That's right, Washington refused to do business with the idiocies of the times and instead embraced free market principles and tended his own business.

Another example of history being written by the victors.

Booker T. Washington was a good man. And I do not endorse collectivism. But the way white people behaved in the South (and I am a white raised in Virginia), I don't believe the South would ever have gotten rid of the institutionalized racism and legally-imposed segregation unless it had been forced to by the Civil Rights struggle. I do not condone the violations of free enterprise brought about by some parts of that struggle (for instance, the part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which treats any privately-owned business that deals with the public as if dealing with the public made that business public property); but still, I don't think the legitimate changes would have been brought about short of political activism.

Professor Timothy Sandefur, at the end of his presentation about self-made man Frederick Douglass, at TOS-Con, recommended highly the new biography of Washington written by Robert Norrell - Up From History.

Great article! Thanks for sharing!