delightful companionship" during the
|
||
Rockefeller family's visit to Egypt. The Egyptologist recounted with
|
||
jocularity what must have been a spirited discussion one day.
|
||
|
||
> On the important question of the relative value of men and women to
|
||
> human society, Mrs. Rockefeller and Mary were somewhat out-voted when
|
||
> it came to a show of hands; but Mrs. Rockefeller never lost a
|
||
> scrimmage; she gave as good as she got in a spirit of unfailing good
|
||
> humor and amiability that won all hearts.[^91]
|
||
|
||
Whether Mrs. Rockefeller and Mary actually felt any type of good humor
|
||
at being relegated to a place of less value to human society is not
|
||
clear from this passage.
|
||
|
||
Over the course of his career, the Rockefeller family repeatedly
|
||
provided funds to enable Breasted's work along the Nile and in the
|
||
Middle East. One such notable case was in an ill-fated museum to be
|
||
built in Egypt.[^92] Breasted used an imperialistic appeal to stress the
|
||
grand implications of his work. He wrote to Mrs. Rockefeller that the
|
||
museum was "not really business, but the fate of a great civilization
|
||
mission, sent out by a great American possessing both the power of
|
||
wealth and the power of vision that discloses and discerns new and
|
||
untried possibilities of good."[^93] He composed the letter to Mrs.
|
||
Rockefeller partially as an apology for the public uproar over the
|
||
ultimately rejected proposal for the new museum.[^94] His imperialistic
|
||
narrative takes a decidedly Christian turn when he refers to the plan to
|
||
build the museum in Egypt as a "new Crusade to the Orient."[^95]
|
||
According to Breasted, the misunderstanding about Rockefeller's
|
||
intentions in building the museum were a result of the Egyptian public's
|
||
unawareness that the money was to be without any reciprocal return, but
|
||
simply for the general good. In fact, a combination of factors doomed
|
||
the plan, including a growing dissatisfaction with such imperialist
|
||
actions and the fact that under the plan, the Egyptian Antiquities
|
||
Service would cede control of the museum's antiquities and all future
|
||
antiquities found in Egypt for thirty-three years.[^96] Had the museum
|
||
come to pass, Breasted and those involved in the museum would have
|
||
defined, on Egyptian soil, what Egyptology would be in terms of its
|
||
artifacts, practitioners, and historical narratives.
|
||
|
||
# Research for Whose Benefit?
|
||
|
||
The point was made earlier that despite the fascinating exchange of
|
||
letters between Booker T. Washington and James Henry Breasted, ancient
|
||
Nile Valley cultures did not factor into Washington's work although
|
||
other African American intellectuals did write about them. With
|
||
Washington, we see the importance of interrogating benefit. Who
|
||
constructs the research questions, and whom does research benefit? The
|
||
fact that Breasted did not have to ask such questions is evidence of his
|
||
privilege. Breasted did not have to be concerned with who benefitted
|
||
from his research and from the research of other Egyptologists. He knew
|
||
that it benefitted people like him: educated men in the west who were
|
||
considered White. (Egyptian men were not included in that category as
|
||
evidenced in the story about the failed museum in Cairo that excluded
|
||
them.) Booker T. Washington did need to ask that question. In the case
|
||
of Tuskegee Institute, how would Egyptology (Nubiology as such did not
|
||
exist then nor were academic silos as limiting--e.g., George Reisner's
|
||
move from Semitic languages to archaeology) benefit the African American
|
||
students whom Washington was educating? His answer: It would not.
|
||
|
||
In fact, Tuskegee has unfortunately become a central word in making sure
|
||
that harm is not done to people through research. The Tuskegee
|
||
Experiment is the informal name of a decades-long deception and health
|
||
crisis that the United States government foisted on innocent African
|
||
American people.[^97] The research began as a health survey in rural
|
||
areas where people lacked access to regular medical care. The survey,
|
||
which was organized by federal and local public health professionals
|
||
with funding from the Rosenwald Fund, tested people for syphilis.
|
||
Rosenwald, it will be remembered, was a longtime benefactor of the
|
||
University of Chicago and Tuskegee Institute. In 1932, the survey turned
|
||
into a four-decade long program that purported to treat syphilis in
|
||
African American men but instead purposefully did not do so because it
|
||
instead secretly studied the effects of untreated syphilis.[^98]
|
||
|
||
One outcome of the disastrous Tuskegee Syphilis Study was the creation
|
||
of the Belmont Report. Written by the (US) National Commission for the
|
||
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and
|
||
released in 1979, the Belmont Report lays out ethical guidelines that
|
||
continue to govern human subjects research in the US.[^99] It provides
|
||
three principles that guide ethical questions that arise during
|
||
research: respect for persons (including protecting those who are most
|
||
vulnerable), beneficence (the obligation to not harm and to maximize
|
||
benefits while minimizing harm), and justice (who benefits from the
|
||
research and is burdened by it). The commission's task---to revisit the
|
||
exploitation of humans as subjects of research and to redress that
|
||
history through policy---is an example of the "healing" that has
|
||
recently been discussed as a goal within Nubian archaeology.[^100]
|
||
|
||
Washington was not involved in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. He died in
|
||
1915, about fourteen years before the survey began. But this injustice
|
||
was done in the county where Tuskegee Institute is located with the
|
||
cooperation of many people in that community, including Tuskegee's
|
||
then-president.[^101] Whatever the reasons for those people's
|
||
cooperation, whether they even knew about the true nature of the
|
||
so-called study, the lasting health and psychological impacts of the
|
||
study are a grim reminder of the need to ensure the safety of human
|
||
subjects in research. One step in that process is to analyze research
|
||
questions to determine who will benefit.
