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Those Happy Danes

Even Booker T. Washington thought so —100 years ago. By Ethelene Whitmire

I WAS SURPRISED TO DISCOVER

that Booker T. Washington, the historic African-American civil rights leader more than a century ago and principal of the Tuskegee Institute, wrote “I had come to the conclusion that the happiest country in Europe, perhaps the happiest country in the world, is Denmark.” This quote was from Chapter 17, “The Organization of Country Life in Denmark,” in his 1911 book, My Larger Education: Being Chapters From My Experience. Washington spent only a short time in Denmark but he declared his visit “one of the most pleasant and eventful days of my life.” Lately, Denmark regularly tops the list of the world’s happiest countries. As recently as 2016 they were No.1 on the World Happiness Index according to Meik Wiking, the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute and the author of The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living. But Washington’s book was published over one hundred years ago.

Exactly one hundred years after BTW’s trip I set foot on Danish soil for the first time and came across this quote by Washington while researching a book about African-Americans in 20th century Denmark. I went to Copenhagen for two months on a whim. I had been watching a lot of Danish films and decided to go there for a mini writing retreat while I revised my first book manuscript. I loved it and discovered numerous stories about African Americans in Denmark and decided to make that the subject of my second book. I returned 11 more times, including for an entire academic year as a Fulbright scholar.

56 SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW SPRING 2018

PHOTO: R. NIELSEN /RINGSTED (DENMARK) MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES.

Booker T. Washington (center) on his visit to Ringsted, Denmark.


SPRING 2018 SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 58

PHOTO: R. NIELSEN /RINGSTED (DENMARK) MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES.

Washington was interested in seeing how the lower classes lived and worked.In 1910 Booker T. Washington went on vacation—his first in 19 years—

funded by friends to reward his hard work establishing the Tuskegee Institute in 1881. They wanted him to go to Europe to rest but instead he turned his trip into a research project. Washington decided to “leave the beaten track of European travel and to plunge into regions which have not been charted and mapped, and where ordinary guides and guidebooks are of little to no avail.” He vowed not to enter “a single palace, museum, gallery, or cathedral.” Ironically, I also vowed not to do touristy things. I wanted to live like a Dane and rented an apartment in Christianshavn and spent many hours in cafes throughout the city. In hindsight that decision made no sense because I had no intention of ever returning to Denmark. I did not believe in visiting the same country multiple times when there were many new countries to explore but I fell in love with Denmark. During and between my multiple trips there I visited numerous museums and did touristy things and I learned about African-Americans who visited, studied, performed and lived in this Nordic country. I wanted to know why they went to Denmark and what were their experiences while there?

Washington was interested in seeing how the lower classes lived and worked in other parts of the world. He said he was “not looking for the best, but for the worst.” He was searching for The Man Farthest Down, the title of his 1912 book. He equated the European lower classes or what he called “peasants” with African-Americans in the rural south working as sharecroppers or tenant farmers. He described his visit to Denmark in “What I Learned About Education in Denmark” and in the newspaper the Springfield Republican on December 31, 1911.

OOKER T. WASHINGTON WAS 54 YEARS OLD WHEN HE WENT to Denmark. His exact date of birth is unknown because he was born into slavery. According to the information on his passport application, B

he stood 5 feet 8 inches tall, his nose was described as large, his complexion as mulatto, reflecting the belief that his father was a white man, and his eyes were listed as gray—an unusual color noted in other publications.

He sailed on August 20, 1910, from New York City to Liverpool, England. During his time in Europe he also visited Scotland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Sicily and Poland. But, according to Vivian Greene-Gantzberg in her article “Booker T. Washington’s European Encounter,” she concluded, “It was not until Washington reached Denmark, that he realized the possibilities of the peasant


class. There, he witnessed the opposite of everything he had seen thus far.” Although professor Gary Totten wrote about Booker T. Washington’s The Man Farthest Down in a chapter in his book, African American


Born as a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington went on to become the most influential spokesman for African-Americans around the turn of the 20th century and the first president and principal developer of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He received no formal schooling in his youth but secured an advanced education through persistent diligence. By the time of his death in 1915 Tuskegee had a faculty of 200 and an endowment of $2 million. Washington


received honorary degrees from Harvard University in 1896 and Dartmouth College in 1901. His autobiography Up from Slavery has been translated into many languages. He visited Denmark in 1910 on a study tour of several European countries. This 1907 photograph is from the Library of Congress archives.


“The people even flattered me by laughing at my jokes, and in the right places.”

Travel Narratives from Abroad, he did not specifically mention Washington’s trip to Denmark, but he discussed his observations about how peasants in other European countries were living in squalor. Washington even concluded several times that these peasants were even worse off than the Negro in the United States. Washington declared, “It was not until I reached Denmark, however, that I began to feel that I had really begun to know the European peasant, because it was not until I reached that country that I saw what the possibilities of the peasant were.”

