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James Lee Dickey: An Analysis of One African-American's Leadership in Jim Crow Texas

Sanitation

Because of Booker T. Washington’s emphasis on industrial education, his students were taught proper building trades. Sanitation would have been one of the most important concerns in the design of a home or office building. In Taylor, because most of the homes were moved in from area tenant farms, they had no running water or sewage. He described the problem in his speech at the Chamber of Commerce Banquet in January 1953, “Negroes have to have sewerage in order that he can have bath tubs so that he can bathe as regularly as anybody else. You know, you can’t blame a man for not bathing when he’s got a #3 tub and got to go out and get 3 buckets of water and a tea-kettle of hot water” and call it a bath. Dr. Dickey worked diligently to improve sanitation for African American’s in Taylor; he realized, as did Booker T. Washington, that white people would judge them by their appearance in addition to their hygiene.

When he discovered African Americans using open toilets, he convinced the city to dig pit toilets throughout the black community.
When African Americans in Taylor were drinking out of a stagnant creek because their water had been cut off for lack of payment, he convinced the city to install water spigots (hydrants) in each section of the south side. Not only did they have fresh drinking water but they could also carry bath water to their homes.

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