Columnist
“I had to call upon the president three or four times at the White House, and at all times I found him kind, patient and most cordial, apparently forgetful of the differences in our history. The time of my last visit was but a few days after the election riots … when the colored people throughout the country were feeling gloomy and discouraged.”
That was Booker T. Washington, African-American leader of yesteryear, recalling his historic meetings with President William McKinley at the turn of the 20th century.
Now here’s Bruce Gordon, president of the NAACP and corporate-trained African-American leader of today, recalling his historic White House meeting with President Bush: “He was very direct, as was I. He was very willing to put his emotions on the table. It was an emotional discussion, both sides.”
Washington’s meeting was historic because it was the first time, after years of hostility, that a president sat down with someone claiming to represent the interests of black people. Gordon’s September meeting was historic because it was the first time, after years of hostility, that a president sat down to have a serious discussion with someone from the NAACP. (Bush met with Kweisi Mfume after the latter announced that he was stepping down as the organization’s president.)
Though more than a century separates the two meetings, both provoke similar questions about leadership and access.
Washington wasn’t the first black American to win a president’s attention. Sojourner Truth had a notable, albeit brief, audience with Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Frederick Douglass attended concerts at the White House as a guest of Rutherford B. Hayes. But Washington had several meetings with McKinley, followed by a famous formal dinner at the behest of Theodore Roosevelt.
Though few could deny Washington’s accomplishments in industry and education, many blacks condemned his willingness to accept segregation in exchange for economic and other advances. They derided him as “The Great Accommodator” who presumed to speak on behalf of all black Americans, in a time when most of them struggled against the same type and degree of oppression.
Gordon and his peers operate in a vastly changed landscape that includes a largely dissolute and apathetic black middle class. Still, Hurricane Katrina and its racially tinged aftermath have stirred in the poor and compassionate those feelings of gloom and discouragement so similar to the ones Washington noted long ago. And the same question remains: Can anyone speak on behalf of all African Americans?
On his second visit to the White House on Dec. 7, Gordon was accompanied by Donna Brazile, a strategist for the Democratic Party; Dorothy Height, retired president of the National Council of Negro Women; Debra Lee, chief operating officer of BET-TV; Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League; Ted Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; the Rev. William Shaw of the National Baptist Convention; H. Patrick Swygert, president of Howard University; and Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
The meeting stemmed, Gordon said, from his suggestion that Bush meet with “African-American leaders that really were representatives of our community.”
It all depends, I suppose, on your definition of “leader.” Some of the folks in Gordon’s company are elected heads of national organizations and can be said to represent a measurable constituency. But does that fact alone mean that, Rev. Shaw, for example, can address the concerns of black non-Baptists? And can Debra Lee, who runs a television network best known for its sexist, misogynist rap videos, effectively “lead” the millions of African Americans who scorn such fare?
It is a question worth asking as well to people such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who, interestingly, were not invited to the meeting. While they are answering, they can also tell us what methods – polls? talk radio? community forums? – they are using to determine exactly what’s on black folks’ minds. When non-elected African Americans, however prominent and successful they may be, aspire to leadership, they need to be able to demonstrate who they are speaking for and how many are in that privileged group. Just like in Booker T. Washington’s day, they must have someone to answer to.
A former reporter for the American, Jabari Asim is a columnist for the Washington Post. His e-mail address is asimj@washpost.com.