W.E.B. Du Bois vs. Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. Du Bois vs. Booker T. Washington African-Americans in the 18th and 19th century lived in a period of tension. African Americans faced greater challenges--legal, economic, social, and political--than any other group challenging their own oppressed status and seeking reform. No longer slaves, they were still not treated upon as equals by whites. However, movements as well as several African-American leaders rose to power during this period. They sought to bring the race to new heights. Two of these leaders were W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who shared different views and solution to the race problem. Their backgrounds strongly influenced the way they attacked the "Negro Problem." William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Bu Bois had grown up with more privileges and advantages than most blacks living in the United States at that time. Unlike most blacks living in the South, he had suffered neither severe economic hardship nor repeated encounters with racism. Du Bois, in comparison to Washington, had never known slavery. As violence against blacks increased in the South throughout the 1880s, Du Bo
Their demands included economic equality and educational opportunity for blacks, desegregation, and the prohibition of discrimination in courts , public facilities, and trade unions. A chief spokesman for education, power broker, and institution builder of his time, Washington founded Tuskegee Institute. Through his experiences with poor blacks and encounters with racial hatred, Du Bois began to develop his racial consciousness and the desire to help improve the conditions of his race. " Du Bois also challenged Washington's leadership through the Niagara Movement. Du Bois also criticized Washington's emphasis on the importance of industrial education for blacks. Their ideas and actions left a lasting legacy, setting the tone for later years to come. This quote best sums up his ideas and arguments: "Is it possible and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meager chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No. Despite that, he had worked his way out of poverty after acquiring an education. He also believed that they should aspire to the professions, and above all, fight for the immediate restoration of their civil rights instead of waiting for them to be granted. By creating a trained elite, blacks would in effect be creating a leadership group capable of fighting for the rights of the race as a whole. It was a black school in Alabama that specialized in industrial and moral education and the training of public school teachers. Du Bois also helped to found one of the most important black organizations in history--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He objected to Washington's strategy of accommodation and compromise with whites in both politics and education. Unlike Du Bois, Booker Taliaferro was born a slave on a small farm in Virginia.
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