Washington arrived in Denmark at the beginning of October 1910 by ferry and the train from Hamburg, Germany. He was greeted by Danes on the train to Copenhagen and was startled to find that many were familiar with his work and his writings. He said, “This welcome was not the usual formal, stereotyped greeting. . . . So numerous and hearty were the greetings I received that I found myself holding a sort of informal reception all the way to Copenhagen station.” A reporter for the Danish newspaper Østsjællands Folkeblad described part of Washington’s visit to Denmark and his arrival at the train station, in this way: “For a Negro, he is unusually light-skinned, and if he didn’t have the characteristic lips for his race, many would not realize that he was the son of a Negro. He is medium height, heavyset, and dressed as a true gentleman.” Washington graciously posed for photographs and told the reporters that he would meet with them that afternoon at his hotel.

IGGO CAVLING, THE EDITOR OF THE INFLUENTIAL DANISH newspaper Politiken, chaired the welcoming committee composed of V

“journalists, educators and other distinguished persons” that organized Washington’s visit to Denmark. Washington’s friend, the social reformer Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives, had introduced the two men. The committee escorted Washington to a suite of rooms at the luxurious Hotel D’Angleterre, founded in 1755 and still operational. After freshening up, Washington was escorted to Langelinie and ate breakfast at the popular pavilion giving him “a fine view of the harbor.” However, he did not see Langelinie’s most famous resident, the Little Mermaid, because the statue was not unveiled until 1913. Oddly, I also did not see the Little Mermaid during my first trip to Copenhagen in 2010. The statue was in the Danish Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was invited to create a video installation to replace the statue during her time in China. That evening a “positively frightened” Washington addressed a large crowd that greeted him with great


enthusiasm. He gave a speech before a crowd of 3,000 and soon realized, that although he had an interpreter, the audience


followed his every word. Amazed, he noted, “The people even flattered me by laughing at my jokes, and in the right places.” Washington received many requests to give additional speeches but stuck with his plan to visit the peasants.

The one unanticipated interruption to his schedule was a special request in a letter he received upon his return to his hotel from the minister of the American Legation—now known as the United States Embassy. The letter said:

My Dear Sir: His majesty, the king of Denmark, has through his master of ceremonies, commanded you to be at the Amalienborg palace at 10 o’clock on Monday (tomorrow). You will be received on giving your name to the marshal of the court. I am delighted to inform you that the king and the queen are greatly interested in your work and very sympathetic with it. They show this by granting you, on their own initiative, the honor of a private audience.

WASHINGTON CALLED THIS INVITATION ONE OF THE

greatest surprises of his life. He worried about the impact of the audience with the king on his plans to visit the peasants. But Washington was told, “It would be an unforgivable thing for anybody to fail to accept an invitation from the king.”

The United States Minister (now called the ambassador) Maurice Francis Egan ended his vacation early in order to return to Denmark to provide assistance to Washington by informing him about royal etiquette. Egan told Washington how to dress for the occasion, to let King Frederick VIII lead the conversation and select the topics for discussion and to never turn his back on the monarch. Fifteen minutes before the meeting, a horse-drawn carriage provided by the minister took Washington from his hotel to Amalienborg Palace where he walked past soldiers with bayonets. After waiting a few minutes he was escorted to meet the king. Washington recalled, “I expected to see a gorgeously fitted apartment. . . . Imagine my surprise when I found practically nothing in the room except the king himself. There was not a chair, a sofa or, so far as I can recall, a single thing in the way of furniture—nothing except the king and his sword.” Washington was surprised at the king’s excellent English.

Their meeting lasted for twenty minutes and they remained standing because, as Washington noted, “we could not have done anything else because there was nothing in the room for either of us to sit upon.” They discussed his work at Tuskegee and the king hoped that Washington could visit the Danish West Indies and help the Danes to provide a similar education to the “colored” people on the islands. Nothing came of this because the king died in 1912 and the Wizard, as Washington was called, died in 1915. At the


conclusion of their meeting the king shook Washington’s hand and said the queen would like to invite him to dine with them that evening at Charlottenlund Palace. Egan had warned Washington that there might be an invitation and that it was really a command. Washington remembered: “I


was delighted to accept the invitation, though I feared it would wreck my plans for seeing the country people.” Washington said that the king made him so comfortable that although he tried to follow Egan’s instructions, Washington feared, “I was not wholly successful.” He recollected, “I must confess that I got out of the room in about the same way I usually go out of the room.” Washington had turned his back to the king.

Reporters waiting outside of the palace eagerly wanted to know how long he had met with the king, what topics were discussed and if he received an invitation for dinner. The A 1909 portrait of King Frederick

VIII October 4, 1910, New York Times headof Denmark. line was “King Honors Washington.”

