Booker T Washington Vs Dubois

The period after the Civil War was a time of great tribulations for African Americans. Despite the fact that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and the 14th Amendment gave all former slaves citizenship and equal rights, black people found themselves left destitute and their rights eroded by hostile whites. Jim Crow laws created an oppressive environment for African Americans, and as a result of the racial disparity, civil rights leaders emerged to the forefront of American history, paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century. Among these civil rights advocates were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, whose ideologies sharply contrast with each other. While both fought for social equality, their methodologies

Washington or W.E.B. Du Bois offered a better plan for racial equality, one must look at several factors. In today’s modern time, many will be quick to claim that Du Bois offered the better plan of the two. His ideologies best reflect the mindset of the modern American people and are seen in the various movements today such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Nevertheless, modern ideas are irrelevant to the period in which Washington and Du Bois lived. The twenty-first century is unlike the nineteenth and twentieth century in its circumstances and conditions. Therefore, when deciding on which of the two methodologies best serve as a platform for the advancement of African Americans, one major factor to look at is the time in which these methodologies were proposed. Washington and Du Bois lived in the Jim Crow era-a period of racial oppression and disenfranchisement of black people. White people treated blacks as inferior beings and any attempt to change the status quo would have been met with hostility. Washington, unlike Du Bois, grew up as a slave and knew the deeply embedded racism within the white people of the time. He knew that black political agitation would lead nowhere and instead settled for a compromise- one that would lead to the eventual advancement of black people. In his book, Washington asked for everyone to “cast down [their] buckets” and help one another (690). He stated that “the wisest among [his] race understand

The scholar was a leader in his own rights in his belief of immediate equality and contention that in waiting for Civil Rights as Washington has proposed, African Americans will face further disenfranchisement, “the legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority,” and “the steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for higher training” (897). Du Bois’s method for social equality would be later seen in the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks who fought for changes in the political system for the rights of African Americans. Nonetheless, Du Bois’s ideology was simply not applicable during the period for which it was proposed simply due to the fact that there were certain needs that were more prominent. Washington realizes this and proposed a plan that would helped the people who found themselves destitute due to their lack of knowledge and