Edward Margolies describes the novel's college as a "southern Negro college with...honeysuckle, moonlight...endowed by Northern liberals who endowed Booker T.'s twin principles of equality and castle submission." Both Tuskegee Institute and the novel's college are located in the South.
On the campus, there is a statue of the Founder with "his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil...of a kneeling slave" (Ellison 36). The Founder symbolizes how Booker T. Washington "unveiled" the faces of slaves and provided hope for their dreams by allowing them a higher education. One also realizes the correlation between the Founder and Washington when reading Homer A. Barbee's speech.
Like Washington, the Founder encouraged blacks to learn useful trades and not to wish for total equality with whites. The college campus is truly an "Uncle Tom" campus where blacks are attempting to become white. Later in the novel, the narrator does this in New York.
Both the Founder and Washington gained the support and respect of white leaders. Whites provided the funds for both schools. In the eyes of many, both men are heros to be given a great deal of admiration.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage, 1980.
Thornbrough, E. L. Booker T. Washington. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1969.
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. Ed. William O. Douglas. New York: Doubleday, 1963.
Washington, Booker T. Working With the Hands. Ed. William Loren Katz. New York: Arno, 1969.