|
||
|
||
Kim TallBear asks a similar question today. Her work shows the urgency
|
||
in continuing to interrogate innovation to determine who systems are set
|
||
up to benefit and what ramifications may be lying beneath the surface,
|
||
unstated. Breasted's theories about a "Great White Race" are thoroughly
|
||
discredited. Also discredited are the racial typologies of the
|
||
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that some Egyptologists, like
|
||
Breasted, used in their work. But the kernels of those ideas are
|
||
beginning to make a comeback in the guise of DNA studies.
|
||
|
||
On the surface, DNA studies may seem to be of positive benefit to a
|
||
community. As TallBear states, "It has become a standard claim of
|
||
human-population genetics that this scientific field can save us from
|
||
the evils of racism."[^102] But she cautions that it is not that simple.
|
||
"The science does not undermine race and thus racism, but it helps
|
||
reconfigure both race and indigeneity as genetic categories."[^103] In
|
||
terms of ancient Nile Valley cultures, we have seen vast overstatements,
|
||
where, for example, the genetic map of one or two individuals has been
|
||
wielded as a marker of an entire population group spanning thousands of
|
||
years and hundreds of kilometers with no attention paid to cultural
|
||
context, human migrations, or variation among humans.[^104] Such overly
|
||
broad claims based on a fraction of evidence completely disregard the
|
||
complexities of human culture and seem to suggest that culture is
|
||
written in human DNA, which is incorrect.[^105]
|
||
|
||
The threat to people who participate in such studies involves loss of
|
||
sovereignty over one's genetic material, one's personal narrative, and
|
||
perhaps material assets as well. The worry is that DNA mapping projects
|
||
are not concerned with the research subjects' well-being but are solely
|
||
done "to satisfy the curiosity of Western scientists."[^106] The alarms
|
||
that TallBear sounds are often muffled beneath rhetoric that sounds
|
||
positive and promising, such as the idea that all humans originated in
|
||
Africa and so are all "related."
|
||
|
||
> Privileging the idea that 'we are all related' might be antiracist and
|
||
> all-inclusive in one context, although that is also complicated,
|
||
> because it relies on portraying Africa and Africans as primordial, as
|
||
> the source of all of us. 'We are all related' is also inadequate to
|
||
> understanding how indigenous peoples reckon relationships in more
|
||
> complicated ways, both biologically and culturally, at *group* levels.
|
||
> 'We are all related' can also put at risk assertions of indigenous
|
||
> identity and indigenous legal rights.[^107]
|
||
|
||
The cultural identification, what TallBear describes as being "at
|
||
*group* levels," is also missing from studies of ancient human remains
|
||
in the Nile Valley. As Keita put it:
|
||
|
||
> It is important to emphasize that, while the biology changed with
|
||
> increasing local social complexity, the ethnicity of
|
||
> Niloto-Saharo-Sudanese origins did not change. The cultural morays
|
||
> \[*sic*\], ritual formulae, and symbols used in writing, as far as can
|
||
> be ascertained, remained true to their southern \[i.e., Egyptian\]
|
||
> origins.[^108]
|
||
|
||
In formal Egyptian artistic contexts, phenotype, along with dress and
|
||
hairstyle, was used to represent groups of people according to ethnic
|
||
stereotypes and then to characterize those ethnic groups in positive or
|
||
negative ways, depending on official state ideology.[^109] The
|
||
Egyptians' highly stereotyped artistic representations of ethnic groups
|
||
tell us only about the Egyptian ideology of ethnic distinctions, not
|
||
about actual differences between ethnic groups. But even in the
|
||
fantastical scenario that the ancient Egyptian portrayals were accurate,
|
||
it would be impossible to map genotypical distinctions onto those ethnic
|
||
groups. "One's *known* ethnically identified ancestors and one's genes
|
||
ancestors are conceptually two different things."[^110] Genotype, of
|
||
course, had no bearing on a person's "insider" or "outsider" status in
|
||
ancient Egypt, regardless of whatever ethnic divisions existed among
|
||
ancient peoples.[^111] TallBear has spent much time analyzing the impact
|
||
and potential threats to Native American communities from research
|
||
projects that want to study their genetic map, that claim to be able to
|
||
tell them "who they are," as if they did not know. Her grave concern for
|
||
whom those studies benefit are a modern-day mirror to the racial
|
||
typologies of the ancient Nile Valley that Booker T. Washington ignored.
