private secretary and influential assistant to Booker T. Washington, advocate of racial uplift who displayed a lifelong commitment to the goals of the Tuskegee Institute–based educational and political machine and was a prominent black representative in Republican politics. Born in Houston, Texas, in 1873 to Horace and Emma Kyle Scott, Emmett Scott was surrounded with parents, relatives, and later friends who knew the horrors of enslavement either through experience, folklore, or history and were determined to rise in the American order. Scott was thus reared in a community that focused on establishing uplift institutions and organizations to enable them to realize and enjoy first-class American citizenship and life. After attending Houston's Gregory Institute, Emmett enrolled at Wiley College from 1887 to 1889 The economic circumstances of his family he was one of eight siblings did not afford Scott the opportunity to complete his college education Upon his ...