Washington was described as “the first Negro ever received at the Danish Court” and the reporter noted “the King would have decorated Mr. Washington with the Order of Danneborg if Mr. Washington were not an American citizen.” The Negro newspaper, the Chicago Defender, had a more effusive headline, “European Royalty Galore Bows to Booker T. Washington.”

FTER WASHINGTON’S AUDIENCE WITH THE KING, THE DELegation abandoned the carriage and took a motorcar to the towns of A

Roskilde to visit a folk school and Ringsted to visit Kærehave Husmandskole. The ride to Roskilde was about an hour from Copenhagen and he described the town as “a piece of rolling ground, overlooking a bay, where the little fisher vessels and small seafaring craft are able to come far inland, almost to the centre of the island. All around are wide stretches of rich farm land, dotted here and there with little country villages.”

Washington was amazed by the quality of life, education and political participation of the lower classes in Denmark. The Danish folk schools, designed to educate the young adults and adults in the lower classes, did not focus their curriculum on agriculture but on geography, the arts, arithmetic, the natural sciences, Danish history, culture and languages. Instruction consisted of lectures


and students were not given examinations. The purpose of the education was to inform the students about “the manner in which different problems have arisen and of the way in which the solution of them has widened and increased our knowledge of the world.” He also noted that the “teachers in these country high schools are genuine scholars.”


“I never saw such healthy, happy, robust school children as I did in Denmark,” he said.The homes of the peasants were filled with literary and technical journals

and books in many languages. Washington found that most Danes, regardless of economic class, spoke at least three languages—Danish, German and English. The peasants had control of the Danish Parliament and “half of the members of the ministry in power were peasants, and half of the members of the cabinet were either peasants or peasants’ sons.” Washington was very impressed. He described how the members of Danish cooperatives were able to borrow money and pool their resources and to control the market for such products as butter, eggs, bacon and dairy products. He declared: “It is generally agreed in Denmark that the cooperative organizations which have done so much for the farming population of the country could not exist if the rural high schools had not prepared the way for them.”

ASHINGTON CREDITED N. F. S. GRUNDTVIG, “SOMETIMES referred to as the Luther of Denmark,” with the creation of the present iteration of the adult folk schools. He said, “The rural W

school movement grew out of a non-sectarian religious movement and was, in fact, an attempt to revive the spiritual life of the masses of the people.” He said, “Bishop Grundvig (sic) was the greatest national resource of Denmark, as it is of any country, was its common people.”

Washington deduced that “The Danish people are probably the best educated and best informed people in Europe.” And he said he was “surprised at the knowledge which every one (sic) I met in Denmark, from the King and Queen to the peasants, displayed in American affairs, and the interest they showed in the progress of the Negro and the work we have been doing at Tuskegee.”

In Ringsted, he said, “the most interesting and instructive part of my visit was the time that I spent at what is called a husmand’s or cotter’s school.” Washington observed similarities, and perhaps confirmation, between the folk schools and the education he was providing. The school in Ringsted offered a “winter course in farming for men and the summer school in household arts for women, offers, just as we do at Tuskegee, a short course to which the older people are invited.”

He observed, “I never saw such healthy, happy, robust school children as I did in Denmark, and, with all respect to Danish agriculture, I am convinced that the best crop that Denmark raises is its children. While other countries have sought to


increase the national wealth and welfare by developing the material resources, Denmark . . . has increased not only the national wealth but the national comfort and happiness by improving her people.” In his article in the Springfield Republican he wrote:


“The appearance of children and women is a pretty good indication of the civilization of people.”

The first thing that attracted my attention, after crossing into Denmark, was the appearance of the children. They seemed to have a sparkle in their eyes and a rich color in their faces that indicated the vigor and health; they had, too, an alertness and activity in their bodies which was in marked contrast with the appearance of the children which I had seen in many other parts of Europe. The Danish children, in a word, seemed to be enjoying life.

No doubt Washington wanted to see this alertness and vigor in AfricanAmerican children in the United States. He also described the appearance of women in Denmark. “I soon began to note that the women of all classes were better and more sensibly dressed than in most places I had visited. They seem happier, they talked more, laughed more, and, apparently, read more than any women I had seen in Europe.” But he mentioned that he was shocked to see “women in a first-class restaurant sitting at a table with gentlemen smoking and apparently enjoying it.” He said that based upon his experiences, “the appearance of children and women is a pretty good indication of the civilization of people.”

AUTHOR ERIK OVERGAARD PEDERSON’S CHAPTER “BOOKER T.

