INSTRUCTIONS FOR WRITING ASSIGNMENT ON
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AND W. E. B. DU BOIS
This assignment is not to write an essay. Instead, it is a set of five questions regarding Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois in which you will compare the two men and the solutions they
offered for the difficulties faced by African Americans at the time. You are to type out the five
questions listed at the bottom of this page, numbering each one and giving your answer to it.
Your main source for this assignment is Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. In addition to it, I
have provided you with several articles and excerpts as resources. In addition to Up From Slavery,
you must also use and cite “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which is the title of chapter
three of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois; and “The Talented Tenth,” a brief article also by
Du Bois. In the following pages you will find these writings by Du Bois along with three other
articles that will be helpful to you.
You must give (cite) the source of your information, whether quoting or putting it in your own
words. For the book, give the page number where you found the information. For the article titled
“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which is a chapter in Du Bois’s book, The Souls of Black
Folk, the word “Souls” plus the paragraph number (listed in the upper right-hand corner of each
paragraph) will suffice.
Cite all information in parentheses immediately after giving the information. For example:
Washington gained insights on race relations from working with Indian boys at Hampton
(Washington, 87).
To cite material from Up From Slavery (quoted or paraphrased), use the model given above.
To cite material from “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which is chapter three of The
Souls of Black Folk, use the following model:
Du Bois states that by the 1830s the South as whole was slave country (Souls, chap. 3, para. 12).
To cite material from Du Bois’s article, “The Talented Tenth,” use the following model:
Du Bois argued that the race’s “exceptional men” would save African Americans (“Talented Tenth”).
Note that because “The Talented Tenth” is a brief article, it is not necessary to give the page
number(s).
To cite material from the one-page Du Bois biography, use the following model:
Du Bois believed that the white children at his school regarded him as inferior to them (Du Bois
bio.)
Note that because the Du Bois biography is a brief article, it is not necessary to give the page
number(s).
To cite material from the Britannica article, use the following model:
Du Bois received a doctorate from Harvard University (Britannica article).
Note that because the Britannica article is brief, it is not necessary to give a page number.
It will take at least two or three paragraphs to fully answer each question. Your
submission should be between four and eight pages, printed and double-spaced.The information
should be specific, not generalizations.
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:
1. Compare how Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois were raised. What kind of education
did they have? Did these things affect their view of the world and if so, how?
2. What was the name of the institution that Washington headed in Alabama? What kind of
education did it offer African Americans, and why?
3. What was Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address?
4. How did Du Bois disagree with Washington over the education of African Americans? What kind
of education for them did Du Bois advocate?
5. Besides the education of African Americans, over what other issues did Du
Bois and Washington disagree?
Format for Writing Assignment on Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
Use the following as a model to get started on your assignment:
History 106.[Section number], Spring 2013
[Your name] [Date submitted]
Writing Assignment on Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
1. Compare how Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois were raised. What kind of education
did they have? Did these things affect their view of the world and if so, how?
Washington was born a slave in the South and Du Bois was born free in theNorth (Washington, 7;
Du Bois bio).
[Some of the information came from Washington’s book and some of it from the Du Bois
biographical sketch, which is why I cited both sources.]
THE PRECEDING IS AN EXAMPLE. DO NOT COPY MY ANSWER.
TIPS:
1. WRITE COMPLETE SENTENCES WITH A SUBJECT AND A VERB.
2. DO NOT USE CONTRACTIONS.
3. DO NOT USE CASUAL LANGUAGE. REFER TO WASHINGTON AS “WASHINGTON,” NOT “BOOKER”
OR “BOOKER T.”
W.E.B Du Bois
Biographical Information
[If you quote or cite from the following indicate it by inserting “(Du Bois Bio)” after the
material. Since it is a brief article no page number is necessary.]
W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was one of
twenty-five to fifty African American residents out of a population of about 5,000 in the town.
Although he saw few outward signs of racism, as a child Du Bois suffered discrimination at the
hands of white children who treated him as inferior because of his color. As a result, his outgoing
personality became sullen and introspective.
While in high school Du Bois showed a keen concern for the development of his race. At age fifteen
he became the local correspondent for the New York Globe. He conceived it his duty to push his
race forward by lectures and editorials on the need for Black people to use the political system to
advance their position in American society.
Intellectually gifted, Du Bois stood out academically from took his fellow students. He hoped to
attend Harvard University after graduating from high school, but could not afford the tuition.
However, he was awarded a scholarship to Fisk College (now University), an African-American
institution in Nashville, Tennessee.
His three years at Fisk, 1885-1888, exposed Du Bois to the depth of the race problem in this
country. He became more determined than before to speed up the development of his people.
