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Booker T. Washington dinner at the White House

On October 16, 1901, shortly after moving into the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt invited his adviser, the African American spokesman Booker T. Washington, to dine with him and his family. The event provoked an outpouring of condemnation from white politicians and press in the American South.[1] This reaction affected subsequent White House practice and no other African American was invited to dinner for almost thirty years.[2]

Background[edit]

Roosevelt, while Governor of New York, frequently had black guests to dinner and sometimes invited them to sleep over.[3]


This instance was not the first time African Americans were invited to dinner at the White House. In 1798 John Adams had dined in the President's House in Philadelphia with Joseph Bunel (a mulatto representative of the Government of Haiti) and his black wife.[4][5] Black people, including leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, had been received at the White House by Presidents Lincoln, Grant, Hayes and Cleveland. At the invitation of First Lady Lucy Hayes, Marie Selika Williams became the first African American professional musician to appear at the White House.[6]

In popular culture[edit]

A Guest of Honor, the first opera created by Scott Joplin, was based on Washington's dinner at the White House.

1929

Jessie De Priest tea at the White House

List of dining events

Burns, Adam (2019). "Courting white southerners: Theodore Roosevelt’s quest for the heart of the South." American Nineteenth Century History 20.1: 1–18.

Davis, Deborah (2013). . New York City: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-43916982-7.

Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation

Grantham, Dewey W (1958). "" Tennessee Historical Quarterly 17#2: 112–30.

Dinner at the White House: Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, and the South.

Harlan, Louis R (1972). Booker T. Washington: volume 1: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901; pp 304–21. A major scholarly biography.

Norrell, Robert J, 2011. Harvard University Press; pp 243–63. A major scholarly biography.

Up from history: The life of Booker T. Washington

Norrell, Robert J. (Spring 2009). "When Teddy Roosevelt Invited Booker T. Washington to Dine at the White House". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 63 (63). The JBHE Foundation: 70–74.  40407606.

JSTOR

Rose, Cynthia, ed, 2004. "" in American Decades Primary Sources, vol. 1: 1900–1909, Gale, pp. 365–67.

Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington

Sasaki, Takahiro (1986). "." The American Review 1986.20: 48–67.

The ‘Tempest in a Teapot’: The South and Its Reaction to the Roosevelt-Washington Dinner at the White House in October, 1901

Severn, John K.; William Warren Rogers (January 1976). "Theodore Roosevelt Entertains Booker T. Washington: Florida's Reaction to the White House Dinner". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 54 (3). Florida Historical Society: 306–318.  30151288.

JSTOR

White, Arthur O. (January 1973). "Booker T. Washington's Florida Incident, 1903-1904". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 51 (3). Florida Historical Society: 227–249.  30151545.

JSTOR

"The Night President Teddy Roosevelt Invited Booker T. Washington to Dinner". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 35 (35). The JBHE Foundation, Inc: 24–25. Spring 2002. :10.2307/3133821. JSTOR 3133821.

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