McKinlay, a colored man with whom he usually stopped when
in the Capital. The next morning he went to the White House by
appointment for an interview with the President. Since they did not
have time to finish their discussion, the President, in accordance
with the course he had often followed with others under similar
circumstances, invited Washington to come to dinner so that they might
finish their discussion in the evening without loss of time.

In response to this oral invitation he went to the White House at the
appointed time, dined with the President and his family and two other
guests, and after dinner discussed with the President chiefly the
character of individual colored office holders or applicants for
office and, as says Colonel Roosevelt, "the desirability in specific
cases, notably in all offices having to do with the administration of
justice, of getting high-minded and fearless white men into
office--men whom we could be sure would affirmatively protect the
law-abiding Negro's right to life, liberty, and property just exactly
as they protected the rights of law-abiding white men." Also they
discussed the public service of the South so far as the
representatives of the Federal Administration were concerned--the
subject upon which President Roosevelt had wished to consult him. The
next day the bare fact that he had dined with the President was
obscurely announced by the Washington papers as a routine item of
White House news. Some days later, however, an enterprising
correspondent for a Southern paper lifted this unpretentious item from
oblivion and sent it to his paper to be blazoned forth in a front-page
headline. For days and weeks thereafter the Southern press fairly
shrieked with the news of this quiet dinner. The very papers which had
most loudly praised the President for his appointment of a Southern
Democrat to a Federal judgeship now execrated him for inviting to dine
with him the man upon whose recommendation he had made this
appointment.

Mr. Washington was also roundly abused for his "presumption" in daring
to dine at the White House. This was a little illogical in view of the
well-known fact that an invitation to the White House is a summons
rather than an invitation in the ordinary sense. Neither President
Roosevelt nor Mr. Washington issued any statements by way of
explanation or apology. While it was, of course, farthest from the
wishes of either to offend the sensibilities of the South,