Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois

Booker T. Washington 1856—1915 His mother Jane was an enslaved black woman who worked as a cook and his father was an unknown white plantation owner. Born a slave (children always follow the status of their mothers) but freed at age 9 with the passing of the 13 th amendment

Booker T. Washington He was educated at the Hampton Institute (a school established to equip free black men with the education necessary to become teachers). In 1881, Washington was appointed by Sam Armstrong as the first leader of Tuskegee Institute (now known as Tuskegee University), and he served as head of the institution for the remainder of his life.

Washington—Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee opened on July 4, 1881, initially using space rented from a local church. The next year, Washington purchased a former plantation, which became the permanent site of the campus.

Washington—Tuskegee Under his direction, his students literally built their own school: constructing classrooms, barns and outbuildings; growing their own crops and raising livestock; and providing for most of their own basic necessities. At Tuskegee, both men and women had to learn trades as well as academics. The education at Tuskegee emphasized practical skills such as carpentry and masonry.

Washington—Tuskegee Washington’s theory was that by providing needed skills to society, African Americans would eventually earn the acceptance of white Americans. He believed that blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens.

Washington Fighting for specific rights like voting was not part of Washington’s immediate agenda. For Washington, a slow acquisition of wealth and culture was the best way to gain equality. Moderation was the key to Washington's ideals.

W.E.B. Dubois Not everyone agreed with Washington’s “moderate” approach to civil rights. W.E.B. Dubois was one of the greatest critics of Washington’s ideas—calling him the “Great Accommodator.”

Dubois Dubois was arguably the greatest advocate of African American civil rights during his time. David Lewis writes: "In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. DuBois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism— scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self- determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."

Dubois Dubois was born and grew up in the overwhelmingly white town of Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1888, DuBois earned a degree from Fisk University (a historically black college in Nashville, TN). DuBois continued his education at Harvard College in 1890 and in 1895 he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard.

DuBois In 1909, DuBois founded the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) For 25 years, he worked as Editor-in-Chief of the NAACP publication, The Crisis. The Crisis published famous Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer.

DuBois Because DuBois was born free, he had many opportunities for education that Washington did not. DuBois felt that Washington's plan to gain equality was only going to further exacerbate the oppression of African-American's in the United States and more specifically the South. Instead of a plan of accommodation, DuBois favored a plan of political action. He believed that African- American's had to speak out against the shortcomings that they were held to in the United States.

DuBois and the “Talented Tenth” While Washington favored a skills-based education for African Americans, Du Bois believed that blacks should strive to obtain the same liberal arts centered education given to the most privileged white Americans. DuBois feared that an industrial focused education would confine blacks permanently to the ranks of second-class citizenship. He emphasized the necessity for higher education to develop the leadership capacity among the most able 10 percent of black Americans. He hoped that giving the best and brightest of his race access to a superior education, would allow those individuals to “raise up” the race as a whole.

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man- training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it—this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.