According to historian C. Vann Woodward, Washington was “The businessman’s gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire. They never had a more loyal exponent.”
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.
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.
If government stayed out of the way and a free market was allowed to flourish, I am confident that institutionalized racism would be less of a problem today than it is - even in the south. Federal intervention was a grave error that has further destroyed individual liberty and the free market.
But it was not a laissez-faire system in the Jim Crow South. There were city ordinances requiring segregation in places that served both blacks and whites. And also, the segregation in real public places, such as courthouses and public schools, should have been outlawed, as it finally was.
Booker T. Washington commemorative coins were issued in 1946-1951. http://www.usrarecoininvestments.com/... They can usually be found at reasonable prices on eBay.
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.
IIRC, Sandefur was a frequent contributor at Liberty magazine in the latter years of its paper publication. Lots of good articles in their on-line archives, mshupe. (http://libertyunbound.com/) Thanks for this excellent article.
Federal intervention was a grave error that has further destroyed individual liberty and the free market.
Booker T. Washington commemorative coins were issued in 1946-1951.
http://www.usrarecoininvestments.com/...
They can usually be found at reasonable prices on eBay.