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20 The Quick and the Dead Written in 1916, “The Quick and the Dead” is an interesting piece in which Fortune tries to cement his place in African American history . Written in response to George Forbes’ article and the Review’s own editorial on the passing of Booker T. Washington, Fortune asserts that he and not Washington is the successor of Frederick Doug­ lass in the realm of race leadership. He separates the history of race leadership into three parts: 1841–1884, led by Douglass, 1884–1904, led by himself, and 1904–1915, led by Washington. In this piece Fortune also tries to separate himself from Washington’s lack—at least in public—of political agitation. Fortune acknowledges his support for Washington and his policies, but he states that he was never hindered in what he sought to pursue. The Quick and the Dead —AME Church Review 32, no. 4 (April 1916): 247–50 In the A. M. E. Church Review for January, 1916, I find two references to the death, the life and the influence of Dr. Booker T. Washington1 that demand correction of the historical record. As I am personally concerned that the historical record should be made up and kept correctly, I thank you for the opportunity to correct it. Speaking of the death of Mr. Frederick Douglass, in 1895, Mr. George W. Forbes2 says (“The Passing of Booker T. Washington ,” pp. 190–2): Odysseus had passed over the Acheron and none was left to bend the bow of Ulysses. But a new order of things, with a new leader, was already on the horizon. Even if Price3 had lived it is doubtful if he should have held the leadership. He would have at least been but a feeble echo of Douglass, and Douglass was in the end but a linger- The Quick and the Dead (1916) / 193 ing voice of the anti-slavery agitation which had led up to and been thrashed out in the results of the Civil War. The coming of Booker T. Washington, therefore, with the Atlanta speech in this very same year of Douglass’ death, was due more to the changed order of things than to the chance of the speech. In your editorial, “The Prophet of a New Age” (p. 208) you say: “Doctor Washington was called forth at a pivotal hour. The Garrisons and Sumners and Douglasses, with all that noble band of philanthropists and humanitarians, had had their hour. Booker T. Washington caught the spirit and vision of the new age. Questions of Liberty, Justice and Equality, and freedom of opportunity must now retire from the center of the stage. All black Americans must henceforth seek to be useful in practical service to their white neighbors.” You and Mr. Forbes both leave a historical blank of twenty-four years, from 1880–1904, in the leadership of the race, which marks the turning point of the race from slave conditions to those of freedom and opportunity, to be filled in. The idolatry of Doctor Washington has gone to such absurd extremes as to murder all men of the race who divide his labors and influence from those of Mr. Douglass.4 I knew them both. They each had feet of clay, and were also intensely human, sensitive to the last degree as to their own position and equally intolerant and scornful of the others. The leadership of the race should be divided into three parts, as follows: From 1841, when Mr. Douglass made his first address, to 1884, when he married Miss Helen Pitts,5 and lost what influence he had with the race on that account; the astounding position being very generally by the race, as well as by white people, that Mr. Douglass had no more right to marry a white women than Doctor Washington had a long time after to dine with a white president at the White House. It was a period of the Colored American, which Mr. Douglass had been the spokesman for and never the leader of from 1841. In fact, Mr. Douglass confined his activities after the war to losing all the money he had saved in the effort to establish the New National Era at Washington, and in trying to make some more for his old age on the lecture platform and holding federal positions. It is good that he was wise enough to do so; otherwise he would have died as the fool dieth, a pauper. All the time of his...

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