Booker T. Washington: LSE

"One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little coloured school in our town.

In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to the two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not only was the school established for the members of any race, but the opportunities that it provided by which poor but worthy students could work out all or a part of the cost of a board, and at the same time be taught some trade or industry.

As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia..."

"In the early days we had very few students who had been used to handling carpenters’ tools, and the bedsteads made by the students then were very rough and very weak. Not unfrequently when I went into the students’ rooms in the morning I would find at least two bedsteads lying about on the floor. The problem of providing mattresses was a difficult one to solve. We finally mastered this, however, by getting some cheap cloth and sewing pieces of this together as to make large bags... The plan of having the students make the furniture is still followed, but the number of pieces in a room has been increased, and the workmanship has so improved that little fault can be found with the articles now. One thing that I have always insisted upon at Tuskegee is that everywhere there should be absolute cleanliness. Over and over again the students were reminded in those first years—and are reminded now—that people would excuse us for our poverty, for our lack of comforts and conveniences, but that they would not excuse us for dirt."

The American educator, author and orator Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) is, overall a good example of the LSE type and its approach to social problems. If there was any noticeable accent at all, it could be EIE for his oratory and emotional inspiration, but it's unlikely to be particularly strong. After all, Qe-ish qualities like insisting on excellence and cleanliness are already characteristic of the LSE type.

His whole life, Washington was a workaholic. After his family was emancipated, he, in Wikipedia's phrasing, "painstakingly" taught himself to read. As he recalled in his autobiography, Up from Slavery, once he learned about Hampton Institute, a school established in Virginia to educate freedmen and their descendants, he immediately rushed there, despite having to work as a janitor to pay for his studies. In them, he excelled enough for the president of the Institute, S. Armstrong, to recommend the fairly young 25-year-old Washington as the leader of Tuskegee Institute, a teachers' college in Alabama. With the type's characteristic responsibility, Washington never wavered in his mission, building Tuskegee into a model institution — proud of its order, discipline, and productivity. "Students followed a rigid schedule of study and work, arising at five in the morning and retiring at nine-thirty at night" — a hard worker himself, LSE also demands it from others.

The second quote is illustrative on his method: he was focused on practical education — farming, trades, domestic skills — more than abstract theory, in order to teach other black Americans to do the same, and insisted on sensory cleanliness as a major part of it. His theory of black advancement was that black people will prove themselves useful through their practical skills, that African Americans should "concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South" — quite socionically telling, especially compared to other black activists like Du Bois, who made an argument for civil rights from a more abstract principle, insisting that demanding proof of usefulness first concedes too much. What type other than the Workaholic No. 1 of the whole socion insists on prosaic hard work as the way forward? In fact, despite having decent powers of emotional suggestion himself, Washington opposed increasing agitation, believing it to be counter-productive.

Washington managed to persuade wealthy whites to donate to his institute by appealing to the values of "industry, thrift, intelligence and property." This is he eventually got the invitation from Theodore Roosevelt to dine with him at the White House. "The means to achieve Washington's vision involved gradualism, economic empowerment, accommodation, ownership of black business, the temporary suspension of equal rights, and starting at the bottom," remarks a book about him  — quite a Delta-style programme. He financed litigation against disfranchisement in secret, not wishing to draw attention to them.

Eventually, the struggle for black equality in the USA demanded more intransigent and ideological people, and "just build harder" wasn't all that was required. Still, as historian Deborah Morowski notes, "The social studies curriculum provided an opportunity for the uplift of African Americans at time when these opportunities were few and far between for black youth. The curriculum provided inspiration for African Americans to advance their standing in society, to change the view of southern whites toward the value of Black people, and ultimately, to advance racial equality." 

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