Black feminist Activist critiques Washington

Ida Wells Barnett, a Black civil rights activist, feminist, and newspaper editor, "Booker T Washington and His Critics" (1904)

"Industrial education for the Negro is Booker T Washington's hobby . . .

"That one of the most noted of their own race should join with the enemies to their highest progress in condemning the education they had received, has been to . . . [college educated Negroes] a bitter pin. . . .

"No human agency can tell how many black diamonds he buried in the black belt of the South, and the opportunities for discovering them become rarer every day as the schools for thorough training become more cramped and no more are being established."

"Does this mean that the Negro objects to industrial education? By no means. It simply means that he knows by sad experience that industrial education will not stand him in place of political, civil and intellectual liberty, and he objects to being deprived of fundamental rights of American citizenship to the end that one school for industrial training shall flourish. To him it seems like selling a nice's birthright for a mess of pottage."