When Booker T. Washington died in November 1915, he was mourned by blacks and whites alike as a national hero. Such prominent figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald publicity paid him high tribute. Distinguished journals and newspapers published editorials praising his work and lamenting his passing. The present volume includes much of this response to Washington's death and, in covering the final two years of his life, brings to a close one of the most critically acclaimed documentary projects of the past two decades.''Washington will remain a fascinating figure precisely because of his diversity and ambiguity. Thanks to the first-rate efforts of Louis R. Harlan, Raymond W. Smock, and their associates, Washington is also becoming a more accessible figure. All students of American history are in their debt.''--Richard B. Sherman, American Historical Review ''The Washington Papers continue to provide a rich load of material for social historians. Intelligently and imaginatively edited, they illuminate not only the life of Booker T. Washington but the several worlds in which he lived.''--Allan H. Spear, Journal of American History On the subject of Washington ''There is no better source to consult than Louis R. Harlan's biography and the first . . . volumes of the Washington papers.''--New York Review of Books ''A major enterprise in Black historiography.''--Times Literary Supplement
