Booker T. Washington wrote an autobiography and told his story from his own point of view, and many other writers have also offered portraits of the man and his rise to prominence. A reading of several of these versions of Washington's life and personality indicates how different writers treat their material and how they may have different takes on the same events.
Washington is depicted by Schneider as an accommodationist, while Harlan argues that there were other forces at work to make him appear so. Both describe him as the most powerful black leader of his time. Schneider says that Washington exercised more power over the ideas of black Americans in his time than any other leader in history, except perhaps for Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King Jr. (Schneider 57). Harlan notes, however, that Washington's legitimacy has been questioned by blacks in subsequent generations precisely because of his tendencies to accommodate whites (Harlan 2). Schneider refers to Washington as a man who denied an interest in politics and who avoided ideology while acting on both the political and intellectual worlds with great force. Schneider also sees Washington as basically pragmatic and as being so in the spirit of his age. He therefore sought a bargain between the races (Schneider 57), an appealing message at the time, but one easily criticized by later generations more attuned to political confrontation.
Schneider also sees Washington as seeking to control the upper class black community in Boston (Schneider 58), while harlan depicts Washington's role as a leader more as seeking economic development for the whole community than to control the elite (Harlan 3). Washington writes of his work in Boston and elsewhere in a way that suggests he is constantly amazed that people are interested in what he has to say, which is in keeping with the view of him as essentially non-political and non-ideological, but which belies the idea t...