THE COLOR LINE

As an aspiring teacher when I think “color line” I think of the concept of coloring in the lines, but here we see the drawing of the color line as separating the races in the post-Reconstruction South with the focus on African Americans and their struggle with discrimination sanctioned by law. Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois focus on the struggles through; civic equality, gaining political rights, educating African Americans, putting an end to lynching, and enforcing social equality among races. Though the three overlap, they have different views and responses to how to respond.
Miss Ida B. Wells, in Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases condemned violence against blacks and the failure of black people to fight for their rights. The “statistics compiled by the Chicago “Tribune” were given the first of this year (1892)” and within the eight years prior to that year, 728 Afro-Americans had been lynched with less than 50 being for political reasons. Wells encouraged black residents to leave town in fear of false claims of rape or other “lynchable” accusations. At a time when some thought they had seen hope for the future when “three of the best specimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood” were lynched. Owners and operators of a flourishing grocery business in competition with a white-man store owner on the opposite corner eventually ended in a threatening attack when officers were wounded and who to blame but the three black men-[“the leaders of the conspiracy”-were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockingly brutal manner.] Wells ends her record with a quote saying, “The gods help those who help themselves.” By this she is referencing to the failure of black people fighting for...

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...s lynch law in all its phases. New York: New York Age Print, 1892. 24. Print.
Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise.” Cotton States and International Exposition. Atlanta, 18 September 1895.
Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise.” Cotton States and International Exposition. Atlanta, 18 September 1895.
Divine, Robert A.. "Toward an Urban Society, 1877-1900." America past and present. Brief 7th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 379. Print.

Divine, Robert A.. "Toward an Urban Society, 1877-1900." America past and present. Brief 7th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 380. Print.
Dubois, W.E.B. . "Chapter 1. Of Our Spiritual Strivings." The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903. 8. Print.
Dubois, W.E.B. . "Chapter 3. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others." The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903. 39. Print.