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 ...
Article
Scott, Emmett J.
Maceo Crenshaw Dailey
Article
Scott, Emmett Jay
Edgar Allan Toppin
educator and publicist, was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Horace Lacy Scott, a civil servant, and Emma Kyle. Scott attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, for three years but left college in 1890 for a career in journalism. Starting as a janitor and messenger for a white daily newspaper, the Houston Post, he worked his way up to reporter. In 1894 he became associate editor of a new black newspaper in Houston, the Texas Freeman. Soon he was named editor and built this newspaper into a leading voice in black journalism in its region. Initially, he tied his fortune to the state's preeminent black politician, Norris Cuney, and was his secretary for a while.
When Cuney retired, Scott turned to Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Scott greatly admired Washington, praising his 1895 Atlanta Compromise ...
