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Scott, Emmett Jay
3 articles on Scott, Emmett Jay
Scott, Emmett J.
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
(b. 13 February 1873; d. 12 December 1957), private secretary and influential assistant to Booker T. Washington, advocate of racial uplift who displayed a lifelong commitment to the goals of the Tuskegee Institute–based educational and political machine and was a prominent black representative in Republican politics. Born in Houston, Texas, in 1873 to Horace and Emma Kyle Scott, Emmett Scottwas surrounded with parents, relatives, and later friends who knew the horrors of enslavement either through experience, folklore, or history and were determined to rise in the American order. Scott was thus reared in a community that focused on establishing uplift institutions and organizations to enable them to realize and enjoy first-class American citizenship and life. After attending Houston's Gregory Institute, Emmett enrolled at Wiley College from ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 2341873–1957
African American secretary of Tuskegee Institute, administrator of the National Negro Business League, and the right-hand man of educator Booker T. Washington. Emmett Scott was born in Houston, Texas, and worked first as a journalist with the Houston Post. In 1894 he founded and edited the weekly Houston Freeman. The views therein largely agreed with those of Booker T. Washington, who hired Scott as his personal secretary at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in 1897. In 1912 he became Tuskegee's secretary, where, as part of the “Tuskegee Machine,” he spread Washington's self-help and accommodationist political and social message, which he expounded on in Tuskegee and Its People (1910) and Builder of a Civilization (1916), a biography of Washington. From 1900 to 1922, ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1101 Includes: Further Reading | Obituaries:(13 Feb. 1873–12 Dec. 1957), educator and publicist, was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Horace Lacy Scott, a civil servant, and Emma Kyle. Scott attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, for three years but left college in 1890 for a career in journalism. Starting as a janitor and messenger for a white daily newspaper, the Houston Post, he worked his way up to reporter. In 1894 he became associate editor of a new black newspaper in Houston, the Texas Freeman. Soon he was named editor and built this newspaper into a leading voice in black journalism in its region. Initially, he tied his fortune to the state's preeminent black politician, Norris Cuney, and was his secretary for a while.When Cuney retired, Scott turned to Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. ...
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