Ed Smith Washington Quotations

The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges.

Before Booker T. Washington, we have small business owners but we do not have a philosopher of black entrepreneurship, and that's what Washington was.

A lot of people today look at Booker T. Washington as a Uncle Tom as a sell out to his community. That business tradition that you see celebrated today and BET and any number of successful black enterprises, it starts off with Booker T. Washington.

There were some kind white people out there who provided a loan here or there, or a little bit of land. But Booker T. Washington and his followers knew that they were going to have to draw from their own resources and they knew that the larger white world was looking at them, every day, closely monitoring them.

I think in terms of the specific aspects making Washington different than, say, Atlanta, or even Richmond or many other southern cities is the immediate post-civil war period. The fact that you create Howard University in 1867 just two years after the war ends. No other city that has a black community can claim a Howard.