Du Bois spent two summers teaching at a school where learned more about the South and his
people. He saw their poverty and the prejudice they endured, but he also saw their desire for
knowledge.
Upon graduating from Fisk Du Bois received scholarships that allowed him to at last enter Harvard.
The attainment of this long-sought goal did not give him satisfaction. Years later he commented, “I
was in Harvard but not of it,” suggesting that he continued to deeply resent any sign of
condescension. He focused on the study of philosophy and history, and after receiving a bachelor’s
degree in 1890 continued at Harvard where eventually he would earn a master’s and a doctor’s
degree.
After completing his master’s degree in the spring of 1891, Du Bois read that former president
Rutherford B. Hayes was heading a fund program to educate Negroes, but had been quoted by a
newspaper as saying that no suitable candidate had been found to undertake advanced study in
another country. Du Bois applied for the grant and complained to Hayes for his statement. Hayes
replied that he had been misquoted. Du Bois received the grant and used it to study at the
University of Berlin, among the best universities in the world.
In Berlin, Du Bois came to believe that the race problem for Africans was not limited to one country
or continent. His studies there increasingly turned toward social research.
Du Bois returned to Harvard to complete his Ph. D. degree. His doctoral dissertation, The
Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, is considered a classic work of history and
continues to be studied by scholars.
Britannica Article on W.E.B. Du Bois
[If you cite or quote from this article do so in this format: (Britannica article). No page number is
necessary.
b. Feb. 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Mass.
d. Aug. 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana.
American sociologist, the most important black protest leader in the United States during the first
half of the 20th century. He shared in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited The Crisis, its magazine, from 1910 to 1934. Late in
life he became identified with Communist causes.
Early career
Du Bois was graduated from Fisk University, a black institution at Nashville, Tenn., in 1888. He
received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. His doctoral dissertation, The Suppression of the
African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, was published in 1896. Although
Du Bois took an advanced degree in history, he was broadly trained in the social sciences; and at a
time when sociologists were theorizing about race relations, he was conducting empirical inquiries
into the condition of blacks. For more than a decade he devoted himself to sociological
investigations of blacks in America, producing 16 research monographs published between 1897
and 1914 at Atlanta (Ga.) University, where he was a professor, as well as The Philadelphia Negro; A
Social Study (1899), the first case study of a black community in the United States. Although Du Bois
had originally believed that social science could provide the knowledge to solve the race problem,
he gradually came to the conclusion that in a climate of virulent racism, expressed in such evils as
lynching, peonage, disfranchisement, Jim Crow segregation laws, and race riots, social change could
be accomplished only through agitation and protest. In this view, he clashed with the most
influential black leader of the period, Booker T. Washington, who, preaching a philosophy of
accommodation, urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and elevate themselves
through hard work and economic gain, thus winning the respect of the whites. In 1903, in his
famous book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois charged that Washington's strategy, rather than
freeing the black man from oppression, would serve only to perpetuate it. This attack crystallized
the opposition to Booker T. Washington among many black intellectuals, polarizing the leaders of
the black community into two wings--the "conservative" supporters of Washington and his "radical"
critics. Two years later, in 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the Niagara Movement, which
was dedicated chiefly to attacking the platform of Booker T. Washington. The small organization,
which met annually until 1909, was seriously weakened by internal squabbles and Washington's
opposition. But it was significant as an ideological forerunner and direct inspiration for the
interracial NAACP, founded in 1909. Du Bois played a prominent part in the creation of the NAACP
and became the association's director of research and editor of its magazine, The Crisis. In this role
he wielded an unequaled influence among middle-class blacks and progressive whites as the
propagandist for the black protest from 1910 until 1934.Both in the Niagara Movement and in the
NAACP, Du Bois acted mainly as an integrationist, but his thinking always exhibited, to varying
degrees, separatist-nationalist tendencies. In The Souls of Black Folk he had expressed the
characteristic dualism of black Americans: One ever feels his twoness--an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. . . . He simply wishes to make it possible for a man
to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without
having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Chapter III:
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
Citation Instructions: Each paragraph is numbered. Follow this format: (Souls, chap. 3, para. 1).
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!
. . . . . . . .
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
BYRON.
EASILY the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is
the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war
memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial
development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen’s
sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple
definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little
ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating
its energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation of the
South, and submission and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly
original; the Free Negroes from 1830 up to wartime had striven to build industrial
schools, and the American Missionary Association had from the first taught various
trades; and Price and others had sought a way of honorable alliance with the best of
the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked these things; he put
enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into this programme, and changed it
from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he
did this is a fascinating study of human life.
