Booker T. Washington dinner at the White House

On October 16, 1901, shortly after moving into the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt invited his adviser, the African American spokesman Booker T. Washington, to dine with him and his family.

[4][5] Black people, including leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, had been received at the White House by Presidents Lincoln, Grant, Hayes and Cleveland.

James K. Vardaman, a Democrat from Mississippi, complained that the White House was now, "so saturated with the odor of nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable;" the Memphis Scimitar declared it "the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States",[7] and on 25 October the Missouri Sedalia Sentinel published on its front page a poem entitled "Niggers in the White House", which ended suggesting that either the president's daughter should marry Washington or his son one of Washington's relatives.

Governor of South Carolina Miles McSweeney stated, "No white man who has eaten with a negro can be respected; it is simply a question of whether those who are invited to dine are fit to marry the sisters and daughters of their hosts.

"[9] William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1896, 1900 and 1908, ridiculed the invitation as a device to secure black votes and promote the pipe dream of "social equality" between the races.