VISUAL ACTIVITY

Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt Dine at the White House Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House in 1901, stirring up a hornet’s nest of controversy that continued into the election of 1904. The Republican campaign piece pictured shows Roosevelt and a light-skinned Washington sitting under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Democrats’ campaign buttons pictured Washington with darker skin and implied that Roosevelt had “painted the White House black” and favored “race mingling.”

READING THE IMAGE: In this Republican image of the famous meeting of Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, what role does skin color play in the depiction?

CONNECTIONS: Why did African Americans in the South continue to ally with the Republican Party?

David J. & Janice L. Frent Collection/Corbis.