1
2
It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many
decades of bitter complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested
and won the admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it
silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.
3
To gain the sympathy and coöperation of the various elements comprising the white
South was Mr. Washington’s first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded,
seemed, for a black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in
the word spoken at Atlanta: “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the
five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” This
“Atlanta Compromise” is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington’s
career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a
complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives,
as a generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved
it, and to-day its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson
Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.
4
Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington’s work in gaining place and
consideration in the North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit
on these two stools and had fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the
heart of the South from birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively
grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the North. And so thoroughly did
he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and the ideals of
material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French
grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme
of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this.
5
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of
the successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to
give them force. So Mr. Washington’s cult has gained unquestioning followers, his
work has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are
confounded. To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his ten million
fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions. One
hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little, has done so
much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter
courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington’s career, as well as of
his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it
is easier to do ill than well in the world.
6
The criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad
character. In the South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest
judgments,—and naturally so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest
sensitiveness to that section. Twice—once when at the Chicago celebration of the
Spanish-American War he alluded to the color-prejudice that is “eating away the
vitals of the South,” and once when he dined with President Roosevelt—has the
resulting Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten seriously his popularity.
In the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words, that Mr.
Washington’s counsels of submission overlooked certain elements of true manhood,
and that his educational programme was unnecessarily narrow. Usually, however,
such criticism has not found open expression, although, too, the spiritual sons of the
Abolitionists have not been prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before
Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or
worthy of ridicule. While, then, criticism has not failed to follow Mr. Washington,
yet the prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too willing to deliver the
solution of a wearisome problem into his hands, and say, “If that is all you and your
race ask, take it.”
7
Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and
most lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even to-day continuing
strong and insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public
opinion of the nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the
disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds. But aside
from this, there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land
a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide currency and
ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained. These same men
admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor
which is doing something worth the doing. They coöperate with Mr. Washington as
far as they conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact
and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions,
he so largely retains the respect of all.
8
But the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads
some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others
to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and
earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,—criticism of
writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led,—this is
the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the
American Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized
before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable
loss,—a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by
search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this
is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social growth.
History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is
its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than
the leadership of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real
progress may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the
social student’s inspiration and despair.
9
Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing
of group leaders, founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present
conditions is worth while studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole
environment of a people, their attitude is largely one of determined opposition to and
conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and brute is added an environment of
men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group may take three main
forms,—a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and action to
the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-realization and
self-development despite environing opinion. The influence of all of these attitudes at
various times can be traced in the history of the American Negro, and in the evolution
of his successive leaders.
10
Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves,
there was in all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and
revenge,—typified in the terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato of Stono, and
veiling all the Americas in fear of insurrection. The liberalizing tendencies of the
latter half of the eighteenth century brought, along with kindlier relations between
black and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment and assimilation. Such aspiration
was especially voiced in the earnest songs of Phyllis, in the martyrdom of Attucks,
the fighting of Salem and Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of Banneker and
Derham, and the political demands of the Cuffes.
11
Stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the previous
humanitarian ardor. The disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the
persistence of slavery and serfdom voiced itself in two movements. The slaves in the
South, aroused undoubtedly by vague rumors of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce
attempts at insurrection,—in 1800 under Gabriel in Virginia, in 1822 under Vesey in
Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible Nat Turner. In the Free
States, on the other hand, a new and curious attempt at self-development was made.
In Philadelphia and New York color-prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro
communicants from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious
institution among the Negroes known as the African Church,—an organization still
living and controlling in its various branches over a million of men.
12
Walker’s wild appeal against the trend of the times showed how the world was
changing after the coming of the cotton-gin. By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly
fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission. The free
Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto immigrants from the West Indies,
began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized the slavery of slaves, but
insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation and
amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. Thus, Forten and
Purvis of Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of
Boston, and others, strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as
“people of color,” not as “Negroes.” The trend of the times, however, refused them
recognition save in individual and exceptional cases, considered them as one with all
the despised blacks, and they soon found themselves striving to keep even the rights
they formerly had of voting and working and moving as freemen. Schemes of
migration and colonization arose among them; but these they refused to entertain, and
they eventually turned to the Abolition movement as a final refuge.
13
Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a new period of selfassertion and self-development dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and
assimilation was the ideal before the leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights
of the Negro by himself was the main reliance, and John Brown’s raid was the
extreme of its logic. After the war and emancipation, the great form of Frederick
Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host. Self-assertion,
especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass came
Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous
but of greater social significance Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.
