booker t washington whitehouse

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: October 16, 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt invites Booker T. Washington to dine at White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country 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. This reaction affected subsequent White House practice and no other African American was invited to dinner for almost thirty years The response from the southern press and politicians was immediate, sustained and vicious. James K. Vardaman, a Democrat from Mississippi, complained that the White House was now, "so saturated with the odor of nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable;" the Memphis Scimitar declared it "the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States," and on 25 October the Missouri Sedalia Sentinel published on its front page a poem entitled "Niggers in the White House," which ended suggesting that either the president's daughter should marry Washington or his son one of Washington's relatives. Senator Benjamin Tillman stated, “Now that Roosevelt has eaten with that nigger Washington, we shall have to kill a thousand niggers to get them back at their places.