Booker T

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BOOKER T WASHINGTON *V* WEB DUBOIS

For more than a hundred years important Black leaders such as: Douglass, Elliot, Washington, and Du Bois have been both praised and sensationalized in our (Black) history books for their individual efforts in the struggle for the civil and political advancement of Black Americans; but among all others the two most “talked” about during that period would have to be Booker T. Washington and his fellow activist and most verbal critic W.E.B. DuBois. Although during the span of their prospective careers both have worked diligently to secure a place for Black Americans in society, agreeing in context with each others hope for the future, in methodology at least their difference of opinion as to the way to go about achieving that goal varied in as many ways as from star to star varies in its positioning in the universe.

Both valued and villainized during his time for his controversial proposal on the unification of Black and White America, civil rights activist Booker T. Washington came to be known as a force to be reckoned with after the presentation of his address at the “Atlanta Exposition” in 1895. In his proposal, under the guise of wanting to say something meaningful that would unite the races, Washington encouraged Black Americans to: 1.settle for low level industrialized education, thereby focusing on the maintenance of the cotton gin instead of the magnitude of their learning potential, 2. Reconcile with the South in a grandiose gesture of forgiveness, which is in my opinion never the less over shadowed by the hundreds of ropes still decorating

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the branches of old southern oaks and dogwoods, and 3. Submit to the loss of all aspirations toward acquiring civil and political rights, therefore with that move relinquishing all hope of ever being anything more than they already were.

In proposing that blacks initiate this type of voluntary subservience Washington thought that with time and hard work Blacks could build their futures through the accumulation of commerce and with the patronization of private owned businesses in their communities gradually acquiring the basic civil and political appendages owed them. He felt that it was more important to be able to earn a living then to be able to say that they were equal under the law; in other words a jobless man who is able to vote does nothing to contribute to the good of society if he is unable to first contribute to the preservation of his own well being.

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