Booker T. Washington’s Letter to C. Elias Winston (1914)

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My dear Mr. Winston: I regret the delay in answering your letter owing to the fact that I have been off on a fishing trip for a week.

In your case, I am doing something which I very rarely do, and that is to attempt to correct a misrepresentation of my words. I have found by some experience in public life that if one spends his time in attempting to correct false reports, he will rarely do anything in the way of constructive work, and that the time spent in trying to make such corrections could be better spent, in most cases, in some direct effort in the way of progress.

I am making exception in your case, because you have been kind and thoughtful enough to do that which very few people think of doing, and that is to try to find out directly from the individual, himself, the facts concerning his utterances. In most cases, persons simply hear a rumor, or read a garbled report of one’s address and then this report or rumor is passed from one hand to another without anyone...