‘Swift growing South’: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington and The Tuskegee Song (1902)

“My dear Mr. Washington, I have your letter and note your objections to the song. In the first place, your objections to the line “Swift growing South” is not well taken because a song is judged not by the hundred of years that it lived but from the time at which it was written, and the “swift growing” only indicated what the South has been, and will contrast with what it may achieve or any failure it may make. The “Star Spangled Banner” was written for the time and although we may not be watching the Stars and Stripes waving from ramparts amid shot and shell, the song seems to be going pretty fairly still. As to the industrial idea, I have done merely what the school itself has done but I will make this concession of changing the fourth line of the third stanza into “Worth of our minds and our hands,” although it is not an easy to sing. The bible I cannot bring in. The exigencies of verse will hardly allow a paraphrase of it or an auctioneer’s list, and so I am afraid that I shall have to disappoint Mr. Penney as to that…” “From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Booker T. Washington,” Washington D.C. January 23, 1902.”

In what may perhaps be one of the more humorous yet profoundly historic communications in all of Booker T. Washington’s letters is the one that led to the eventual creation of the most rehearsed lyrics in Tuskegee Institute’s long history: “The Tuskegee Song.” Mr. Washington throughout his lifetime had dealt with strong, youthful and ingenious personalities without taking personal affront or referring to it as ego or arrogance. (For he knew that their talents were necessary for the upbuilding and advancement of Tuskegee.) He successfully recruited Emmett J.Scott to become his chief of staff; He managed the talent and ego of T. Thomas Fortune to represent Tuskegee in the then Negro press. He recruited perhaps the greatest professor and researcher in Tuskegee’s history George Washington Carver. (Though he was unsuccessful in recruiting W.E.B. Du Bois who technically reached out first seeking employment at Tuskegee, he would have certainly created a pathway for their partnership.)

All the same, here we find Washington recruiting the talented but deeply troubled and short-lived life of Paul Laurence Dunbar to write the school’s official song: “The Tuskegee Song.” (A song which might not have been were it not for this gifted poet’s insistence even against Mr. Washington’s “objections’ to some of the lyrics.)

Dunbar’s rebuffs to Washington’s reveals a wit and sarcasm that though it might have infuriated Washington, we have no record of it. In response to Washington’s suggestion to remove the ‘Swift growing South’ due to its possible anachronistic symbolism, Dunbar shrewdly—and very comically— made the comparison to the nation’s anthem noting that the “Stars and Stripes [no longer are] waving from ramparts amid shot and shell.” Even Washington’s keen perception might have given this a chuckle. Yet and still, Dunbar conceded to one verse being changed at Washington’s suggestion, the “Worth of our minds and our hands.” This however did not come without perhaps a parting barb from Dunbar that “it is not easy to sing.” On one of the final points of disagreement was the bible to which in all finality Dun bar replied: “The Bible I cannot bring in.”

Notwithstanding, this communication from Dunbar to Washington during the creation of The Tuskegee Song’s, we would be remiss if we did not understand the admiration Dunbar had for Booker T. Washington. For he wrote a poem in tribute to Mr. Washington and in turn Mr. Washington gave him perhaps a greater honor in writing “The Tuskegee Song,” which still is in existence at this present day.