Emmett Jay Scott (February 13, 1873 – December 12, 1957) was an African American journalist, newspaper editor, academic, and government official who was Booker T. Washington's closest advisor at the Tuskegee Institute. He was responsible for maintaining Washington's nationwide "Tuskegee machine," with its close links to black business leadership, white philanthropists, and Republican politicians from the local level to the White House.
After Washington's death, Scott lost his Tuskegee connection, but moved to Washington, D.C., as Special Advisor of Black Affairs to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Scott was the highest-ranking African American in DemocratWoodrow Wilson's presidential administration.[2] After 1919, he was less and less visible in national affairs, with the NAACP largely assuming the leadership role that Booker T. Washington had dominated.
Biography
Early life and education
Emmett Jay Scott was born in Houston, Texas, in 1873, the son of former slaves Horace Lacy Scott and Emma Kyle.[3] He began his studies at Wiley College in 1887, but left 3 years later to pursue a career in journalism.[3]
Journalism
Scott worked at the white-owned The Houston Post as a janitor before working his way up to messenger and eventually reporter.[3] He and friends knew that the city's African-American community was not receiving adequate coverage. Scott joined Charles N. Love and Jack Tibbitto in founding Houston's first African-American newspaper, the Texas Freeman.[4] Scott became editor soon after the newspaper began circulation.[3] His leadership expanded the Texas Freeman's presence in the Houston region, making it a prominent publication throughout Texas.[3]
Tuskegee Institute activities
In Houston Scott promoted Booker T. Washington, who was developing the Tuskegee Institute. Washington was impressed and in 1897 hired Scott as his personal secretary, publicity chief and top advisor. Scott had a major role in management of the college, fundraising, and building Washington's national networks of black businessmen and white philanthropists. Indeed he was known as the “Architect of the Tuskegee Machine.”[5]
On the side Scott was a real estate investor with ties to the banking and insurance industries. He was a founder of the National Negro Business League in 1900 and served as Secretary of that organization from its establishment until 1922.[6]
Scott served as Secretary of the Tuskegee Institute from 1912 until 1917.[6] Scott was also selected as Secretary of the International Congress of the Negro, a conference hosted by the Tuskegee Institute in 1912.[6] Although he was heir apparent to take the helm as principal of Tuskegee Institute following Washington's death in 1915, the trustees passed over Scott to name Robert Russa Moton, formerly of the Hampton Institute, to the position.[6]
Liberia
Scott at the docks, New York City, 1909
Scott reported as part of a group sent to the country from the U.S. government.[7] He worked with Booker T. Washington and took his place after Washington determined travel to Liberia would take him away from his other work for too long.[7][8]
World War I activity
After the election of President Woodrow Wilson, as the United States moved closer to war, Scott was appointed as Special Assistant for Negro Affairs to the Secretary of WarNewton D. Baker. Scott was the highest-ranking African-American in the administration. He selected William Henry Davis to serve as his own assistant and staff manager, helping to ensure blacks were treated fairly by the War Department.
In June 1918, Scott organized a meeting of African-American journalists and business leaders to recommend a Black journalist to the U.S. War Department for reporting on the Negro troops in World War I. Ralph Waldo Tyler was selected to report on the Black troops at the front, and he became the first African-American foreign war correspondent. Tyler's reports were screened by the U.S. Committee on Public Information, then they were reviewed by Scott. He selected letters to be syndicated through the Black press.[9]
After the war, Scott wrote his own history of this period, Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919) featuring a preface by Secretary Baker and foreword by General John Pershing.[9]
Later career
After leaving the War Department in 1919, Scott was named Secretary-Treasurer of Howard University, a position he held until 1933, at which time the Treasurer position was split off. He quarreled with the president and was forced out in 1938.[6]
Scott remained active in Republican politics as a liaison with the black community. He served as an advisor to the public relations staff for every Republican National Convention from 1928 through 1948. He was a paid assistant publicity director of the Republican National Committee from 1939 to 1942. During World War II, Scott was director of employment and personnel relations for Shipyard No. 4 of the Sun Ship Co. in Chester, Pennsylvania. He was a joiner who served on many committees, such as the United States Liberian Commission. He also authored several books.[10][11][12] Scott died in Washington, D.C., in 1957.[1]
Legacy
Historian Eugene Berwanger argues that Scott was in line to succeed Booker T. Washington as the nation's leading African-American spokesman after Washington's death in 1915, but failed to take advantage of that opportunity, allowing the NAACP to instead fill that leadership role. Scott's visibility gradually faded out, apart from within black educational circles. Berwanger suggests the cause was in large part because he insisted on adhering to Washington's accommodation philosophy and refused to support issues popular in the black leadership community, especially national anti-lynching legislation. He lacked Washington's optimism and drive and broad vision; instead, Scott demonstrated expertise in public relations when Washington called the tune but was unable to take the initiative after Washington was gone.[13]
Morgan State University maintains a collection of Scott's papers.[14] His letters to various parties are a valuable historical resource cited in many works.[15]
1 2 3 4 5 6 Robert A. Hill (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: Volume 1: 1826-August 1919. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983; pp. 173-174, fn. 1.
