Analysis of a Chief Lieutenant of the Tuskegee Machine: David Jackson

In A Chief Lieutenant, Jackson recovers the lived experience of oppression in Mississippi during the early-twentieth century. While cognizant of the extraordinary brutality that lay beneath the legal apparatus of segregation, he focuses upon the constraints institutionalized racism imposed upon a black middle class that nevertheless strove to make Mound Bayou a haven. His depiction of Charles Banks, an admiring one, confirms historian Robert Kenzer's observation that successful African Americans in the South "were forced to live very public lives in which they faced constant scrutiny not only from other blacks but also from whites."[2] As for Mound Bayou, it is worth remembering that those who fought for African American empowerment saw black enterprise as the foundation of "racial uplift." As Jackson notes, Booker T. Washington wrote extensively about Banks and his labors within the Mississippi Delta. "As I look at it," Washington observed, "Mound Bayou is not merely a town; it is at the same time and in a very real sense of that word, a school. It is not only a place where a Negro.

This essay tells the life and work of Charles Banks, Booker T. Washington's chief lieutenant in Mississippi; he was an African American leader in the state and most influential black businessmen in the early decades of the 20th century. This book was to enlighten people about who Charles banks was and how he was important to our history. Charles Banks was born March 25, 1973, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to Daniel A. and Sallie Ann Banks. His parents had been slaves in Mississippi. In A Chief Lieutenant of the Tuskegee Machine, David H. Jackson Jr. tells the life of Charles Banks leading African American entrepreneur and adherent to Booker T. Washington's strategy of self-help and racial uplift in the Jim Crow South. Charles banks became a retail merchant, bank founder, mill owner, and a founder and leading citizen of the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Jackson attributes Bank's achievements as a hard worker and business men. Charles Banks was a famous Black leader, like Jessie Jackson.

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