14
Then came the Revolution of 1876, the suppression of the Negro votes, the changing
and shifting of ideals, and the seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass, in
his old age, still bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood,—ultimate
assimilation through self-assertion, and on no other terms. For a time Price arose as a
new leader, destined, it seemed, not to give up, but to re-state the old ideals in a form
less repugnant to the white South. But he passed away in his prime. Then came the
new leader. Nearly all the former ones had become leaders by the silent suffrage of
their fellows, had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually, save
Douglass, little known outside their race. 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. Naturally the Negroes 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. The rich and
dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race problem, but was
investing largely in Southern enterprises, and welcomed any method of peaceful
coöperation. Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr.
Washington’s leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed.
15
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and
submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique.
This is an age of unusual economic development, and 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.
Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact
with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr.
Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro
races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given
impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of
the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of
intensified prejudice all the Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth;
at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other
races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly selfrespect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily
surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
16
In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through
submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks 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. This policy has been courageously and insistently
advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a
result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there
have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington’s teachings;
17
but his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier
accomplishment. The question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine
millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of
political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for
developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct answer to
these questions, it is an emphatic No. And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple
paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it
is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and
property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission
to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of
higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could
remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by
their graduates.
This triple paradox in Mr. Washington’s position is the object of criticism by two
18
classes of colored Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the
Savior, through Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt
and revenge; they hate the white South blindly and distrust the white race generally,
and so far as they agree on definite action, think that the Negro’s only hope lies in
emigration beyond the borders of the United States. And yet, by the irony of fate,
nothing has more effectually made this programme seem hopeless than the recent
course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies,
Hawaii, and the Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe from
lying and brute force?
The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said
little aloud. They deprecate the sight of scattered counsels, of internal disagreement;
and especially they dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an
excuse for a general discharge of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless,
the questions involved are so fundamental and serious that it is difficult to see how
men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E. Bowen, and other representatives of this
group, can much longer be silent. Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this
nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
19
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to ability.
They acknowledge Mr. Washington’s invaluable service in counselling patience
and courtesy in such demands; they do not ask that ignorant black men vote
when ignorant whites are debarred, or that any reasonable restrictions in the
suffrage should not be applied; they know that the low social level of the mass of
the race is responsible for much discrimination against it, but they also know,
and the nation knows, that relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a
result of the Negro’s degradation; they seek the abatement of this relic of
barbarism, and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies
of social power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ. They
advocate, with Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro common schools
supplemented by thorough industrial training; but they are surprised that a man
of Mr. Washington’s insight cannot see that no such educational system ever has
rested or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college and
university, and they insist that there is a demand for a few such institutions
throughout the South to train the best of the Negro youth as teachers,
professional men, and leaders.
20
This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward
the white South; they accept the “Atlanta Compromise” in its broadest
interpretation; they recognize, with him, many signs of promise, many men of
high purpose and fair judgment, in this section; they know that no easy task has
been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But, nevertheless,
they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in
indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising
uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at
hand and urging their fellows to do the same, but at the same time in
remembering that only a firm adherence to their higher ideals and aspirations
will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility. They do not expect
that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come in a
moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at
the blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to
gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and
insisting that they do not want them; that the way for a people to gain respect is
not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary,
Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is
necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that
black boys need education as well as white boys.
21
In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their
people, even at the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of
American Negroes would shirk a heavy responsibility,—a responsibility to
themselves, a responsibility to the struggling masses, a responsibility to the
darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American
experiment, but especially a responsibility to this nation,—this common
Fatherland. It is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong
to aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so. The
growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after
the frightful differences of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep
congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war;
but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death
of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of
inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every
consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized
methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T.
Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are
sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
22
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present
generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be
blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate
endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating
than to the best thought of the South. The South is not “solid”; it is a land in the
ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy;
and to praise the ill the South is to-day perpetrating is just as wrong as to
condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South
needs,—needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the
insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.
23
To-day even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so
many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the
workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a
laborer, some of the educated see a menace in his upward development, while
others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help him to rise. National
opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to
protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of
the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery,
especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated
who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged his
deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and
abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is
nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against “the South” is unjust; but to use the
same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing
with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only
sane, but the imperative duty of thinking black men.
24
It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several
instances he has opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the
Negro; he sent memorials to the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional
conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in other ways has openly or
silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate happenings.
Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct
impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is
justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s
degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more
quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise
depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous
half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and
race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second,
industrial and common-school training were necessarily slow in planting because
they had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions,—it being
extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was possible, and
certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great
truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is
equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused
and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he
cannot hope for great success.
