W. E. B Dubois And The Gilded Age Analysis

At the turn of the Twentieth Century America is one generation removed from the civil war. For African Americans times are supposed to be improving following the Reconstruction of the south and the ratification of the 15th amendment. Except, in actuality life is still extremely tough for the vast majority of African Americans. Simultaneously, the birthing of the industrial revolution is taking place in America and a clear social divide in daily livelihood and economic prosperity is forming across the country. This time is known as the Gilded Age because as the metaphor emphasizes, only a thin layer of wealth and prosperity of America’s elite robber barons is masking the immense amount of impoverished American laborers. Among the vast majority

DuBois believes that in a time of such social and economic inequality in the Nation the only way for African Americans to take their deserved rights, and overcome the daily injustices of the Gilded Age and racism is through thorough education.
To understand the viewpoint of W.E.B Dubois and his argument for having a well-educated African American population, his own background and life experience of the struggle to be African and American must be considered. DuBois is born in the north in Massachusetts where the so-called Negro problem paralyzing the

These driven African American leaders are the “talented tenth” meaning the top ten percent of the African American population who are all successful college educated men who are looking at the long-term view of where the role of Black Americans is going to be in the nation. These “talented tenth” share in DuBois’s belief that “education is that whole system of human training within and without house walls, which molds and develops men.” That in order to gain equality the Black community in the country needs to pursue the holistic education, that caters to the mind, body and soul of the African American student, and prepares black leaders. Ultimately this means that in a time of booming industrialization in America, it is imperative that for African Americans that, “True education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.” This is so important to Dubois because he understands that the White man’s view of progression in an industrialized America is no different then the pro-slavery America of the nineteenth century. When DuBois returned to his schoolhouse in Tennessee, several years after leaving to pursue his own higher education, he returned to find his “log schoolhouse was gone. In its place