|
||
|
||
TallBear's warning to carefully consider the promises and the purposes
|
||
of research is a first step in constructing a critical framework to
|
||
examine Egyptological research. It is beyond the scope of this article
|
||
to directly address the following issues, but their complexities should
|
||
also be kept in mind. As mentioned above, a growing body of work
|
||
addresses legacies of colonialism in the discipline of Egyptology.[^112]
|
||
Alongside those works should be considered issues such as color
|
||
prejudice in modern Egypt, the rights of indigenous people to a land's
|
||
history, and the particular challenges faced by African descended people
|
||
in the US versus in Africa.[^113]
|
||
|
||
# Conclusion
|
||
|
||
Mary Church Terrell recalled with pride the day that Booker T.
|
||
Washington met Prince Henry of Prussia in the morning and Mrs.
|
||
Vanderbilt in the afternoon. Although some African descended scholars,
|
||
such as W. E. B. Du Bois, are much feted in academic circles these days,
|
||
Booker T. Washington is too frequently overlooked not only as a pioneer
|
||
in education but in teaching students how to recognize what benefits
|
||
them. Put in the language of the Harper and Breasted's University of
|
||
Chicago, he taught the students of Tuskegee how to think.
|
||
|
||
Washington felt his method of education could teach "self-help, and
|
||
self-reliance," as well as "valuable lessons for the future."[^114] In
|
||
the Institute's early days, he had students constructing buildings and
|
||
clearing land for agricultural purposes.
|
||
|
||
> My plan was to have them, while performing this service, taught the
|
||
> latest and best methods of labour, so that the school would not only
|
||
> get the benefit of their efforts, but the students themselves would be
|
||
> taught to see not only utility in labour, but beauty and dignity;
|
||
> would be taught, in fact, how to lift labour up from mere drudgery and
|
||
> toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake.[^115]
|
||
|
||
Despite the fact that the Institute and its community were the direct
|
||
and visible beneficiaries of this labor, many students were nonetheless
|
||
reluctant to do the work. Washington convinced the students at Tuskegee
|
||
Institute of the benefit of his style of education by participating in
|
||
the educational experiment with them.
|
||
|
||
> When I explained my plan to the young men, I noticed that they did not
|
||
> seem to take to it very kindly. It was hard for them to see the
|
||
> connection between clearing land and an education. Besides, many of
|
||
> them had been school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not
|
||
> clearing land would be in keeping with their dignity. In order to
|
||
> relieve them from any embarrassment, each afternoon after school I
|
||
> took my axe and led the way to the woods. When they saw that I was not
|
||
> afraid or ashamed to work, they began to assist with more enthusiasm.
|
||
> We kept at the work each afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty
|
||
> acres and had planted a crop.[^116]
|
||
|
||
Their labor on the grounds of the new Institute benefitted them as an
|
||
educational community. As quoted early in this article, Washington also
|
||
published an article in *The Atlantic* that framed such work as a
|
||
benefit to White society. Why? Because Washington knew how to think from
|
||
a position of precarity. He knew that the economic and social success of
|
||
African Americans would begin to make White people feel that same
|
||
precarity, a precarity usually only felt by people of color and the most
|
||
economically disadvantaged White people. His piece in *The Atlantic*
|
||
forestalled any such alarm in wealthier White circles by assuring them
|
||
that the labor of African Americans benefitted White people too.
|
||
|
||
Washington found no benefit in Egyptology. Personally, he did not
|
||
connect with the ancient culture. As a formerly enslaved person, he saw
|
||
the ancient Egyptians through the lens of the Biblical Exodus, as those
|
||
who enslaved other people. Systemically, there was nothing in Egyptology
|
||
to benefit his educational system. Breasted's "Great White Race" clearly
|
||
excluded Tuskegee Institute. But Washington deftly shows us a way to
|
||
move past the roadblock of Breasted's Egyptology.
|
||
|
||
As seen in Washington's interactions with world leaders and other
|
||
university leaders, he handled difficult situations with ease. The same
|
||
is true in his correspondence with Breasted. In his reply, Washington
|
||
showed himself to be an astute reader, able to discern where in
|
||
Breasted's narrative he felt the benefit lay for African American
|
||
communities. He sidestepped the contradictory narrative of the Nile
|
||
Valley based on skin color and instead wrote an empowering narrative. He
|
||
turned to the kingdom of the Upper Nile as an ancient source for the
|
||
cultures of West Africa, where many African Americans traced their
|
||
heritage.
