"Guest of Honor" was an easy book to read, presented in a linear time line. The author parallels the lives of Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington, the guest of honor. I had heard of Booker T. but did not know much about him. This book supplies a basic outline of his life and the incredible endurance he maintained to stay on a treacherous social ladder. He was a philosophical, stoic man. The year of the dinner was 1901. It became clear American society, especially the south, was not ready to admit blacks into social equality. The headlines responding to the dinner proudly portrayed negro "inferiority" as an uncontested fact, many northern papers such as the NY Times were also proudly prejudiced. That Booker T. was dubbed "The Negro Moses" must have rankled. The group also handled the question of whether or not there was current prejudice toward President Obama. The book provided a good discussion but was a little thin. It did what it set out to do: covered this outstanding political "scandal" of 1901, a Republican President bestowing an honor on a black man.
