Wells Vs Dubois

During the end of the 19th Century, the condition of Black Americans was fatal and destructive during the fight for progression and equity. Although their physical chains were removed, Black Americans entered another form of racialized bondage that deteriorated their mental, physical, academic, social, political, and economic well-being. Despite living in constant torture, three prominent African-American leaders would take note of these issues and formulate tactics on what they believed would improve the black condition. In their acclaimed narratives, Ida B Wells, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois would propose three distinct diagnostic accounts of racial subordination during the late 19th century. For Dubois, his account of racial subordination

Wells, racial subordination sprouts from white society’s fear of black economic and political success. As a way to subjugate this fear and reclaim white superiority, white individuals have excessively increased the number of lynchings on black bodies since the beginning of Reconstruction. In her book On Lynchings, Wells provides a primary example of how resentment and envy of white individuals led to the demise of a successful black store owner. In March 1892, a white man by the name of William Barrett felt economically threatened by a competing black-owned grocery, known as The People’s Grocery. Angered by the success of the rival grocery story, a group of white residents attacked the store. Gunshots were traded, injuring three white men. The black grocers were eventually arrested but shot and lynched by a white mob before they could stand trial. The black grocers of the People’s Grocery store epitomize America’s resentment toward the uprising entrepreneurial class of African Americans that emerged during the Reconstruction Era. As black individuals were becoming “too independent” of America’s economic restraint, white individuals saw this as a threat that could potentially disrupt the white hegemony and overthrow their economic dominance. As a result, whites believed that “they [black people] needed to learn a lesson” in subordination, by killing black leaders that could potentially uplift and encourage African-American prosperity (Wells 19). By making an example out of black leaders by lynching them, this, in turn, renews a sense of fear into other black individuals and reestablishes the economic dichotomy between whites and blacks. Although the use of lynchings has become a tactic to hinder the economic progression of Black people, Wells proposes combative methods that could potentially limit these violent