Emmett Jay Scott (February 13, 1873 – December 12, 1957) was an African American journalist, newspaper editor, academic, and government official who was Booker T. Washington's closest advisor at the Tuskegee Institute.

[2] After 1919, he was less and less visible in national affairs, with the NAACP largely assuming the leadership role that Booker T. Washington had dominated.

Scott joined Charles N. Love and Jack Tibbitto in founding Houston's first African-American newspaper, the Texas Freeman.

Washington was impressed and in 1897 hired Scott as his personal secretary, publicity chief and top advisor.

Scott had a major role in management of the college, fundraising, and building Washington's national networks of black businessmen and white philanthropists.

Indeed he was known as the “Architect of the Tuskegee Machine.”[5] On the side Scott was a real estate investor with ties to the banking and insurance industries.

[6] Scott was also selected as Secretary of the International Congress of the Negro, a conference hosted by the Tuskegee Institute in 1912.

He selected William Henry Davis to serve as his own assistant and staff manager, helping to ensure blacks were treated fairly by the War Department.

Berwanger suggests the cause was in large part because he insisted on adhering to Washington's accommodation philosophy and refused to support issues popular in the black leadership community, especially national anti-lynching legislation.