Compare And Contrast Washington And W. E. B. Dubois

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W.E.B. Du Bois’ political views were that he was once a leader of the opposing side of the early civil rights movement. DuBois was born free and had a lot of educational opportunities that Booker T. Washington did not have. “Du Bois felt that Booker T. Washington’s plan to gain equality was only going to broaden and aggravate the cruelty of African-American’s in the United States and more specially in the South.” Rather choosing a plan of accommodation, Du Bois would rather favor a plan with political action. DuBois believed that African Americans had to speak clear on the weaknesses that they were held to in the United States. DuBois had very specific ideas of what he thought the African American’s needed to achieve in order to gain equality. …show more content…

Washington believed that if African Americans focused their attention on striving economically, they would eventually be given the rights that they were owed. Washington encouraged blacks to attend trade schools, “where they could learn to work with industrially or agriculturally.” In Atlanta, Washington stated, “Our greatest danger is that, in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in the proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life.” Washington had suggestion was something that the Negro race were familiar with. Most southern and northern whites had accepted the fact that his plan was acknowledged by the subordination of the black race. “Washington made a point that we as African Americans can achieve the rights we want if we present ourselves useful to the white race.” Washington states, “No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree shunned.” Washington said that “befriending a white man was imperative to ending a black man’s struggle, and to those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man who is their next-door neighbor,” “cast down your bucket for the people of all the races by whom we are surrounded.” This was the first time that a black man had ever spoken in front of many white people. It was shown that some African Americans were not on agreeing terms with Washington’s idea that this was also a sign of “submission for the black race.” With this, lied a conflict that when Washington send the message to African Americans saying that if they were going to come up, they would have to continue to use their hands as a means to be productive in white society. Having this

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