As pointed out in comments: I've been appropriated! (again)

[james_davis_nicoll]

the Booker T Washington Society page of quotes attributes my quotation to Washington. I wonder how long it's done that? And how many of the other quotations on that page are also actually not from Washington?

I did ask them about this and got this reply almost instantly:

Thank you for your inquiry.
We will respond as soon as poosible.
Ronald Court
Booker T Washington Society

That "poosible" makes a strong case that this is just institutional carelessness.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly, the Booker T Washington Society was founded by a white conservative, one Ronald Court (Conservative credentials presented here. He enjoys necromantic ventriloquism by putting words into Booker T Washington's mouth, and lecturing black people on why Obama is a racist.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A while back I was trying to figure out what historical intellectual figure's name to appropriate for the name of a parody of a conservative pseudo-think-tank, and despaired because they were all taken.

But I think I could do it by choosing a particularly ridiculous historical figure. The Goropius Becanus Institute, maybe, or the Cosmas Indicopleustes Foundation.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Is the Venerable Bede taken?

John Radcliffe might be a good choice; known today mostly for the library in Oxford, that was a posthumous bequest; his contemporary Sir Samuel Garth quipped that the endowment was "about as logical as if a eunuch should found a seraglio."

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo

This whole thing is making me cry.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is so ragemaking. If I had nothing but money, I would bankroll Washington's descendants in bringing a lawsuit against this clownfish in California under the "right to exploitation" precedent established in the Fred Astaire vacuum commercial case.

Alas, I have everything but money, and lawyers tend not to accept bile and nerdery in payment.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I particularly enjoyed that Booker's webmaster's ripoff of your quote was bowdlerized.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Your quote (bowdlerized) has been attributed to Washington in various places on the web for years. I'm quite certain I pointed that out to you years ago, though I don't remember exactly when.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Yes, I knew that but not that it was done so on a specifically BTW-related site.

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

Fo' Paws had your quote unattributed on a shirt at Eastercon. Jo Walton and I got to the stall at the same time from opposite directions and started discussing the shirt and how many people it had been attributed to. This was when the owner started taking notice, and notes, and said he would check the proper wording and the next printing would be with your name on. You may want to get in touch to make sure.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

If it's the American SF shirt printer/dealer I think it is, he (otherwise a nice enough guy) has been in deep denial for a decade or more about James' authorship of that quote. Not sure whether he genuinely is confused by the bullshit that's been spread, or just hates the thought of any ethical obligation to pay a token royalty, or what.

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

I ordered one from his next batch since he didn't have one in my size so we will see if he does this time.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

An almost-instant response probably means it was just an automated acknowledgement.

How disappointing.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I did get a proper reply for him which I won't quote because it's email.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

It's not on the web page now, though it's still on the print version (PDF) linked from "Print Here".

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I think it would be only fair to credit you for inventing peanut butter as a quid pro quo, except that that was George Washington Carver.