|
||
|
||
As one of the founders of Egyptology in the US, Breasted's viewpoints
|
||
formed the basis of the discipline. His core values, with their
|
||
attendant racist, sexist, and colonialist overtones, are clearly spelled
|
||
out in public and in private, in the school textbooks and in the
|
||
personal correspondence that he authored. To move away from those
|
||
viewpoints and the unwelcome baggage they bring with them, Egyptologists
|
||
must find alternative directions to the ones set out by early scholars
|
||
like Breasted. One alternative path was offered by Booker T. Washington
|
||
who considered cultural connections across Africa. Other scholars, in
|
||
Africa and elsewhere in the world, have thought similarly. Increasingly,
|
||
we see efforts to bring new perspectives to research questions in the
|
||
Nile Valley and to make connections between the ancient Nile Valley and
|
||
elsewhere in Africa. Washington modeled for his students a connection
|
||
between physical labor and school education. In his brief encounter with
|
||
Egyptology, he models for us a way to move forward from the discipline's
|
||
colonial outlooks.
|
||
|
||
# Bibliography
|
||
|
||
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||
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||
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|
||
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||
|
||
Abt, Jeffrey. *American Egyptologist: The Life of James
|
||
Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute*. Chicago:
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|
||
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||
---------. "Toward a Historian's Laboratory: The
|
||
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|
||
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|
||
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||
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||
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||
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||
|
||
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||
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|
||
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||
|
||
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||
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|
||
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||
|
||
Bieze, Michael. *Booker T. Washington and the Art of
|
||
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|
||
|
||
Bieze, Michael Scott, and Marybeth Gasman,
|
||
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||
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||
|
||
Breasted, James Henry. Directors Correspondence. Records.
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||
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||
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||
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||
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||
|
||
---------. *Ancient Times: A History of the Early World*.
|
||
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||
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||
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|
||
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||
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||
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|
||
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|
||
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|
||
|
||
---------. *The Conquest of Civilization*. New York:
|
||
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|
||
|
||
Breasted, James H., and Carl F. Huth, Jr. *A
|
||
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|
||
Chicago: Denoyer-Geppert Company, 1918.
|
||
|
||
Buzon, Michele R., Stuart Tyson Smith, and
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||
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||
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||
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||
|
||
Capo Chichi, Sandro. "On the Relationship between Meroitic
|
||
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||
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||
|
||
Challis, Debbie. *The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic
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||
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|
||
|
||
Davies, Vanessa. "Egypt and Egyptology in the Pan-African
|
||
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|
||
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||
|
||
---------. "Pauline Hopkins' Literary Egyptology."
|
||
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|
||
|
||
---------. *Peace in Ancient Egypt*. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
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||
|
||
---------. "W. E. B. Du Bois, a new voice in Egyptology's
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||
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||
|
||
Dawood, Azra. "Building Protestant Modernism: John D.
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||
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||
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||
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||
---------. "Failure to Engage: The Breasted-Rockefeller
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||
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||
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||
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||
Doyon, Wendy. "On Archaeological Labor in Modern Egypt."
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||
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||
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[^1]: Terrell, *A Colored Woman*, p. 191. The author would
|
||
like to thank the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Oriental Institute
|
||
Museum Archives, and the University of Chicago Special Collections
|
||
for permission to publish their materials in this article.
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||
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||
[^2]: Scott and Stowe, *Booker T.
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Washington*, p. 153.
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||
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||
[^3]: Terrell, *A Colored Woman*, pp. 190--191.
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||
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||
[^4]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, pp. 1--2.
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||
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||
[^5]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, pp. 8--9.
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||
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||
[^6]: Washington, "The Fruits of Industrial Training."
|
||
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||
[^7]: Du Bois, *The Souls of Black Folk*, p. 67.
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||
|
||
[^8]: Washington, *Character Building*, pp. 97--98.
|
||
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||
[^9]: Du Bois, "Lecture in Baltimore," pp. 76--77.
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||
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||
[^10]: "Seeks No Social Equality" *The Daily Maroon*, December 11, 1906,
|
||
p. 3, available online:
|
||
campub.lib.uchicago.edu/search/?f1-title=Daily%20Maroon. Note that
|
||
the issue is mistakenly catalogued under the date November 12, 1906.
|
||
|
||
[^11]: On Washington's motives behind his rhetoric, see, for example,
|
||
Hall, *Black Separatism and Social Reality*, and more
|
||
recently Bieze and Gasman, *Booker T.
|
||
Washington Rediscovered*.
|
||
|
||
[^12]: For more on Terrell's impact in that sphere, see
|
||
Haley, "Black Feminist Thought and Classics."
|
||
|
||
[^13]: Terrell, *A Colored Woman*, pp. 191--193.
|
||
|
||
[^14]: Williams, *Rethinking Race*, p. 62.
|
||
|
||
[^15]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, pp. 8--11.
|
||
|
||
[^16]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, pp. 15--19.
|
||
|
||
[^17]: Du Bois, *The Autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois*,
|
||
pp. 126--28; Lewis, *W. E. B. Du Bois*, pp. 45, 69.
|
||
|
||
[^18]: Du Bois, *Darkwater*, p. 15.
