Civil Rights

The views of two influential black leaders during the 20th century are known as W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington. The men shared a common goal, and that was uplifting black people toward success. The ideologies they differed in were a reflection of their Early Lives, Philosophies, and Career Legacies.

Born as a slave on April 5, 1856, Washington was raised in Franklin County, Virginia. He was raised alone by his mother in a small cabin on a southern plantation. He didn’t have a formal education as a child and was forced into hard manual labor. Washington later went on to attend Hamilton Normal Agriculture Institute, and received an industrial, and agriculture education from the institution. Dubois, on the other hand was born as free man on February 23, 1868 in the northern state of Massachusetts. He received a formal education as a child, and grew up in a diverse culture. Later Dubois went on to graduate from Fisk University, and Harvard, and obtained a Liberal Arts Degree.

The distinct difference between Washington and Dubois was their Philosophies, in which they were very critical of each other. Washington’s education philosophies were instilled in him at Hamilton Institute by a formal General. It was there that he received a notion that an education

in the crafts, industrial, and farming were more important. He said that, “blacks would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated in all strata of society”. Washington was popular with the southern and

northern whites, because he preached their way of life by telling blacks to just be complacent with their way of life . He felt that blacks was more useful by picking up a mop, cleaning, laboring in the field, and that would gain them their freedom. Dubois, on the other hand believed that blacks should have the same equality of life as whites. He also expressed that the only way to obtain such is to become educated in academics. Dubois stated in the “Talented Tenth that one in ten black college educated men would become leaders of their own race through education, writing books, and becoming directly involved in social change”.

Washington and Dubois biggest philosophy disagreement was black suffrage issues, in which consists of social, economics, and voting rights. Washington made his point by saying during his Atlanta Compromise Speech that black’s should, “Cast down your Buckets”. He was simply telling us that we should just stop fighting for equal rights, and settle for manual labor and discrimination. Dubois was outraged by his speech and published Souls of Black Folk by quoting. "this policy has damaged African Americans by contributing to the loss of the vote, the loss of civil status, and the loss of aid for institutions of higher education. Du Bois insists that "the right to vote," "civic