ABSTRACT
The popular conception of Booker T. Washington is one of a provincial accommodationist who was intellectually, politically and geographically isolated from African and world affairs. Nine Tuskeegee graduates worked for various lengths of time in Togo between 1901 and 1909. Their many letters back home to the school provide a rare glimpse of the African-American Negro contact with Africa. A worldwide expose of the forced labour and police brutality in this so-called model colony cast Washington in the role of the defender of the mistreated African and he agreed to the request of Thomas S. Barbour, American organizer of the Congo Reform Association, to use his influence with the US political elite to promote reform in the Belgian Congo. Washington was also contacted by South African Commissioner of Education, E. B. Sargant, who was instructed to devise an education plan for the Orange Free State and Transvaal.