|
||
|
||
[^19]: Davies, "W. E. B. Du Bois."
|
||
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||
[^20]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, p. 126.
|
||
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||
[^21]: For those figures, see Concerning circulation of the Crisis,
|
||
1918. Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868--1963 (MS
|
||
312), Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives
|
||
Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
|
||
|
||
[^22]: Goodspeed, *William Rainey Harper*, p. 47.
|
||
|
||
[^23]: Harper, *The Trend in Higher Education*, pp.
|
||
378--382. Harper was one of the founders of Joliet Junior College,
|
||
the first public community college in the United States.
|
||
|
||
[^24]: *The Industrial Art League*, \[p. 4\]. See also
|
||
Triggs, *Chapters in the History*.
|
||
|
||
[^25]: Harlan, *The Booker T. Washington Papers, Volume
|
||
1*, p. 84.
|
||
|
||
[^26]: Harlan, *The Booker T. Washington Papers, Volume
|
||
4*, pp. 472--473.
|
||
|
||
[^27]: Washington, *Up from Slavery*, pp. 253--54.
|
||
|
||
[^28]: *Official Program of the National Peace Jubilee*.
|
||
|
||
[^29]: Bieze, *Booker T. Washington*, pp. 97--98.
|
||
|
||
[^30]: University of Chicago. Office of the President. Harper, Judson
|
||
and Burton Administrations. Records, 85, 14, Hanna Holborn Gray
|
||
Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
|
||
|
||
[^31]: Rosenwald's philanthropic fund was dedicated to promoting
|
||
technical education, supporting African American artists and
|
||
intellectuals, and piloting a program for treating syphilis that
|
||
when taken over by the federal government deceitfully harmed the
|
||
African Americans research participants; [Feiler]{.smallcaps}, *A
|
||
Better Life for Their Children*.
|
||
|
||
[^32]: "The University Record," *University of Chicago Magazine* 5,5
|
||
(March 1913), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 159. Hanna
|
||
Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of
|
||
Chicago Library.
|
||
|
||
[^33]: "Events and Discussion," *University of Chicago Magazine* 4,8
|
||
(July 1912), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 293--96. Hanna
|
||
Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of
|
||
Chicago Library.
|
||
|
||
[^34]: "Events and Discussion," *University of Chicago Magazine* 4,8
|
||
(July 1912), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 297. Hanna
|
||
Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of
|
||
Chicago Library.
|
||
|
||
[^35]: Note that the description in the University's online photographic
|
||
archive ("procession \[...\] to the dedication of the William Rainey
|
||
Harper Memorial Library") is incorrect. Given the fact that
|
||
Washington is wearing a mortarboard and robe, this must have been
|
||
the afternoon procession to the Convocation. See
|
||
photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?show=browse1.xml\|3147.
|
||
|
||
[^36]: Witynski, "100 years ago, Georgiana Simpson made
|
||
history."
|
||
|
||
[^37]: Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," p. 385.
|
||
|
||
[^38]: Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," p. 376.
|
||
|
||
[^39]: Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," p. 384.
|
||
|
||
[^40]: Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," pp. 378--80.
|
||
|
||
[^41]: Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," pp.
|
||
384--385.
|
||
|
||
[^42]: Much on this topic has been written by Reid (e.g.,
|
||
"Indigenous Egyptology") and Quirke (e.g., "Exclusion
|
||
of Egyptians"), as well as many others, for example,
|
||
Riggs, "Colonial Visions"; Doyon, "On
|
||
Archaeological Labor"; Langer, "Informal Colonialism";
|
||
Minor, "Decolonizing Reisner"; Lemos,
|
||
"Can We Decolonize." Note too the statement by Tuck
|
||
and Yang ("Decolonization," pp. 1): "Decolonization
|
||
brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not
|
||
a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies
|
||
and schools."
|
||
|
||
[^43]: Goodspeed, *William Rainey Harper*, pp. 116--17.
|
||
|
||
[^44]: The other is George Reisner, professor at Harvard. See
|
||
Davies, "Egypt and Egyptology."
|
||
|
||
[^45]: Letter from James Henry Breasted to Booker T.
|
||
Washington, April 29, 1909. Breasted, James Henry. Directors
|
||
Correspondence. Records. Box 013, Folder 033, OI Museum Archives of
|
||
the University of Chicago.
|
||
|
||
[^46]: Letter from James Henry Breasted to Booker T.
|
||
Washington, April 29, 1909.
|
||
|
||
[^47]: Letter from James Henry Breasted to Booker T.
|
||
Washington, April 29, 1909. For Williams's perspective on Breasted
|
||
and Washington, see Williams, *Rethinking Race*, pp.
|
||
54, 72.
|
||
|
||
[^48]: Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," p. 376.
|
||
|
||
[^49]: Ambridge described his conclusions as "deeply ethnocentric at
|
||
best"; Ambridge, "Imperialism and Racial Geography,"
|
||
p. 13.
