How icons Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington blazed a path for racial equality

American intellectual and former slave Booker T. Washington had a unique partnership with Teddy Roosevelt. The friendship between the two men would change America for the better.

Brian Kilmeade is the co-host of FOX News Channel's (FNC) FOX & Friends (weekdays 6-9 AM/ET) alongside Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt and the host of One Nation with Brian Kilmeade (Saturdays 8-9 PM/ET). 

A full five years after promising Booker T. Washington that he would come to Alabama to visit the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Theodore Roosevelt finally arrived. His train steamed to a stop early on October 24, 1905, pausing first in the town of Tuskegee. The day was chilly for October, but many of the two thousand inhabitants, along with others from the surrounding villages of Tallassee and Cheha, clogged the streets with wagons and carriages pulled by horses and mules. Black and White residents of Tuskegee lined the byways and town square, hoping for a glimpse of the president.

After being greeted by the mayor, Roosevelt gave a short speech. It was warmly received – – this was a rare honor, having the Chief Magistrate of the United States stop in their Alabama town – but folks were wary, too. Two Pinkerton detectives had arrived two days earlier to identify "suspicious characters" who might have "evil designs upon Dr. Washington." Since McKinley’s assassination, Roosevelt himself routinely carried a revolver when in public, but danger seemed always in the air for Washington, even close to home. Just a year earlier, the district’s own congressman, Tom Heflin, had stood on the steps of Tuskegee’s court house and threatened Washington with lynching. In response, the partisan crowd had risen to its feet in a standing ovation. But the day of Roosevelt’s visit would be a peaceable day.