Civil Rights Activists Booker T Washington and WEB Du Bois
Civil Rights Activists Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois were both civil rights activists, yet one man’s solution to the problems faced by African Americans in late-nineteenth-century America, was better than the other’s. That man was Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washington was born into slavery where as W.E.B. Du Bois was born a free man. Their different backgrounds created very dissimilar ideas of how the African Americans would achieve full civil liberties and equal rights.
Having studied at Hampton Institute in Virginia, Booker T. Washington was motivated to spend his time promoting Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. W.E.B. Du Bois on the other hand, graduated from Fisk University in Tennessee and then became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard.
Washington preached that in order to gain understanding from whites, African Americans would have to concentrate on creating economic security by improving vocational skills. He told blacks to disregard their want for political equality. Du Bois, had a different type of audience and he led them to request full civil freedoms, an end to discrimination, and the recognition of human brotherhood. He mocked and jeered at Washington’s ideas.
Washington’s ideas were nothing to be made fun of. He spoke to a people who had very little education, if any, yet had potential to learn. He spoke to people that were good at blue-collar jobs. He spoke from his heart to a nation of African Americans who deserved their rights, but needed his wise words to help them.
Proof that Washington spoke on behalf of the whole African American community is in a speech he gave. He said: “To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition…cast down your bucket where you are-cast it down…in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic services, and in the professions…no race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem…” Here he is reaching out to everyone with a profound message.
W.EB. Du Bois’ message was quite unlike Booker T. Washington’s. In fact he turned Washington’s views upside down. In The Negro Problem he wrote that the point of “education isn’t to turn men into carpenters, but it is to turn carpenters...