25
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially
to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South,
shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside
as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to
the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to
righting these great wrongs.
26
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self
and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging.
The North—her co-partner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it
with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by
“policy” alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country
survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a
forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as
Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the
masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors
and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the
headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or
South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the
emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and
ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does
this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and
peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men,
clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would
fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The Talented Tenth
W.E.B. Du Bois
September 1903
In this article Du Bois spells out his objections to Booker T. Washington’s emphasis on manual and
industrial training for African Americans, and makes a case that a “Talented Tenth” of black youth
ought to receive a college or university education. Follow this format in citing from this work:
(Talented Tenth). Since it is a brief article, no page number is necessary.
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of
education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of
developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and
death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate
task. . . . If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not
necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not,
in nature, men. . . .
From the very first it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and
elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and
race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the
work of natural internal leadership? Negro leadership therefore sought from the first to rid the race
of this awful incubus that it might make way for natural selection and the survival of the fittest. . . .
Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort
and example of this aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth
civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward
that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their
vantage ground. This is the history of human progress . . . .
How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few
strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be
schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. . . .
All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its
yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and
befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their
bellies, and no God greater than Gold. . . .
The college-bred Negro . . . is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of
the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social movements. It need hardly
be argued that the Negro people need social leadership more than most groups; that they have no
traditions to fall back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well defined
social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully evolved. The preacher was, even before
the war, the group leader of the Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally
this preacher was ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the older type by
better educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct work and by direct influence on other
preachers, and on congregations, the college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory
work and moral inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated.
It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college has found its peculiar
function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how mighty a revolution has been thus
accomplished. To furnish five millions and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race
and blood, in one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but very important one, in
that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses
of the blacks in contact with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities
and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were first teachers, and then
teachers of teachers. And here it is that the broad culture of college work has been of peculiar
value. Knowledge of life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro’s deepest
ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been simply for bread winning,
but also for human culture, has been of inestimable value in the training of these men. . . .
There must be teachers, and teachers of teachers, and to attempt to establish any sort of a system
of common and industrial school training, without first . . . providing for the higher training of the
very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds. School houses do not teach
themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living
human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath
of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian
or American. . . .
I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of teaching the Negro to
work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem to depreciate in the slightest degree the important
part industrial schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I do say, and insist upon
it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, to imagine that its own work can be
accomplished without providing for the training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its
own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public schools.
But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of schools; it is much more a
matter of family and group life - the training of one’s home, of one’s daily companions, of one’s
social class. Now the black boy of the South moves in a black world - a world with its own leaders,
its own thoughts, its own ideals. In this world he gets by far the larger part of his life training, and
through the eyes of this dark world he peers into the veiled world beyond. Who guides and
determines the education which he receives in his world? His teachers here are the group-leaders
of the Negro people---the physicians and clergymen, the trained fathers and mothers, the
influential and forceful men about him of all kinds; here it is, if at all, that the culture of the
surrounding world trickles through and is handed on by the graduates of the higher schools. Can
such culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we afford to ignore it? Do you think that if
the leaders of thought among Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers, that they will have no
leaders? On the contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold the places they so largely
occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you
must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership, or
you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless misguided rabble.
I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys,
too. I believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro
education since the war has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the
object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are
two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and
community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family
what life means; the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an
efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men--not a
quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many college-bred men, but
enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the
second object demands a good system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently located and
properly equipped. . . .
What is the chief need for the building up of the Negro public school in the South? The Negro race
in the South needs teachers to-day above all else. This is the concurrent testimony of all who know
the situation. For the supply of this great demand two things are needed - institutions of higher
education and money for school houses and salaries. . . .
Thus, again, in the manning of trade schools and manual training schools we are thrown back upon
the higher training as its source and chief support. There was a time when any aged and worn-out
carpenter could teach in a trade school. But not so to-day. Indeed the demand for college-bred men
by a school like Tuskegee ought to make Mr. Booker T. Washington the firmest friend of higher
training. Here he has as helpers the son of a Negro senator, trained in Greek and the humanities,
and graduated at Harvard; the son of a Negro congressman and lawyer, trained in Latin and
mathematics, and graduated at Oberlin; he has as his wife, a woman who read Virgil and Homer in
the same class room with me; he has as college chaplain, a classical graduate of Atlanta University;
as teacher of science, a graduate of Fisk; as teacher of history, a graduate of Smith,--indeed some
thirty of his chief teachers are college graduates, and instead of studying French grammars in the
midst of weeds, or buying pianos for dirty cabins, they are at Mr. Washington’s right hand helping
him in a noble work. And yet one of the effects of Mr. Washington’s propaganda has been to throw
doubt upon the expediency of such training for Negroes, as these persons have had.
Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal
foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will
remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the levers to
uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by
intelligence. Education must not simply teach work--it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the
Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No
others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other
races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=174
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WRITING ASSIGNMENT ON
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AND W. E. B. DU BOIS
This assignment is not to write an essay. Instead, it is a set of five questions regarding Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois in which you will compare the two men and the solutions they
offered for the difficulties faced by African Americans at the time. You are to type out the five
questions listed at the bottom of this page, numbering each one and giving your answer to it.
Your main source for this assignment is Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. In addition to it, I
have provided you with several articles and excerpts as resources. In addition to Up From Slavery,
you must also use and cite “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which is the title of chapter
three of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois; and “The Talented Tenth,” a brief article also by
Du Bois. In the following pages you will find these writings by Du Bois along with three other
articles that will be helpful to you.
You must give (cite) the source of your information, whether quoting or putting it in your own
words. For the book, give the page number where you found the information. For the article titled
“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which is a chapter in Du Bois’s book, The Souls of Black
Folk, the word “Souls” plus the paragraph number (listed in the upper right-hand corner of each
paragraph) will suffice.
Cite all information in parentheses immediately after giving the information. For example:
Washington gained insights on race relations from working with Indian boys at Hampton
(Washington, 87).
To cite material from Up From Slavery (quoted or paraphrased), use the model given above.
To cite material from “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which is chapter three of The
Souls of Black Folk, use the following model:
Du Bois states that by the 1830s the South as whole was slave country (Souls, chap. 3, para. 12).
To cite material from Du Bois’s article, “The Talented Tenth,” use the following model:
Du Bois argued that the race’s “exceptional men” would save African Americans (“Talented Tenth”).
Note that because “The Talented Tenth” is a brief article, it is not necessary to give the page
number(s).
To cite material from the one-page Du Bois biography, use the following model:
Du Bois believed that the white children at his school regarded him as inferior to them (Du Bois
bio.)
Note that because the Du Bois biography is a brief article, it is not necessary to give the page
number(s).
To cite material from the Britannica article, use the following model:
Du Bois received a doctorate from Harvard University (Britannica article).
Note that because the Britannica article is brief, it is not necessary to give a page number.
It will take at least two or three paragraphs to fully answer each question. Your
submission should be between four and eight pages, printed and double-spaced.The information
should be specific, not generalizations.
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:
1. Compare how Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois were raised. What kind of education
did they have? Did these things affect their view of the world and if so, how?
2. What was the name of the institution that Washington headed in Alabama? What kind of
education did it offer African Americans, and why?
3. What was Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address?
4. How did Du Bois disagree with Washington over the education of African Americans? What kind
of education for them did Du Bois advocate?
5. Besides the education of African Americans, over what other issues did Du
Bois and Washington disagree?
Format for Writing Assignment on Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
Use the following as a model to get started on your assignment:
History 106.[Section number], Spring 2013
[Your name] [Date submitted]
Writing Assignment on Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
1. Compare how Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois were raised. What kind of education
did they have? Did these things affect their view of the world and if so, how?
Washington was born a slave in the South and Du Bois was born free in theNorth (Washington, 7;
Du Bois bio).
[Some of the information came from Washington’s book and some of it from the Du Bois
biographical sketch, which is why I cited both sources.]
THE PRECEDING IS AN EXAMPLE. DO NOT COPY MY ANSWER.
TIPS:
1. WRITE COMPLETE SENTENCES WITH A SUBJECT AND A VERB.
2. DO NOT USE CONTRACTIONS.
3. DO NOT USE CASUAL LANGUAGE. REFER TO WASHINGTON AS “WASHINGTON,” NOT “BOOKER”
OR “BOOKER T.”
W.E.B Du Bois
Biographical Information
[If you quote or cite from the following indicate it by inserting “(Du Bois Bio)” after the
material. Since it is a brief article no page number is necessary.]
W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was one of
twenty-five to fifty African American residents out of a population of about 5,000 in the town.
Although he saw few outward signs of racism, as a child Du Bois suffered discrimination at the
hands of white children who treated him as inferior because of his color. As a result, his outgoing
personality became sullen and introspective.
While in high school Du Bois showed a keen concern for the development of his race. At age fifteen
he became the local correspondent for the New York Globe. He conceived it his duty to push his
race forward by lectures and editorials on the need for Black people to use the political system to
advance their position in American society.