|
||
|
||
[^50]: The story of the original series of events and the inquiry is
|
||
recounted by the person whose research resulted in a presidential
|
||
pardon: Baker, *The Brownsville Texas Incident*.
|
||
|
||
[^51]: Baker, *The Brownsville Texas Incident*, p. 13.
|
||
|
||
[^52]: Baker, *The Brownsville Texas Incident*, p. 219;
|
||
Lusane, *The Black History of the White House*.
|
||
|
||
[^53]: Baker, *The Brownsville Texas Incident*, p. 240.
|
||
|
||
[^54]: Terrell, "Secretary Taft and the Negro Soldiers."
|
||
|
||
[^55]: Terrell, *A Colored Woman*, p. 278.
|
||
|
||
[^56]: Letter from Booker T. Washington to James Henry
|
||
Breasted, May 6, 1909. Directors Correspondence. Records. Box 013,
|
||
Folder 033, OI Museum Archives of the University of Chicago.
|
||
|
||
[^57]: Letter from Booker T. Washington to James Henry
|
||
Breasted, May 6, 1909.
|
||
|
||
[^58]: Histories of Egyptology consistently avoid engaging with the
|
||
scholarship of African descended scholars both in the US and in
|
||
Africa outside of Egypt, for example, Thomas,
|
||
*American Discovery*; Thompson, *Wonderful Things*;
|
||
Bednarski, Dodson, and Ikram, *History
|
||
of World Egyptology*.
|
||
|
||
[^59]: Beatty and Davies, "African
|
||
Americans"; Davies, "Egypt and Egyptology";
|
||
Davies, "Pauline Hopkins' Literary Egyptology";
|
||
Davies, "W. E. B. Du Bois."
|
||
|
||
[^60]: On the formation of the question of the racial identity of
|
||
ancient Egyptians, which arose among White researchers as "Europeans
|
||
were becoming increasingly invested in the idea of their own
|
||
preeminence," and Morton, Nott, and Gliddon, who popularized the
|
||
idea that the ancient Egyptians were White, see
|
||
Bernasconi, "Black Skin, White Skulls." Also
|
||
Smith, "Stranger in a Strange Land." On the work of
|
||
Galton and Pearson, who worked with Egyptologist Flinders Petrie,
|
||
see Challis, *The Archaeology of Race*. One of
|
||
Breasted's sources for his *Ancient Times* book who aligned with
|
||
these perspectives is Parsons, cited below.
|
||
|
||
[^61]: Mudimbe, *The Invention of Africa*, lays out the
|
||
colonialist view of "Africa." I learned about this work from the
|
||
discussion in TallBear, *Native American DNA*, p. 147.
|
||
See also Wengrow, "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of
|
||
Power," p. 134, who notes "The claim that Ancient Egypt arose upon
|
||
'African foundations' constitutes a powerful but vague rhetorical
|
||
statement, which implies a historical relationship between what are,
|
||
in reality, two relatively modern categories ('Africa' and 'Ancient
|
||
Egypt'), both subject to a variety of possible understandings."
|
||
|
||
[^62]: See n. 112.
|
||
|
||
[^63]: Washington, *The Man Farthest Down*, p. 241.
|
||
|
||
[^64]: The set included an abridged student atlas, an unabridged atlas
|
||
"especially suitable for teachers," and an accompanying teacher's
|
||
manual. See Breasted and Huth, *A
|
||
Teacher's Manual*; also *European History Atlas*.
|
||
|
||
[^65]: Breasted, *Ancient Times*, 2nd ed, p. 13.
|
||
|
||
[^66]: See his discussion of now-discredited theories about the
|
||
differing head shapes among so-called races and his discussion of
|
||
the "Semitic race," as if race were linked to language family;
|
||
Breasted, *Ancient Times*, 2nd ed, pp. 131 note, 160.
|
||
For more on this issue, see Ambridge, "Imperialism and
|
||
Racial Geography"; Ambridge, *History and Narrative*.
|
||
|
||
[^67]: Williams, *Rethinking Race*, pp. 7--8.
|
||
|
||
[^68]: Teslow, *Constructing Race*, p. 68. Note that Boas
|
||
was not without prejudice to Africans, as Teslow outlines.
|
||
|
||
[^69]: Keita, "Studies and Comments," p. 130.
|
||
|
||
[^70]: Keita, "Ancient Egyptian 'Origins' and 'Identity.'"
|
||
See also Templeton, "Human Races," p. 646: "Humans
|
||
show only modest levels of differentiation among populations when
|
||
compared to other large-bodied mammals, and this level of
|
||
differentia- tion is well below the usual threshold used to identify
|
||
sub- species (races) in nonhuman species. Hence, human races do not
|
||
exist under the traditional concept of a subspecies as being a
|
||
geographically circumscribed population showing sharp genetic
|
||
differentiation."
|
||
|
||
[^71]: Keita, "Studies and Comments," p. 129. For more on
|
||
the mistaken idea of "purity" in this context, see
|
||
TallBear, "The Emergence, Politics, and Marketplace."
