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Primary sourceNewspaper article13 March 1903

Niggers in the White House

13 March 1903

A racist poem printed in the Kentucky New Era newspaper in 1903, attacking Booker T. Washington's 1901 White House dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt.

This racist poem attacks Washington directly over his 1901 White House dinner with Roosevelt, showing the backlash his access to power provoked.

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Scan of a newspaper column with a boxed headline containing a racial slur and the subtitle 'Six Months Hence.' Below are two columns of printed verse, signed by an unchained poet in Democratic Leader, Missouri.
"Niggers in the White House," Kentucky New Era, 13 March 1903.

About this source

What it is

This is a scanned column from the Kentucky New Era newspaper, printed on 13 March 1903. It carries a boxed headline using a racial slur and the subtitle "Six Months Hence," followed by printed verse credited to a writer in a Missouri paper called the Democratic Leader.

Why it matters

The poem was written in reaction to Booker T. Washington's dinner at the White House with President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. That dinner, where a Black man sat as a guest at the president's table, provoked fury among many white Southerners who saw it as a threat to racial segregation. This newspaper poem is a primary example of that backlash, using crude racist stereotypes to mock Black people in positions of respect or influence.

Look closer

  • Why might a newspaper choose to print a poem like this instead of a straightforward news report?
  • What does the anger in this poem tell us about the racial attitudes of the time?
  • How might Washington have responded to seeing something like this printed about him?

This newspaper article is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Booker T. Washington on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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