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Emmett J. Scott - (Afro-Texans) by Maceo C Dailey (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- Reared in Houston (Freedmen's Town), Texas, Emmett J. Scott was a journalist, newspaper editor, government official, author, and chief of staff, adviser, and ghostwriter to Booker T. Washington.
- Author(s): Maceo C Dailey
- 424 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Cultural, Ethnic & Regional
- Series Name: Afro-Texans
Description
About the Book
The first biography of Emmett J. Scott, chief of staff, adviser, and ghostwriter to Booker T. Washington, and power player behind the Tuskegee Institute.Book Synopsis
Reared in Houston (Freedmen's Town), Texas, Emmett J. Scott was a journalist, newspaper editor, government official, author, and chief of staff, adviser, and ghostwriter to Booker T. Washington. Called "the power broker of the Tuskegee Machine," Scott was a Renaissance man, scholar, and political fixer. However, his life has not received a full examination until now.Built upon fifty years of research, Maceo C. Dailey's Emmett J. Scott offers fascinating detail by describing Scott's role in promoting the Tuskegee Institute. Before his 2015 death, Dailey had nearly singular access to the Scott papers at Morgan State University, which have been officially closed for decades. Readers will finally be exposed to Scott's behind-the-scenes contributions to racial uplift and will see his influential role in advancing not only the Tuskegee Institute but also the Booker T. Washington agenda.
Editors Will Guzmán and David H. Jackson Jr. lend their own expertise in bringing Dailey's lifetime project to fruition. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis, a close friend of Dailey's, provides a timely foreword. Former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown, Scott's granddaughter, reflects on his impact and her relationship with the Scott family in the afterword.
Taken together, this work of biography is an impressive reference and an essential endeavor of recovery, one that restores to prominence the life and legacy of Emmett J. Scott.
Review Quotes
"Dailey's well-researched biography of Scott offers an
alternative to the traditional history of Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee
Institute. . . . Dailey provides a vivid and compelling history
of a man known publicly as Washington's liaison but who masterfully became the
architect of the Tuskegee Machine through his behind-the-scenes leadership,
political savviness, and astute personality. Through Dailey's first volume of
Scott's life, we learn that Scott was a race man and a leading 'power broker of
the Tuskegee Machine.'" --Sheena Harris Hayes, Journal of Southern History
90, no. 3 (August 2024)