1 2 Bacon, Leonard; Thompson, Joseph Parrish; Storrs, Richard Salter; Beecher, Henry Ward; Leavitt, Joshua; Tilton, Theodore; Bowen, Henry Chandler; Ward, William Hayes; Holt, Hamilton; Franklin, Fabian; Fuller, Harold de Wolf; Herter, Christian Archibald (22 February 2018). "The Independent". S. W. Benecdict – via Google Books.
Berwanger, Eugene H. "Scott, Emmett Jay" in John A. Garraty. ed., Encyclopedia of American Biography ( 1974) pp 974-975.
"Emmett Jay Scott" in Smith, Jessie Carney ed. Notable Black American Men, Book II (Gale, 1998)
Dailey, Maceo Crenshaw. "The Business Life of Emmett Jay Scott." Business History Review 77.4 (2003): 667-686.
Dailey, Maceo Crenshaw. "Neither ‘Uncle Tom’ nor ‘Accommodationist’: Booker T. Washington, Emmett Jay Scott, and Constructionalism." Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South 37 (1995): 20-34.
Dailey Jr, Maceo Crenshaw. "Emmett Jay Scott: The Career of a Secondary Black Leader" (PhD Diss.Howard University, 1983).
Gates, Henry Louis and Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, eds. The African American national biography (2008) 7: 105-106.
Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. Vol. 2 (Oxford UP, 1983). passim.
Masterson, Kristin. "Emmett J. Scott’S “Official History” Of The African-American Experience In World War One: Negotiating." Creating Knowledge vol 8 (2015) pp: 76-83 online.
Matthews, Carl S. "The Decline of the Tuskegee Machine, 1915-1925: The Abdication of Political Power." Atlantic Quarterly (Autumn 1976). 460-69.
Waller, James Edward. "Emmett Jay Scott: The Public Life of a Private Secretary" (PhD . Diss. University of Maryland, College Park, 1971).
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
William Hooper Councill was a former slave and the first president of Huntsville Normal School, which is today Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in Normal, Alabama.
Robert Russa Moton was an American educator and author. He served as an administrator at Hampton Institute. In 1915 he was named principal of Tuskegee Institute, after the death of founder Booker T. Washington, a position he held for 20 years until retirement in 1935.
The National Negro Business League (NNBL) was an American organization founded in Boston in 1900 by Booker T. Washington to promote the interests of African-American businesses. The mission and main goal of the National Negro Business League was "to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro." It was recognized as "composed of negro men and women who have achieved success along business lines". It grew rapidly with 320 chapters in 1905 and more than 600 chapters in 34 states in 1915.
Monroe Nathan Work was an African-American sociologist who founded the Department of Records and Research at the Tuskegee Institute in 1908. His published works include the Negro Year Book and A Bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America, a bibliography of approximately seventeen thousand references to African Americans.
William Henry Davis was an educator, pharmacist, and a United States government official. In the Woodrow Wilson administration he was appointed as a special assistant to the Secretary of War, the highest position of any African American in the national government.
