When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her incendiary novel Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1850, she dreamed of filling the nation's nostrils with the stench of slavery. And so she did. The book created such uproar that Abraham Lincoln listed it among the causes of the Civil War. Stowe had fashioned the novel for just such effect, to transform slavery from abstraction into grieving reality through the incarnation of her characters.
The central character, of course, was the tenderly Christlike Uncle Tom, a moving example of goodness and nobility in the face of crushing wickedness. Not long after the book reached the public, though, something went horribly wrong. A gross distortion was drawn from its pages. Uncle Tom, the symbol of Christian virtue, was transformed, so much so that today the name "Tom" has become an insult. Now, to call a black man a "Tom" is to say that he is a sellout, a betrayer of his race, guilty of the most cringing submission and disgraceful self-abasement. Because such theft of honor is not unusual in our memory of the great and the exemplary, found either in history or the pages of fiction, we should consider this stealing of Uncle Tom more carefully.
In Stowe's novel even the most hardened of slave traders says that Tom combines "all the moral and Christian virtues bound in black morocco." He is a man, we are told, with an "impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith." He is a "Patriarch" among his people, a gentle teacher, and the most trusted of servants to all. Love so graces Tom's life that on bended knee he begs his master to escape the snare of his drunken ways. When this same master is later mortally wounded, it is Tom, not a clergyman, whom he wants praying at his bedside.
This love makes Tom courageous, as well. When the snarling Simon Legree snatches Tom's hymnbook and rages, "I'm your church now!" Stowe tells us that something within the silent black man answered, "No!" Later Tom refuses to flog a woman and tells Legree, "I'm willin' to work night and day, and work while there's life and breath in me; but this yer thing I cant feel it right to do; and Mas'r, I never shall do it,never. Then in another confrontation, Tom proclaims, No! no! no! my soul an't yours, Masr! You havent bought it,ye cant buy it! Its been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it;no matter, no matter, you cant harm me!
Finally, when Legrees rage toward the unbroken Tom drives him to threaten murder, Tom answers, Masr, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, Id give ye my hearts blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul. Id give em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. Oh, Masr! dont bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than twill me! Do the worst you can, my troublesll be over soon; but, if ye dont repent, yours wont never end! As Legree whips the life from Tom in a mad fury of guilt and hate, the dying black man cries, Ye poor miserable crittur!there ant no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul! Then, after speaking once again of his Lord to the attending slaves, he breathes no more.
Such is the legacy of Uncle Tom. Surely his name should be a badge of honor for any people of any race in any time. How is it, then, that the name of this courageously Christlike character has become an insult? How has this epitome of gentleness and forgiveness been used to give such offense? Perhaps the true offense of Uncle Tom is that he is too good. Perhaps he is too convicting, too disturbingly pure. This certainly was the case in Stowes day. Unprotected by weak copyright laws, Stowes character was adapted by stage plays and Tom shows in a manner that distorted the heroic being of the novel. In his place arose a cruel deformity, carefully crafted to appease the wounded pride of the postwar years and affirm the values of the bawdyhouse. Thus Stowes Tom became as lost amid the insulting distortions of her day as his virtuous example is to our own time. Only Tom the insult remains.
This story of the stealing of Uncle Tom provides a parallel to the life and legacy of Booker T. Washington that is too inviting. Today the prevailing view of Washington is that of a sniveling Tom, a man who delayed the struggle for civil rights and betrayed his race to a Jim Crow society. But this is a fiction, as far from the true Washington as Tom the insult is from Harriet Stowes Tom. And the similarities do not end there. Like Stowes character, Washington urged forgiveness for offenses. He demonstrated, as well, that freedom is nothing without character and that the most honorable life is one invested in the lives of others. Above all, Washington, too, proclaimed that the highest life is one rooted in Christlikeness, for in Christ both Stowes Tom and Booker T. Washington found the font of true freedom. For these and other transgressions, Washingtons wisdom and legacy have been obscured by a cruelly concocted Tom myth that has left little of value for our age.
It has not helped that most of the recent literature on Washington has been written for children. True, the example of an illiterate slave child rising by education and character to international fame is a tale the young ought to know. Yet the focus of this approach is on the events of his life rather than the philosophy with which he sought to liberate his race. He is made, then, a symbol rather than a wise man, a parable rather than a prophet. This would be acceptable if there were a larger body of literature that faithfully captures for our time what Washington labored so tirelessly to express to his. But here he has not been well served. His chief biographer, the eminent Lewis R. Harlanwho has written a two-volume biography, edited fourteen volumes of Washingtons papers, and published a book of essaysdoes not seem much enamored of his subject. For him Washington is too flawed and compromising a figure to be of much help in our time. So, aside from the occasional book of! quotes or childrens television specials, there is little offered today to challenge the Tom myth that has Washington entombed.
This is tragic, particularly for a generation that is struggling with the very issues Booker T. Washington addressed with such insight. To an age wracked with racial hatred and division, Washington speaks of a practical yet honorable path to healing. To a generation for which the promise of rights and opportunity has collapsed into a mire of arrogance and vice, Washington sounds the trumpet call to character. Moreover, the economic signs of our time seem to indicate a shift in precisely the direction Washington prepares us forthe rise of a service economy, the priority of trades, the preeminence of technology, the value of excellence, the wisdom of training head, hand, and heart, and the emergence of cultural identity and networking. Coming as it does from a hundred years before us, Washingtons wisdom is amazingly current, often appearing prophetic in the way that all rediscovered truth appears to be at first.
This is not to say, however, that Booker T. Washington was an entirely perfect man. He was, as all men are, quite imperfect. Yet Washingtons legacy has been ravaged by a strange compulsion of this age, a compulsion that robs it of the very counsel of the ancients it suffers so horribly without. Our generation hypocritically insists upon applying to great leaders of the past standards of morality we have stoutly rejected for ourselves. Then because they fail our teststests we ourselves could never passwe discard them, refusing to give them further hearing. Perhaps this reflects our cynicism about ourselves or perhaps we simply wish to blind ourselves to the moral mirror the past holds up for us. Either way, what we forget is that great leaders, like beautiful women, are only made more compelling for their imperfections. We learn from both the splendor and the blemishes, for that is how God has chosen to speak through them. Indeed, the surprise of our age ought not to be that! men are flawed. The surprise ought to be that we are so surprised.
This book, then, is intended neither to elevate Booker T. Washington to sainthood nor to follow the modern trend of mistaking faultfinding for scholarship. Instead, the goal of this work is to briefly review the course of Washingtons life and then to draw from that life those principles and practices that have the power to elevate a people and make them equal to their best. The assumption here is that when the past is considered, the question ought to be asked, How can we live differently for what we have learned? This is the question that the life of Booker T. Washington cries out to answer and his are the kinds of answers that offer fresh winds of wisdom for those willing to soar upon them.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