Intellectually gifted, Du Bois stood out academically from took his fellow students. He hoped to
attend Harvard University after graduating from high school, but could not afford the tuition.
However, he was awarded a scholarship to Fisk College (now University), an African-American
institution in Nashville, Tennessee.
His three years at Fisk, 1885-1888, exposed Du Bois to the depth of the race problem in this
country. He became more determined than before to speed up the development of his people.
Du Bois spent two summers teaching at a school where learned more about the South and his
people. He saw their poverty and the prejudice they endured, but he also saw their desire for
knowledge.
Upon graduating from Fisk Du Bois received scholarships that allowed him to at last enter Harvard.
The attainment of this long-sought goal did not give him satisfaction. Years later he commented, “I
was in Harvard but not of it,” suggesting that he continued to deeply resent any sign of
condescension. He focused on the study of philosophy and history, and after receiving a bachelor’s
degree in 1890 continued at Harvard where eventually he would earn a master’s and a doctor’s
degree.
After completing his master’s degree in the spring of 1891, Du Bois read that former president
Rutherford B. Hayes was heading a fund program to educate Negroes, but had been quoted by a
newspaper as saying that no suitable candidate had been found to undertake advanced study in
another country. Du Bois applied for the grant and complained to Hayes for his statement. Hayes
replied that he had been misquoted. Du Bois received the grant and used it to study at the
University of Berlin, among the best universities in the world.
In Berlin, Du Bois came to believe that the race problem for Africans was not limited to one country
or continent. His studies there increasingly turned toward social research.
Du Bois returned to Harvard to complete his Ph. D. degree. His doctoral dissertation, The
Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, is considered a classic work of history and
continues to be studied by scholars.
Britannica Article on W.E.B. Du Bois
[If you cite or quote from this article do so in this format: (Britannica article). No page number is
necessary.
b. Feb. 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Mass.
d. Aug. 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana.
American sociologist, the most important black protest leader in the United States during the first
half of the 20th century. He shared in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited The Crisis, its magazine, from 1910 to 1934. Late in
life he became identified with Communist causes.
Early career
Du Bois was graduated from Fisk University, a black institution at Nashville, Tenn., in 1888. He
received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. His doctoral dissertation, The Suppression of the
African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, was published in 1896. Although
Du Bois took an advanced degree in history, he was broadly trained in the social sciences; and at a
time when sociologists were theorizing about race relations, he was conducting empirical inquiries
into the condition of blacks. For more than a decade he devoted himself to sociological
investigations of blacks in America, producing 16 research monographs published between 1897
and 1914 at Atlanta (Ga.) University, where he was a professor, as well as The Philadelphia Negro; A
Social Study (1899), the first case study of a black community in the United States. Although Du Bois
had originally believed that social science could provide the knowledge to solve the race problem,
he gradually came to the conclusion that in a climate of virulent racism, expressed in such evils as
lynching, peonage, disfranchisement, Jim Crow segregation laws, and race riots, social change could
be accomplished only through agitation and protest. In this view, he clashed with the most
influential black leader of the period, Booker T. Washington, who, preaching a philosophy of
accommodation, urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and elevate themselves
through hard work and economic gain, thus winning the respect of the whites. In 1903, in his
famous book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois charged that Washington's strategy, rather than
freeing the black man from oppression, would serve only to perpetuate it. This attack crystallized
the opposition to Booker T. Washington among many black intellectuals, polarizing the leaders of
the black community into two wings--the "conservative" supporters of Washington and his "radical"
critics. Two years later, in 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the Niagara Movement, which
was dedicated chiefly to attacking the platform of Booker T. Washington. The small organization,
which met annually until 1909, was seriously weakened by internal squabbles and Washington's
opposition. But it was significant as an ideological forerunner and direct inspiration for the
interracial NAACP, founded in 1909. Du Bois played a prominent part in the creation of the NAACP
and became the association's director of research and editor of its magazine, The Crisis. In this role
he wielded an unequaled influence among middle-class blacks and progressive whites as the
propagandist for the black protest from 1910 until 1934.Both in the Niagara Movement and in the
NAACP, Du Bois acted mainly as an integrationist, but his thinking always exhibited, to varying
degrees, separatist-nationalist tendencies. In The Souls of Black Folk he had expressed the
characteristic dualism of black Americans: One ever feels his twoness--an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. . . . He simply wishes to make it possible for a man
to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without
having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Chapter III:
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
Citation Instructions: Each paragraph is numbered. Follow this format: (Souls, chap. 3, para. 1).
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!
. . . . . . . .
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
BYRON.
