Discrimination
The struggle for social and economic equality
of Black people in America has
been long and slow. It is sometimes amazing
that any progress has been made in
the racial equality arena at all; every
tentative step forward seems to be
diluted by losses elsewhere. For every
"Stacey Koons" that is
convicted, there seems to be a Texaco executive
waiting to send Blacks back to
the past. Throughout the struggle for equal
rights, there have been courageous
Black leaders at the forefront of each
discrete movement. From early activists
such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T.
Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois, to 1960s
civil rights leaders and radicals
such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the
Black Panthers, the
progress that has been made toward full equality has
resulted from the
visionary leadership of these brave individuals. This does not
imply,
however, that there has ever been widespread agreement within the
Black
community on strategy or that the actions of prominent Black leaders
have met
with strong support from those who would benefit from these actions.
This report
will examine the influence of two "early era" Black activists:
Booker
T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Through an analysis of the
ideological
differences between these two men, the writer will argue that,
although they
disagreed over the direction of the struggle for equality, the
differences
between these two men actually enhanced the status of Black
Americans in the
struggle for racial equality. We will look specifically at
the events leading to
and surrounding the "Atlanta Compromise" in 1895. In
order to
understand the differences in the philosophies of Washington and
Dubois, it is
useful to know something about their backgrounds. Booker T.
Washington, born a
slave in 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia, could be
described as a pragmatist.
He was only able to attend school three months
out of the year, with the
remaining nine months spent working in coal mines.
He developed the idea of
Blacks becoming skilled tradesmen as a useful
stepping-stone toward respect by
the white majority and eventual full
equality. Washington worked his way through
Hampton Institute and helped
found the Tuskeegee Institute, a trade school for
blacks. His essential
strategy for the advancement of American Blacks was for
them to achieve
enhanced status as skilled tradesmen for the present, then using
this status
as a platform from which to reach for full equality later.
Significantly,
he argued for submission to the white majority so as not to
offend the power
elite. Though he preached appeasement and a "hands
off" attitude toward
politics, Washington has been accused of wielding
imperious power over "his
people" and of consorting with the white
elite. William Edward Burghardt
DuBois, on the other hand, was more of an
idealist. DuBois was born in
Massachusetts in 1868, just after the end of the
Civil War and the
official end of slavery. A gifted scholar, formal education
played a much
greater role in DuBois's life than it did in Washington's. After
becoming a
Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk and Harvard, he was the first Black
to earn a
Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895. DuBois wrote over 20 books and more than
100
scholarly articles on the historical and sociological nature of the
Black
experience. He argued that an educated Black elite should lead Blacks
to
liberation by advancing a philosophical and intellectual offensive
against
racial discrimination. DuBois forwarded the argument that "The
Negro
problem was not and could not be kept distinct from other reform
movements..
." DuBois "favored immediate social and political integration and
the
higher education of a Talented Tenth of the black population. His main
interest
was in the education of ‘the group leader, the man who sets the
ideas of the
community where he lives. . .'" To this end, he organized the
"Niagara
movement," a meeting of 29 Black business and professional men,
which led
to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored
People (NAACP). The crux of the struggle for the ideological
center of the
racial equality movement is perhaps best exemplified in Mr.
DuBois's influential
The Souls of Black Folk. In it, he makes an
impassioned argument for his vision
of an educated Black elite. DuBois also
describes his opposition to Booker T.
Washington's "Atlanta Compromise"
as follows: "Mr. Washington
represents in Negro thought the old attitude of
adjustment and
submission..." According to DuBois, Washington broke the mold
set by his
predecessors: "Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells- Brown, and
Douglass, a new
period of self-assertion and self- development dawned.... But
Booker T.
Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but
of two--a
compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro." DuBois
reported
that Blacks "resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise
which
surrendered their civil and political rights, even though this was to
be
exchanged for larger chances of economic development." DuBois's point
and,
according to him, the collective opinion of the majority of the Black
community,
was that self- respect was more important than any potential
future economic
benefits. Before Washington's conciliatory stance gained a
foothold, "the
assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was
the main
reliance." In other words, DuBois resented what he saw as
Washington
"selling" Black pride: "...Mr. Washington's programme
naturally
takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such
an extent as
apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of
life." The
compromise included, in DuBois's words, "that black people give
up, at
least for the present, three things,-- "First, political power,
Second,
insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro
youth,--and
concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the
accumulation of
wealth, and the conciliation of the South." The final point
comprised the
centerpiece both of Washington's strategy for the ultimate
redemption of Black
Americans and of DuBois's condemnation of that
strategy. Indeed, Washington
backed up his assertions by founding the
Tuskeegee Institute as a trade school
for young Black men. DuBois could not
abide this type of appeasement. In his
mind, this step was tantamount to the
Black community telling the white
community that, henceforth, Blacks would
cease pretending to be equal to whites
as human beings; rather, they would
accept an overtly inferior social status as
being worthy of maintaining the
white majority's physical world, but unworthy of
true equality, of conducting
socio-cultural discourse with the mainstream
society. The paradox must have
been maddening for both men, especially Mr.
Washington. He no doubt
understood that, as a group, Blacks could never hope to
progress to the point
of equality from their position of abject poverty.
Moreover, without
skills, their hopes of escaping their economic inferiority
were indeed scant.
Washington's plan for blacks to at least become skilled
artisans and
tradesmen must have seemed logical to him from the standpoint of
improving
the economic lot of the average Black man. At the same time, he must
have
realized that, by accepting inferiority as a de- facto condition for
the
entire race, he may have broken the black spirit forever. In considering
this
matter, the writer is reminded of more recent events in American
history--the
affirmative action flap that occurred after Clarence Thomas's
appointment to the
U.S. Supreme Court, for example. Mr. Thomas, clearly a
beneficiary of
affirmative action, announced that he was nonetheless opposed
to it. His
argument was that if he had not been eligible for benefits under
affirmative
action programs, he would have still achieved his current
position in the inner
circle of this society's white power elite. Similarly,
Booker T. Washington
enjoyed access to the power elite of his time, but one
must wonder whether
President Roosevelt, for example, in his interactions
with Mr. Washington, was
not merely using the situation for public relations
value. "[Mr.
Washington] was ‘intimate' with Roosevelt from 1901 to 1908.
On the day
Roosevelt took office, he invited Washington to the White
House to advise him on
political appointments of Negroes in the south." After
all, he did not
become a popular president by being oblivious to such
political maneuvering.
Perhaps Mr. DuBois was the more prescient
visionary. Perhaps he understood what
Mr. Washington did not, that after
the critical historical momentum toward
social acceptance that had been
established prior to the late nineteenth
century, if political pressure were
not maintained, the cause of true equality
would be lost forever. Moreover,
DuBois understood that equality would not be
earned through appeasement. From
our perspective of over 100 years, we must
admit that he may have been right.
For example, in the aftermath of the
"Atlanta Massacre" of September 22, 1906
and a similar incident in
Springfield, Illinois, "it was clear to almost
all the players that the
tide was running strongly in favor of protest and
militancy." "For six
days in August, 1908, a white mob, made up, the press
said, of many of the
town's ‘best citizens,' surged through the streets of
Springfield, Illinois,
killing and wounding scores of Blacks and driving
hundreds from the city."
However, it later turned out that DuBois was
considered to be too extreme in the
other direction. For example, as the
NAACP became more mainstream, it became
increasingly conservative, and this
did not please DuBois, who left the
organization in 1934. He returned later
but was eventually shunned by Black
leadership both inside and outside of the
NAACP, especially after he voiced
admiration for the USSR. In the political
climate of the late 1940s and 1950s,
any hint of a pro-communist
attitude--black or white--was unwelcome in any group
with a national
political agenda. We can see, then, that neither Washington's
strategy of
appeasement nor DuBois's plan for an elite Black intelligentsia was
to become
wholly successful in elevating American Blacks to a position of
equality.
However, perhaps it was more than the leadership of any one Black man
that
encouraged African Americans to demand a full measure of social and
economic
equality. Perhaps the fact that there was a public dialogue in itself
did
more to encourage Black equality than the philosophy of any one
prominent
Black man. After all, concepts such as equality are exactly
that: concepts. As
such, it up to each of us to decide how we see ourselves
in relation to others;
superior or inferior, equal or not equal, the choice
is ultimately our own.