|
||
|
||
[^72]: Smith, 'Backwater Puritans'?, p. 4.
|
||
|
||
[^73]: Breasted, *Ancient Times*, 2nd ed, p. 133.
|
||
|
||
[^74]: Williams, *When the Sahara Was Green*.
|
||
|
||
[^75]: Breasted, *A History of Egypt*, p. 25;
|
||
Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," pp. 378--80.
|
||
|
||
[^76]: Breasted, *A History of Egypt*, p. 25;
|
||
Breasted, "Recovery and Decipherment," pp. 378--80.
|
||
|
||
[^77]: Smith, 'Backwater Puritans'?, p. 4.
|
||
|
||
[^78]: "What the archaeological work is bringing to light, though, is
|
||
the irrelevance of the race-based theory, as cultural identities do
|
||
not necessarily match or relate to race"; Gatto, "The
|
||
Nubian Pastoral Culture," p. 21.
|
||
|
||
[^79]: See, for example, Breasted, *Ancient Times*, 2nd
|
||
ed, pp. 767, 770. His division of the continent of Africa repeated
|
||
claims made by earlier writers. Parsons, a source cited in his
|
||
second edition of *Ancient Times*, both mischaracterized Egypt as
|
||
cut off from other population groups ("the most isolated nation of
|
||
the Western world in early times") and mistakenly entertained the
|
||
idea that the culture to because of biological circumstances ("Or
|
||
was there a touch of genius in the ancient Egyptian blood \[the
|
||
result of a fortunate crossing of races or perhaps simply of slow
|
||
evolution within a pure breed\] that lifted the Egyptian mind above
|
||
the other peoples of Africa?") before launching into a rambling
|
||
explanation of how "scientists have scarcely begun to understand the
|
||
conditions which are favorable to greatness," which then leads him
|
||
to essentially give the reader permission to be racist: "The truth
|
||
is that anthropology can help very little as yet in solving the
|
||
great racial problems. Man will have to rely upon his old racial
|
||
instincts." See Parsons, *The Stream of History*, pp.
|
||
200, 143, 145--46.
|
||
|
||
[^80]: For example, a recent study dispenses with the rather simplistic
|
||
idea that the predynastic population of the northern Nile Valley was
|
||
essentially replaced by a largescale migration of people from the
|
||
south (Naqada). Instead, the study shows that migration occurred in
|
||
northern and southern directions. See Keita, "Mass
|
||
Population Migration."
|
||
|
||
[^81]: Keita, "Studies and Comments," p. 130.
|
||
|
||
[^82]: Breasted, *A History of Egypt*, p. 26.
|
||
|
||
[^83]: Bernasconi, "Crossed Lines," p. 227.
|
||
|
||
[^84]: Bernasconi, "Crossed Lines," p. 226.
|
||
|
||
[^85]: "After the Glacial Age, when the ice, which had pushed far south
|
||
across large portions of Europe and Asia, had retreated for the last
|
||
time, it was the men of the Great White Race who moved in and
|
||
occupied these formerly ice-bound regions"; Breasted,
|
||
*Ancient Times*, 2nd ed, p. 12 note.
|
||
|
||
[^86]: Breasted, *Ancient Times*, 2nd ed, p. 12 note.
|
||
|
||
[^87]: Breasted, *The Conquest of Civilization*, p. 704.
|
||
|
||
[^88]: Breasted, *The Conquest of Civilization*, pp.
|
||
xii--xiii.
|
||
|
||
[^89]: In a biography of Breasted written for the National Academy of
|
||
Sciences, John Wilson of the Oriental Institute falteringly tries to
|
||
defend Breasted's characterization of "an upward line" of "man's
|
||
course" through history, but the effort falls terribly flat.
|
||
Wilson, "James Henry Breasted," p. 111.
|
||
|
||
[^90]: Breasted, *Ancient Times*, p. 25. By the book's
|
||
second edition, his narrative had softened: "After men began
|
||
cultivating food in the field and raising it on the hoof, they
|
||
became for the first time food-producers. Being therefore able to
|
||
produce food at home, they found it less necessary to go out as
|
||
hunters and kill wild animals for food. The wandering life of
|
||
hunting, therefore, gradually changed"; Breasted,
|
||
*Ancient Times*, 2nd ed, p. 29.
|
||
|
||
[^91]: Letter from James Henry Breasted to Mr.
|
||
Rockefeller. Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller,
|
||
Jr., Series 2 (FA335), Box 41, Folder 368, Rockefeller Archive
|
||
Center.
|
||
|
||
[^92]: Dawood, "Failure to Engage"; Dawood,
|
||
"Building Protestant Modernism."
|
||
|
||
[^93]: Letter from James Henry Breasted to Mrs.
|
||
Rockefeller. Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller, Abby Aldrich
|
||
Rockefeller, AA (FA336), Box 2, Folder 23, Rockefeller Archive
|
||
Center.
