Night of Violence
He looked me right in the face and said, "Hello, sweetheart."
LAURA PAGE ALVAREZ
IT WAS about nine o'clock on Sunday evening, March 19, 1911. Booker T. Washington had arrived in New York the preceding day from Battle Creek, Michigan, and checked in at the Hotel Manhattan, a first-class, midtown hotel, without the usual accompaniment of his male stenographer. After giving talks at a black church and a white church, he returned to his hotel early Sunday evening, but instead of going to the dining room he made his supper out of a bag of peanuts bought on the street. Then he left the hotel, traveled uptown by subway, and entered the vestibule of an apartment building at 11 1/2 West Sixty-third Street, a short distance west of the southern edge of Central Park. The building was near but not in the so-called Tenderloin, an "easy-morals" section of the city. There were enclaves of black residents nearby, but the building he entered was occupied entirely by whites, as were those on either side. A theater was across the street, and many of the inhabitants were connected with the theater in one way or another.
After scanning the directory Washington rang one of the bells, received no answer and, so he later said, thought the occupants might be at church and would return soon. While he studied the directory and considered whether to wait, a slim, attractive brunette about thirty
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