Booker T Washington Vs Dubois Essay

It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Now should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities (Washington, pg 2, The Atlanta Exposition speech).” By saying this Washington means that in order for the African American race to succeed as free civilians they have to learn how to appreciate their background and use that to an advantage to succeed in the society. He states, “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly. (Washington, pg 3, The Atlanta Exposition speech).” He also suggest for African Americans to take advantage of the number of opportunities presented to them in order to succeed in life. He highlights his message to his audience by exampling a ship lost a see and whose sailors were dying of thirst.

Whites’ challenges were: economic threats, gerrymandering and requiring a literacy test pass for voters (illiteracy was a big problem for blacks at that time). Also the internal problem was differing views between Baker and other leaders about leadership. While Baker tried to develop local leadership, the ministers held a view that we need a strong, charismatic leadership. But the SCLC was doing its best to achieve a cooperation with the NAACP. The SCLC was publicly and privately complementing the accomplishments, goals, and importance of the NAACP in the civil rights activism.

Washington’s ideas. Booker T. Washington was a prominent figure after the Reconstruction Era. He was a part of the group that created the Atlanta Compromise, which stated that blacks would submit to white political rule in exchange for vocational education. This agreement would ensure that black men could have an education which would aid in their accumulation of wealth, and allow them to live in peace with the white men in their community. DuBois does not necessarily agree with Washington, feeling as if he was complying with the notion of black inferiority.

It was the realization that everything that they had been conditioned to think or react was in fact just a shield to control the what was the “inferior” race in their eyes. Many white Southerners tried to resist the change, claiming they were only helping the black population or keeping balance by “protecting” them from what radical thinking could spring from. Thankfully later on in the century, this racist mindset was brought to light and black civil rights activists became more prominent figures as they fought for equal opportunities. A battle that had arguably happened much later than it should have, set off by the works and efforts of those like Griffin, who went against the flow of societal norms in risky experiments. So while there were flaws and mistakes in John Griffin’s experiment in Black Like Me, that same experiment helped bring the mindset of many inside and even outside of the South into a better, less deprived view of the world around them with some resistance.

Critiquing the approach of prominent civil rights activists, who in his view were invested in a strategy of racial uplift that would only benefit a few selected African Americans, by largely upholding the racial and social status quo -- at the cost of the vast majority of Blacks in the country, whose situation was further deteriorating, Carmichael developed his more inclusive, grassroots oriented approach of black empowerment. Countering a politics of respectability that had proved ineffective in changing the hearts and minds of the great majority of Whites, Carmichael advocated a politics that centered on the interests of African Americans in a way that would end what he perceived as a vicious circle, the constant reliance on the fleeting goodwill of Whites. Informed by his own experiences in Lowndes County, Alabama, Carmichael advocated a strategy of local organizing that diverged from the civil rights movement’s narrow focus and dependence on the national Democratic Party. Instead of catering votes to the Democrats and hoping that they would make good on their promises, Carmichael argued that African Americans should form their own organizations. These would function as a power basis for future negotiations in the political realm.

In Douglass narrative, he proves that unlike the slave owner’s perceptions, African Americans could be “scholars” that “ardently [desired] to learn”(48). The fact that the slaves choose to attend Douglass’s school despite the possibility of painful repercussions proves that they had a desire to grow

Washington addressed “It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top” he was fighting for the rights of African Americans He believed the best way to do this was for African Americans to accept that they are inferior. Booker T. Washington believed that African Americans and whites should be equal and kept “separate as the fingers”. DuBois was a African American man that was born not as a slave but still believed that African Americans and Whites should be equal. In contrast, DuBois believed that African American boys should have the same education as White boys. Also He believed that color discrimination is unacceptable.

Through the war, Green which to set the precedent for an improvement in the social status of African American people. This appeal to the past persuades his audience to not buckle under the previous and present social injustices, but rather to strive to right as many social wrongdoings as

Black populists viewed social progression as a stretch, where it could happen but they had “limited expectations.” African American populists exercised their time attempting to save individuals lives in heated moments of politics and criminal justice. The minorities involved in the progressive moment viewed “racial improvement with the bitterness of having other paths closed by deliberating combination of extreme poverty and the restrictions imposed by white power.” Black populists, such as Rayner, understood that Jim Crow Laws were present, but accepted that these laws in America were systematic. Therefore, African Americans that choose to be progressive, tended to not understand the exclusion of the right to participate because they understood the climates of the

Race mattered because uneducated people were thought to be blacks, education was easily given to the black as it was for the poor whites. However race didn’t matter in the same aspect because education was taught, black or white you were not born with elite knowledge. The knowledge was learned, sadly whites thought just because they were white there should be elite and wealthy; which the case