e have already quoted, and in which he
characterized racial prejudice as "a cancer gnawing at the heart of
the Republic, that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from
an army without or within."

Very early in his career Washington worked out for himself a perfectly
definite line of conduct in the matter of social mingling with white
people. In the South he scrupulously observed the local customs and
avoided offending the prejudices of the Southerners in so far as was
possible without unduly handicapping his work. For instance, in his
constant travelling throughout the South he not only violated their
customs, but oftentimes their laws, in using sleeping cars, but this
he was obliged to do because he could spare neither the time to travel
by day nor the strength and energy to sit up all night. This
particular Southern prejudice and the laws predicated upon it he was
hence forced to violate, but he did so as a physical necessity to the
accomplishment of his work and not in any sense as a defiance of
custom or law. While in the South he observed Southern customs and
bowed to Southern prejudices, but he declined to be bound by such
customs, laws, and prejudices when in other parts of this country or
the world. Except in the South he allowed himself whatever degree of
social intercourse with the whites seemed best calculated to
accomplish his immediate object and his ultimate aims. He never
accepted purely social invitations from white persons. He always
claimed that he could best satisfy his social desires among his own
people. He believed that the question of so-called "social equality"
between the races was too academic and meaningless to be worthy of
serious discussion.

Probably he never made a more well-considered or illuminating
statement of his personal attitude toward social intercourse with the
dominant race than in a letter to the late Edgar Gardiner Murphy, a
Southerner "of light and leading," author of "The Present South," "The
Basis of Ascendancy," and other notable books on the relations between
the races. Mr. Murphy, as a Southerner, became alarmed at the attacks
upon Booker Washington by certain Southern newspapers and public men
because of his appearance at so-called social functions in the North.
Mr. Murphy, rightly regarding the retention of the favorable opinion
of representative Southern whites as essential to the success of
Washington's work, very naturally feared any course of action whic