Washington Vs. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were both intelligent, hard-working, successful black men. The roots of their fruition, however, were vastly different.

Washington was a young boy when he began working in a salt factory. He learned to read on his own and later attended a school for freed black slaves and worked in a coal mine. He paid his way through college working as a janitor. After his graduation there, he worked as a teacher, which would later become his career.

Conversely, Du Bois was born to non-slave parents and attended a school right off the bat and thrived there. He wrote for African American newspapers and was elected valedictorian. He attended the prestigious Fisk University by the aid of a scholarship raised just for him by local ministers and teachers after his mothers's death. He was awarded grants, went to college in Berlin, earned a Ph.D., and started publishing books.

These divergent boyhoods, in my opinion, greatly influenced both Du Bois' and Washington's views on the course of black people. Respective to their upbringings, Washington suggested the black people to, in Du Bois' words, "give up, at least for the presesnt, three things, -- First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of the Negro youth" (466). Instead, he wanted the Negro to "Cast down [their] bucket[s] where [they] [were]" (442), emphasizing that they should use the resources available to them at the time being to prosper, rather than fight for other (but more desirable and powerful) resources that are out of reach. This ideal is very reflective to how his childhood defined him: by a modest beginning and hard work in physical labor.

Du Bois' suggestions to gain the right for black people to vote, demand civil equality, and offer quality education to all black children reflect his upbringing as well, considering his lifetime of education and attending schools with whites, never being held back because of his race and instead being encouraged forward because of his intellect. His views are more militant in the sense that he is urging for an upheaval of sorts to get what the black people deserve, rather than quietly bide time waiting for a gradual revolution of the black man like Washington suggests. Washington's slow and subtle tactics are more conservative. He wants black people to work in the vocation known well to blacks already; "in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions" (443).

I understand and respect what Washington meant when he said that "there is something in human nature which we cannot blot out, which makes one man, in the end, recognize and reward merit in another, regardless of color or race" (449), meaning that by fighting and forcing the white man to accept and equal himself to that of the black race, the recognition of that race is not sincere. Instead, he believes allowing the white man to come to the conclusion himself to give recognition to that race allows for a more amiable and less violent form of revolution.

Despite my respect for his theory, I must side with W.E.B. Du Bois. This may be because living in 2012 America, I know that race is still a touchy subject and that the freedom of blacks wasn't really fully accepted until the 60s or so. Knowing this influences me to want the black people of 19th century America to fight for their equality, right to vote, and education (and more). I think the incredible plight against the black race merits an equally incredible crusade for their well-earned equality in this country. Had I been asked the same question in the 1890s, I may have answered quite differently, but Washington's passive approach to black equality doesn't earn my vote. Du Bois has, in my opinion, the superior strategy.