Washington Vs Du Bois: What wa

African Americans were their own civilization. One that was brutally subjugated, but as diverse in belief and philosophy as any other society. When the slave nation became a nation of freedmen, a lot of doors opened all at once. Unfortunately, there were others standing in front of those doors: white society. To be fair, no social structure, especially the previously slave owning South, could make an easy transition from black livestock to colored fellow citizen overnight. This was an obstacle that the African American people of America would have to jump together. However, how to approach this obstacle met some difference of opinion between black rights advocates Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. While Du Bois’s argument that black Americans deserved all the rights synonymous with U.S. citizenship was absolutely valid, Washington had a much more reasonable expectation of how the freed slaves and American society could unite towards equality.

Du Bois hit the nail on the head as far as black legal rights. Blacks were not a subjugate race any longer. Eventually, if

Washington repulsed the idea that blacks needed to be handed their rights and aid by the government, preferring instead self-reliance as the choice for African Americans to earn their rights. Black and white people didn’t have to be social equals right away; this could come in time. All Washington asked of Americans was to give black America a fair chance to prove themselves as economic equals through hard work to educate and employ themselves as useful members of society, thus earning their American freedoms in the eyes of other hard-working Americans. He hoped to achieve this goal by founding the Tuskegee Institute, an industrial school, in the hope that former slaves would get basic career skills and would be able to slowly climb the economic ladder, each generation ahead of the last, until finally, equality could be reached. The path was much longer than Du Bois’s short legal battle shortcut, but the reward would be true respect and understanding of the rest of American society.

not if not immediately, blacks would have to be given equal rights under U.S. law. It was a near guarantee not only because it was fair and moral, but also to kee

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