Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois: Two Paths to Ending Jim Crow

Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution With the passage of these amendments to the Constitution, African Americans expected all of the rights of citizenship. African American males specifically expected the right to vote because the 15th Amendment stated, “The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Evolution of the Jim Crow South Disenfranchisement of African Americans g Grandfather Clause g Poll Tax g Literacy Test g Intimidation and Fear

Jim Crow Laws Systematic State-Level Legal Codes of Segregation g

Transportation

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Schools

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Libraries

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Drinking Fountains

g Morgues and Funeral Parlors

Plessy vs. Ferguson The Case: Homer Plessy, 1/8th black, was arrested for sitting in the “white car” of a Louisiana train in violation of that state’s “Separate Car Act.” The case was appealed to Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Ruling 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson The Ruling: SEPARATE facilities were lawful as long as they were EQUAL. Justice John Harlan, the lone dissenter wrote, “Our Constitution is color-blind.”

Supreme Court in 1896

Plessy v. Ferguson The Result: Legalized Jim Crow Segregation until 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education)

Two African Americans, Two Diverse Backgrounds

Booker T. Washington

W.E.B. DuBois

Booker T. Washington Outlined his views on race relations in a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta – “Atlanta Compromise” Felt that black people should work to gain economic security before equal rights Believed black people will “earn” equality

Booker T. Washington Developed programs for job training and vocational skills at Tuskegee Institute Asked whites to give job opportunities to black people Was popular with white leaders in the North and South

Booker T. Washington Was unpopular with many black leaders Associated with leaders of the Urban League which emphasized jobs and training for blacks

Booker T. Washington g Born a slave in southwestern Virginia g Believed in vocational education for blacks g Founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama g Believed in gradual equality g Accused of being an “Uncle Tom” g Received much white support g Wrote Up From Slavery (1901)

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Born into slavery on southern plantation in Virginia Received college degree and became a teacher Atlanta Exposition speech (1895) Need for education, economic progress more crucial than civil rights Learn industrial skills for better wages

Carpentry class at Tuskegee Institute

Senior class in Agricultural Education at Tuskegee Institute

Booker T. Washington Head of the Tuskegee Institute – skill training for young boys Invited to the White House as guest of Theodore Roosevelt View points: Confrontation would be disaster for outnumbered blacks Cooperation with supportive whites only way to overcome pervasive racism

Autobiography “Up From Slavery” "Even then I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment."

Booker T. Washington "Think about it: We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands...Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe." - Up From Slavery

W.E.B. DuBois Views given in The Souls of Black Folks and The Crisis Strongly opposed Booker T. Washington’s tolerance of segregation Demanded immediate equality for blacks

W.E.B. DuBois Felt talented black students should get a classical education Felt it was wrong to expect citizens to “earn their rights” Founded the NAACP along with other black and white leaders

W.E.B. DuBois g Born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts g Well educated-First African American to receive Ph.D. from Harvard g Wanted immediate equality between blacks and whites g Wanted classical higher education for blacks g Wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903) g The Niagara Movement – led to NAACP

W.E.B (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois was born on February 23, 1863 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Du Bois knew little of his father. Alfred Du Bois married Mary Burghardt in 1867. Soon after Du Bois was born, his father left, never to return. Du Bois described him as "a dreamer-- romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable, he had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a beloved vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little."

Du Bois at the age of four, dressed to conform to the Victorian era's idea of how wellbehaved little boys should appear.

Du Bois at age nineteen.

Du Bois with Fisk University faculty and students in front of Jubilee Hall, c. 1887.

Pharmacy class at Howard University in Wash., D.C.

Library at Howard University

Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1896.

Du Bois at the Paris International Exposition in 1900 where he won a gold medal for his exhibit on the achievement of black Americans.

Du Bois met Nina Gomer while at Wilberforce and they were married in 1896. Their first child, Burghardt, died as an infant in Atlanta from a typhoid epidemic.

Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1909.

What issue concerned both men? Violence against African-Americans in the post-Reconstruction America. The following images record events that Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois were quite familiar with and wanted to fight against. They simply had different strategies.

Scene of Lynching at Clanton, Alabama, Aug. 1891

The lynching of Lige Daniels. August 3, 1920, Center, Texas.

Du Bois and other black leaders of similar opinions organized what became known as the Niagara Movement. It was the first organization to seek full political and economic rights for Afro-Americans at a national level. By 1910, the organization led to the founding of the NAACP.

Du Bois (2nd row, 2nd from right) in a NAACP sponsored demonstration against lynching and mob violence against blacks.

Du Bois receiving the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, Atlanta University, 1920.

Du Bois and members of The Crisis staff in their New York office.

Speakers at the Pan-African Congress held in Brussels, Belgium, in 1921. Du Bois is 2nd from right.

One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes — foolishly, perhaps, but fervently — that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development. p. 125.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, — not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of filth from white whoremongers and adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home. A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. p. 126.