Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois--

From the end of the 19th century, and through the beginning of the 20th century, two men were struggling to help their race with their own unique strategies. These men were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. While they were both activists for the same race, they had very different ideas about how the black man should deal with the problems before him. One man was a passive activist (much like Gandhi or M.L.K. Jr.), one man was an aggressive activist (comparable to Malcolm X).

Booker T. Washington was the passive activist. He believed that the Black American should "cast down [his] bucket where [he] [was]." In his mind, progress would come gradually, and the blacks needed to be ready for that progress when it came. He wanted to help blacks by showing them the opportunities that were currently open to them (like working in factories). He even created his own school just for black people: Tuskegee Institute. There, blacks learned how to do simple day-to-day jobs instead of educating themselves about political, civil and intellectual rights. As T. Thomas Fortune noted, blacks were taught "what [was] practical, what [would] best fit [them] for the work of life." Washington advocated the idea that blacks should be happy with what they had, rather than use "artificial forcing." In time, the black man would gain equal rights, but meanwhile, "the opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just [then] [was] worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house." Booker T. Washington fit perfectly with his times. He, like many whites, was for the "separate but equal" idea. The blacks and the whites, to him, could coexist peacefully, "as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." He believed the white man and the black man could be allies in a new era, one in which the black man would become increasingly prepared for the opportunities that lay before him. Social equality would come slowly, but surely.

W.E.B. Du Bois, however, had a very different viewpoint. He wanted social equality for all black men immediately. He demanded the right to vote, civic equality and the education of youth according to ability. As black illiteracy and lynchings grew after military troops abandoned Reconstruction in 1877, Du Bois struggled to make other blacks increasingly aware of the way they were being cheated by whites. For him, it was appalling to see "Colored Only" restrooms and fountains, as can be clearly observed from Document J. He noted that "effort [was] being made to the curtail the educational opportunities of the colored children... the principles of democratic government [were] losing ground, and caste distinctions [were] growing in all directions." Du Bois could not believe that people of his own race were "voluntarily throwing away [their rights] away and insisting that they [did] not want them." He urged the black man, therefore, to "complain... plain, blunt complain, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong--this [was] the ancient, unerring way to liberty." By constantly speaking out against the injustices being done to them, blacks would not be waiting for social equality to come to them--they would be creating social equality themselves. Du Bois was a bit radical for his times, though he fit perfectly with the 1960s, nearly 10 decades later. Du Bois favored integration and the outlaw of the "separate but equal" law that had been made legal with Plessy vs. Ferguson. While his cause was right and just, whites were much more willing to listen to Booker T. Washington, the gradual progressionist, then be forced to hand blacks equal rights.

In summary, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois both had very different ideas about how the black man could gain social equality. But the two men were similar in one important aspect: they both believed that the black man would one day be seen as an equal in society. And their efforts paid off, too. By the 1900s, black school enrollment was slowly rising, illiteracy was decreasing, and lynchings were happening less and less. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois were significant figures in paving the rocky road to black equality.

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