Washington and the Danish Folk High School,” published in The Racial Politics of Booker T. Washington, marveled at the fact that both the Tuskegee Institute and the Danish folk-school movement had “so many shared traits at their height on two continents at about the same time, without any common source of inspiration.” It seemed that Washington was not trying to learn anything new from the Danish folk schools but found confirmation about the mission of his own institution. Pedersen said Washington’s “experience in Denmark served to strengthen his belief in the value of the type of vocational training given at Tuskegee Institute compared with the value of more formal, academic training.” Pedersen also said, “It is difficult to determine the impact of Washington’s ideas in Denmark but his visit to the country certainly exposed his ideas and work to the public and many had the chance to study his ideas.”

The excursions to Roskilde and Ringsted were rushed because of the impending dinner at the palace. Washington confessed to “trembling a little in anticipation of the ordeal that was awaiting me at night. I had never taken a formal dinner with a


PHOTO: RINGSTED (DENMARK) MUSEUM AND

king and queen.” Once again, Egan instructed him about the appropriate attire to wear and royal protocol. The dinner was a white-tie event and luckily Washington had one but it “burst.” He was able use a pin to keep it in place, but Washington recalled, “I trembled all through the dinner for fear that my tie might go back on me.” He arrived ten minutes before the


The passport photograph of

E. Franklin Frazier for his 1921 trip to Denmark.

dinner and met Queen Louise. They discussed Tuskegee and Washington’s books including his autobiography Up From Slavery and The Story of the Negro and Tuskegee. Washington confided, “I had, however, a sneaking idea that Minister Egan was responsible for a good deal of the familiarity which both the king and queen seemed to exhibit regarding Tuskegee.” Dinner was served on gold plates and Washington could not help but recall that he ate on tin plates during slavery.

After dinner Washington faced another dilemma. He had to go to London that night in order to make a speaking engagement the next day. He knew that he could not just leave. However, the king and queen bid him good night in time for him to make his train. But first he stopped by Minister Egan’s home to fill him in on the day’s adventures. The committee then accompanied Washington to the station.

Booker T. Washington ended his chapter about Denmark in My Larger Education with the following statement:

My study of the Danish rural schools has not only taught me what may be done to inspire and foster a national and racial spirit, but it has shown how closely interwoven are the moral and material conditions of the people, so that each man responds to and reflects the progress of every other man in a way to bring about a healthful, wholesome condition of national and racial life.


PHOTO: RINGSTED (DENMARK) MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES.

There is no doubt that Washington’s trip and subsequent publications inspired other African-Americans. Several scholars and adult students went to Denmark, primarily in the 1930s to study both the Danish cooperative system and the folk schools at the still-existing International People’s


Frazier became the first African-American to receive a thousand-dollar stipend from the ASF.

College in Elsinore. In 1921 sociologist E. Franklin Frazier became the first African-American to receive a thousand-dollar stipend from the AmericanScandinavian Foundation. He literally followed in Washington’s footsteps by visiting the same folk-school in Roskilde and published three articles about his research in Denmark: “The Co-Operative Movement in Denmark,” “The Folk High School at Roskilde,” and “Danish People’s High Schools and America” in the journal The Southern Workman. In the last article he discussed the possibility of recreating the folk schools in the southern United States to help uplift the African-American population. Decades later, in 1949, the American-Scandinavian Foundation congratulated Frazier for becoming the first African-American president of the American Sociological Association in 1948. Frazier said he was delighted to hear from the organization and wrote back, “The ASF fellowship was, as I indicated in the preface of my book, an important stage in my development and consequently the ASF has always held a warm place in my heart.” In his 1949 book, The Negro in the United States, Frazier wrote, “This book has grown out of the author’s researches in the field of race relations and the problems of peasant people over a period of a quarter of a century. While carrying on research on the Negro in the United States, he was fortunate in having the opportunity to study similar problems of peoples in other countries. Soon after beginning the study of the Negro in the United States, the author received a fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation which enabled him to spend a year in Denmark studying the role of the folk high schools in the life of the Danish peasants.”

FTER THE TOUR OF THE FOLK SCHOOLS AND COOPERATIVE farms in Roskilde and Ringsted Washington’s motorcade drove off to return to Copenhagen. He recalled seeing both an American and A

a Danish flag waving and heard “a familiar American song…sung with great heartiness.” The local newspaper, Ringsted Folketidende, published two photographs of Washington in Ringsted including one of him and his hosts standing in front of an enormous American flag. Washington said, “All this warmed my heart, taught me to love Denmark and made me feel that it was and is one of the happiest countries in the world.”


Ethelene Whitmire is a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the Information School and the Department of Afro-American Studies. She is currently writing a book, Searching for Utopia:

African-Americans in 20th Century Denmark, with the support of grants from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Lois Roth Endowment, Scan Design and a 2016-2017 Fulbright in

Denmark, where she was a visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen.


Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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