|
||
|
||
[^94]: On the issue of the museum as it pertained to contemporary
|
||
Egyptian politics, see Abt, "Toward a Historian's
|
||
Laboratory"; Abt, *American Egyptologist*.
|
||
|
||
[^95]: Letter from James Henry Breasted to Mrs.
|
||
Rockefeller. Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller, Abby Aldrich
|
||
Rockefeller, AA (FA336), Box 2, Folder 23, Rockefeller Archive
|
||
Center.
|
||
|
||
[^96]: Abt, "Toward a Historian's Laboratory," p. 177.
|
||
|
||
[^97]: Baker, Brawley, and
|
||
Marks, "Effects of Untreated Syphilis."
|
||
|
||
[^98]: Much has been written about these injustices from the perspective
|
||
of public health and medicine, as well as the social sciences. I
|
||
choose to focus on Mr. Gray's narrative because of his involvement
|
||
with the legal case that resulted in some compensation for the
|
||
victims and the Belmont Report and subsequent laws protecting humans
|
||
as subjects of research; Gray, *The Tuskegee Syphilis
|
||
Study*, pp. 39--42.
|
||
|
||
[^99]: Available at
|
||
https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/index.html.
|
||
|
||
[^100]: Lemos, "Can We Decolonize," p. 13.
|
||
|
||
[^101]: Gray, *The Tuskegee Syphilis Study*, pp. 45--46.
|
||
|
||
[^102]: TallBear, *Native American DNA*, p. 146.
|
||
|
||
[^103]: TallBear, *Native American DNA*, pp. 146--47. In
|
||
assessing the data that DNA testing companies provide to consumers
|
||
about their own genetic material, she writes, "Thus we must ask for
|
||
whom are particular forms of genetic knowledge power (or profit),
|
||
and at whose expense?" TallBear, "The Emergence,
|
||
Politics, and Marketplace," p. 22.
|
||
|
||
[^104]: Schuenemann, "Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes."
|
||
|
||
[^105]: Gourdine, Keita,
|
||
Gourdine, and Anselin, "Ancient Egyptian
|
||
Genomes."
|
||
|
||
[^106]: Asociación ANDES, "ANDES Communiqué." I found this
|
||
source via TallBear, *Native American DNA*, p. 194.
|
||
|
||
[^107]: TallBear, *Native American DNA*, p. 153.
|
||
|
||
[^108]: Keita, "Studies and Comments," p. 149.
|
||
|
||
[^109]: On ethnic stereotypes, see Smith, *Wretched Kush*,
|
||
pp. 6--7. But note that "there are no texts from the Egyptians or
|
||
Kushites that present an identification scheme of peoples
|
||
*designated by their color*" (emphasis in the original);
|
||
Keita, "Ideas about 'Race,'" p. 100. On the formal art
|
||
of temple and elite tomb contexts as a vehicle for the expression of
|
||
state ideology, see Smith, *Wretched Kush*, esp. chap.
|
||
7; Davies, *Peace in Ancient Egypt*, esp. pp. 12--13.
|
||
|
||
[^110]: Keita, "Ideas about 'Race,'" p. 110.
|
||
|
||
[^111]: Keita, "Ancient Egyptian 'Origins' and
|
||
'Identity;'" Keita, "Ideas about 'Race,'" p. 112, 116.
|
||
|
||
[^112]: See n. 59 for some articles that give examples of scholars doing
|
||
this work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
|
||
Another famous example is the work of the Senegalese scholar Cheikh
|
||
Anta Diop. More recent examples include [Ashby]{.smallcaps} and
|
||
Adodo, "Nubia as a Place of Refuge";
|
||
Buzon, Smith, and
|
||
Simonetti, "Entanglement"; Capo Chichi,
|
||
"On the Relationship"; Faraji, *The Roots of Nubian
|
||
Christianity*; Gatto, "The Nubian Pastoral Culture";
|
||
Hansberry, *Pillars in Ethiopian History*;
|
||
Hassan, "Memorabilia"; Heard,
|
||
"Barbarians at the Gate"; Jaggs, "Maat - Iwa";
|
||
Keita, "Ancient Egyptian 'Origins' and 'Identity'";
|
||
Lemos, "Beyond Cultural Entanglements";
|
||
Malvoisin, "Geometry and Giraffes";
|
||
Monroe, "Animals in the Kerma Afterlife";
|
||
Smith, "'Backwater Puritans'?"; Somet,
|
||
*L'Égypte ancienne*; Wengrow, "Landscapes of
|
||
Knowledge."
|
||
|
||
[^113]: On these issues, see Sabry, "Anti-blackness in
|
||
Egypt"; Abd el-Gawad and Stevenson, "Egypt's Dispersed
|
||
Heritage"; Hassan, "African Dimension."
|
||
|
||
[^114]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, p. 149.
|
||
|
||
[^115]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, p. 148.
|
||
|
||
[^116]: Washington, *Up From Slavery*, pp. 130--31.
|