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    "Booker Washington was one of the most patient and earnest and, withal, one of the ablest men whom I ever met.  As a matter of fact he was one of the great men that the South has produced in twenty-five years.  His theory and practice was to educate the Negro and make him a good citizen, an intelligent farmer or workman, a man, in other words, who is an intelligent voter.  Of course, he was fought by the Negro who had political proclivities, and by the white man who wished to use the Negro.  These two elements minimized his efforts, but he was wise beyond his generation.  The intelligent people of the South respected him for his wonderful and splendid work.  I was interested in him irrespective of the great question at issue because he was reared in my county of Kanawha.  He was born in Franklin, County, Virginia."

Source: Gov. William A. MacCorkle, The Recollections of Fifty Years of West Virginia (1928).