The Voice of the Negro was a literary periodical aimed at a national audience of African Americans which was published from 1904 to 1907. It was created in Atlanta, Georgia in June 1904 by Austin N. Jenkins, the white manager of the publishing company J. L. Nichols and Company. He gave full control of the magazine to the Black editors John W. E. Bowen, Sr. and Jesse Max Barber.
The Future of the American Negro, a book written in 1899 by American educator Booker T. Washington, set forth his ideas regarding the history of enslaved and freed African-American people and their need for education to advance themselves. It was re-published as a second edition in 1900 and was made available in electronic form in 2008 via Project Gutenberg.
Noel Francis Parrish was an American brigadier general in the United States Air Force who was the white commander of a group of black airmen known as the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. He was a key factor in the program's success and in their units being assigned to combat duty. Parrish was born and raised in the south-east United States; he joined the U.S. Army in 1930. He served in the military from 1930 until 1964, and retired as a brigadier general in 1964.
William Sidney Pittman was an American architect who designed several notable buildings, such as the Zion Baptist Church and the nearby Deanwood Chess House in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He was the son-in-law of Booker T. Washington.
Ralph Waldo Tyler (1860–1921) was an African-American journalist, war correspondent, and government official. He was the only accredited black foreign correspondent specifically reporting on African-American servicemen stationed in France during World War I. His career began in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in the late 1880s, where he held several journalistic positions including editor of the Afro-American; co-founding the short-lived African-American newspaper, The Free American; contributing a Black news column and serving as society editor at the white-owned Columbus Evening Dispatch, and writing for The Ohio State Journal.
Clarissa Scott Delany, neeClarissa Mae Scott (1901–1927) was an African-American poet, essayist, educator and social worker associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
Richard W. Thompson was a journalist and public servant in Indiana and Washington, D.C. He was at various times an editor or managing editor of the Indianapolis Leader, the Indianapolis World, the Indianapolis Freeman and the Washington D.C. Colored American. He was published as a general correspondent in The Colored American, The Washington Post, the Indianapolis Freeman, the Indianapolis World, Atlanta Age, Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, the Cincinnati Rostrum, the Charleston West Virginia Advocate, the Philadelphia Tribune and the Chicago Monitor. His longest-lasting relationship was with the Indianapolis Freeman. In 1896, the black paper, The Leavenworth Herald, edited by Blanche Ketene Bruce, called Thompson the "best newspaper correspondent on the colored press."
Charles Herbert Garvin, M.D. was a prominent African-American physician, writer, and educator in Cleveland, Ohio. He published 26 papers for the Journal of the National Medical Association on subjects ranging from tuberculosis in African-American populations, to the history of the black movement.
Florida J. Wolfe, also known as "Lady Flo", was an African-American socialite, cattle rancher and philanthropist in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez.
The Texas Freeman was a newspaper for African Americans established in 1893 in Houston, Texas. It was established by Charles N. Love along with his wife Lilla as well as Jack Tibbitto, and Emmett J. Scott who became its editor. It was the city's first African American newspaper. On January 3, 1931, the paper merged with the Houston Informer to become the Houston Informer and Texas Freeman.
Gordon David Houston was Professor of English at Howard University, one of the first African-American educators to teach Old English literature and the first African-American from Cambridge to graduate from Harvard University.
Albon L. Holsey was a businessman and advocate for African American businesses. He served as executive secretary of the National Negro Business League. He received a William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes.
Lincoln Memorial Cemetery is a commercial, privately owned, historically Black cemetery located on the south side of Suitland Road in Suitland, Maryland. The cemetery is adjacent to Washington National Cemetery and across the street from the historically white Cedar Hill Cemetery. The cemetery was established in 1927 and is the final resting place of many notable African-Americans, including Walter Washington, Charles Richard Drew, Charles Hamilton Houston, Emmett J Scott, Secretary to Booker T Washington at Tuskegee, Commissioner to Liberia and Author of Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War.
Clement Richardson was an American professor, college president, and author. An African American, he served as president of Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri from 1918 until 1922. He edited The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race which includes a profile on him.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
