BOOKER T. WASHINGTON DINES AT HAMLET HOTEL...1903

[Bruce Osburn]

FROM: KEOWEE COURIER, Pickens Court House, S.C., Sept. 2, 1903

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, ET. AL.
DINE LIKE WHITE FOLKS at HAMLET, N.C. — VIGOROUS PROTESTS MADE.

Charlotte, N.C., August 24. — There was much discussion in Charlotte to-day, especially among traveling men, over the fact that Booker T. Washington and a delegation of 40 to 50 other colored men were guests of the Seaboard Air Line Hotel, at Hamlet, yesterday, says the Chronicle. According to the story Washington and his friends, who were traveling in Pullman cars from Nashville, Tenn., to Washington, D.C., reached Hamlet a few minutes before noon and walked into the dining room where they were served a late breakfast. The manager of the hotel had been notified of the arrival of the party and the negroes were served in the same dining room and in the same manner as the white men and ladies who stop there, though no white people were in the dining room at the time.

The Seaboard Air Line Hotel is conducted by Gresham & Jamison, who are well and favorably known to the traveling public. The manager explained that, had Booker Washington and his party arrived at the regular meal hour, they would not have been served in the dining room, but a separate room would have been prepared for their accommodation. As there were no white people to eat it was thought useless to go to the trouble to arrange another room while the regular dining room was unoccupied.

The traveling men who have been heard to express an opinion on the matter are not at all pleased that the negroes should have been served in the same room where white guests are entertained every day. It is considered especially unfortunate that it should have been done just at this time, when there is much discussion of the race question all over the country. One traveling man said, in speaking of the matter: "If Booker Washington and his friends can receive service that is accorded white people at a North Carolina eating house, what is to hinder any other party of negroes that may be traveling to demand the same treatment?"

The consensus of opinion appears to be that the managers of the hotel should have closed up and made it convenient to be away when Booker Washington and his friends arrived.

A Charlotte hotel man informed a Chronicle reporter this afternoon that Gresham & Jamison were required by the Seaboard Air Line Railway, from whom the hotel is leased, to serve negro guests.
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FROM: THE MANNING TIMES, Manning, S.C., Sept. 9, 1903.

The hotel at Hamlet, N.C., that served breakfast to Booker Washington and other negroes recently, while white guests, among them A.O. Bacon, of Georgia, waited outside, refusing to sit in the same room with the negroes, will be boycotted by the traveling public. The affair is considered by drummers as a disgrace to the state and an insult to the traveling fraternity. Already a protest and pledge not to ever patronize that hotel again has been signed by over 300 traveling salesmen that travel through North Carolina.