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Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois


Cases such as there brought up new voices advocating civil equality, and the strategies by which they are achieved. One of these voices was that of Booker T. Washington, an educator and the most prominent black leader of his day. He grew up as a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, born to a white slave-holding father and a slave mother. In his famous Atlanta Compromise Address, Booker T. Washington used the saying "cast down your bucket" as a metaphor for deserting racist ideas. He stated that it is only in the South that "a negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world," that the Negro race can only succeed until they learn dignity from menial farm labor. He supported the idea that a "negro can only survive through submission," that social equality cannot be achieved through assertiveness, but rather by earning it. Washington wanted blacks to try and get along in society. He encouraged blacks to become educated and to work in agriculture and industry, to accept their second-class status in American society. Washington wanted blacks to stay submissive until the time was right.
             Many of Du Bois theories were in response to the writings of Booker T. Washington. Washington believed that blacks in America needed pride in themselves in order to rise in a white dominated society. His concern was for solidarity and self-help. Du Bois agreed with him in some aspects but had different ideas for helping the black community. Washington called for Negroes to give up higher education and politics in order to concentrate on gaining industrial wealth. Du Bois disagreed. He believed that only though education could blacks gain status and that Washington's idea promoted black submission to whites. Du Bois felt that adaption was the best means of treating the discrimination against blacks. Education was the key to a diverse, multicultural society. "If the meaning of modern life cannot be taught at Negro hearthsides because the parents themselves are untaught then its ideals can be forced into the centres of Negro life only by the teaching of higher institutions of learning and the agency of thoroughly educated men," wrote Du Bois.


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