Booker T Washington & Tadeusz AndrzejBonawentura Kosciuszko
Feb 4, 2019 7:33:02 GMT -7
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Feb 4, 2019 7:33:02 GMT -7
When the great African-American educator and human-rights pioneer Booker T. Washington visited Krakow, Poland, in 1910, he made a special point of paying tribute to a dead white male with the nigh-unpronounceable name of Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko.
"I knew from my school history what Kosciuszko had done for America in its early struggle for independence, " Washington would later write. "I did not know, however, until my attention was called to it in Krakow, what Kosciuszko had done for the freedom and education of my own people. . . . When I visited the tomb of Kosciuszko, I placed a rose on it in the name of my race."
TWENTIETH CENTURY PERSPECTIVES
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), born into slavery, advanced by way of education to become an educator himself first at Hampton Institute in Virginia, became a leading American orator, the founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an African-American leader, and an inspirational author best known for his autobiography, UP FROM SLAVERY and as well, MY LARGER EDUCATION, Being Chapters from My Experience that was published in 1911:
"In the course of my journey across Europe I visited, in the fall of 1910, the ancient city of Cracow, the former captial of Poland...(There) I met a very intelligent American lady...of Polish origin, who turned out to be the wife of the Polish count who was the owner and proprietor of the hotel. It was this lady who advised me to go and visit, while I was in Cracow, the tomb of the Polish patriot, Kosciuszko, whose name I had learned in school as one of those Revolutionary heroes who, when there was no longer any hope of liberty for their own people in the Old World, had crossed the seas to help establish it in the New.
Kosciuszko, I learned, made a will in which be bequeathed part of his property in this country in trust to Thomas Jefferson to be used for the purpose of purchasing the freedom of...(slaves) and giving them instruction in the trades and otherwise.
Seven years after his death, a school (for former) slaves, known as the Kosciuszko School, was established in Newark, New Jersey. The sum left for the benefit of this school amounted to thirteen thousand dollars.
The Polish patriot is buried in the cathedral at Cracow, which is the Westminster Abbey of Poland, and is filled with memorials of the honored names of that country. Kosciuszko lies in a vault beneath the marble floor of the cathedral. As I looked upon his tomb I thought how small the world is after all, and how curiously interwoven are the interests that bind people together. Here I was in this strange land, farther from my home than I ever expected to be in my life, and yet I was paying my respects to a man whom the members of my race owed one of the first permanent schools for them in the United States.
When I visited the tomb of Kosciuszko I placed a rose on it in the name of my race."
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), born into slavery, advanced by way of education to become an educator himself first at Hampton Institute in Virginia, became a leading American orator, the founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an African-American leader, and an inspirational author best known for his autobiography, UP FROM SLAVERY and as well, MY LARGER EDUCATION, Being Chapters from My Experience that was published in 1911:
"In the course of my journey across Europe I visited, in the fall of 1910, the ancient city of Cracow, the former captial of Poland...(There) I met a very intelligent American lady...of Polish origin, who turned out to be the wife of the Polish count who was the owner and proprietor of the hotel. It was this lady who advised me to go and visit, while I was in Cracow, the tomb of the Polish patriot, Kosciuszko, whose name I had learned in school as one of those Revolutionary heroes who, when there was no longer any hope of liberty for their own people in the Old World, had crossed the seas to help establish it in the New.
Kosciuszko, I learned, made a will in which be bequeathed part of his property in this country in trust to Thomas Jefferson to be used for the purpose of purchasing the freedom of...(slaves) and giving them instruction in the trades and otherwise.
Seven years after his death, a school (for former) slaves, known as the Kosciuszko School, was established in Newark, New Jersey. The sum left for the benefit of this school amounted to thirteen thousand dollars.
The Polish patriot is buried in the cathedral at Cracow, which is the Westminster Abbey of Poland, and is filled with memorials of the honored names of that country. Kosciuszko lies in a vault beneath the marble floor of the cathedral. As I looked upon his tomb I thought how small the world is after all, and how curiously interwoven are the interests that bind people together. Here I was in this strange land, farther from my home than I ever expected to be in my life, and yet I was paying my respects to a man whom the members of my race owed one of the first permanent schools for them in the United States.
When I visited the tomb of Kosciuszko I placed a rose on it in the name of my race."