EASILY the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy
of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly
passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and
hesitation overtook the freedmen’s sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington
came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a
little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its
energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and
submission and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly original; the Free Negroes
from 1830 up to wartime had striven to build industrial schools, and the American Missionary
Association had from the first taught various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of
honorable alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked
these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into this programme, and
changed it from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he
did this is a fascinating study of human life.
1
2
It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of bitter
complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of
the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes
themselves.
3
To gain the sympathy and coöperation of the various elements comprising the white South was
Mr. Washington’s first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black
man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: “In
all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all
things essential to mutual progress.” This “Atlanta Compromise” is by all odds the most notable
thing in Mr. Washington’s career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received
it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives, as a
generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and to-day
its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with
the largest personal following.
4
Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington’s work in gaining place and consideration in the
North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had
fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and training,
so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the
North. And so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism,
and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French
grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of
absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this.
5
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the
successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force.
So Mr. Washington’s cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully
prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. To-day he stands as the one
recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation
of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little, has
done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy
of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington’s career, as well as of his triumphs, without
being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in
the world.
6
The criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad character.
In the South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments,—and naturally
so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness to that section. Twice—once
when at the Chicago celebration of the Spanish-American War he alluded to the color-prejudice
that is “eating away the vitals of the South,” and once when he dined with President Roosevelt—
has the resulting Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten seriously his popularity. In
the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words, that Mr. Washington’s counsels
of submission overlooked certain elements of true manhood, and that his educational
programme was unnecessarily narrow. Usually, however, such criticism has not found open
expression, although, too, the spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been prepared to
acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and selfsacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or worthy of ridicule. While, then, criticism has not failed to
follow Mr. Washington, yet the prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too willing to
deliver the solution of a wearisome problem into his hands, and say, “If that is all you and your
race ask, take it.”
7
Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most
lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even to-day continuing strong and
insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation.
Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues
and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful
colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the
wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained. These
same men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor
which is doing something worth the doing. They coöperate with Mr. Washington as far as they
conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact and power that,
steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the
respect of all.
8
But the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the
best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech
so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those
whose interests are most nearly touched,—criticism of writers by readers, of government by
those governed, of leaders by those led,—this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of
modern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom
they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also
irreparable loss,—a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by
search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at
once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social growth. History is but the record of
such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character! And of all types
and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?—that
curious double movement where real progress may be negative and actual advance be relative
retrogression. All this is the social student’s inspiration and despair.
9
Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing of group
leaders, founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions is worth while
studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a people, their
attitude is largely one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural forces. But when to
earth and brute is added an environment of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned
group may take three main forms,—a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all
thought and action to the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at selfrealization and self-development despite environing opinion. The influence of all of these
attitudes at various times can be traced in the history of the American Negro, and in the
evolution of his successive leaders.
10
Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves, there was in
all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge,—typified in the
terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato of Stono, and veiling all the Americas in fear of
insurrection. The liberalizing tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought,
along with kindlier relations between black and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment and
assimilation. Such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest songs of Phyllis, in the
martyrdom of Attucks, the fighting of Salem and Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of
Banneker and Derham, and the political demands of the Cuffes.
11
Stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the previous humanitarian ardor.
The disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the persistence of slavery and serfdom
voiced itself in two movements. The slaves in the South, aroused undoubtedly by vague rumors
of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce attempts at insurrection,—in 1800 under Gabriel in
Virginia, in 1822 under Vesey in Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible Nat
Turner. In the Free States, on the other hand, a new and curious attempt at self-development was
made. In Philadelphia and New York color-prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro
communicants from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious institution
among the Negroes known as the African Church,—an organization still living and controlling in
its various branches over a million of men.
12
Walker’s wild appeal against the trend of the times showed how the world was changing after
the coming of the cotton-gin. By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the
slaves thoroughly cowed into submission. The free Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto
immigrants from the West Indies, began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized
the slavery of slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation
and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. Thus, Forten and Purvis of
Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston, and others,
strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as “people of color,” not as
“Negroes.” The trend of the times, however, refused them recognition save in individual and
exceptional cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks, and they soon found
themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting and working and moving
as freemen. Schemes of migration and colonization arose among them; but these they refused to
entertain, and they eventually turned to the Abolition movement as a final refuge.
13
Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and selfdevelopment dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the
leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance,
and John Brown’s raid was the extreme of its logic. After the war and emancipation, the great
form of Frederick Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host. Selfassertion, especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass came Elliot,
Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of greater
social significance Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.
14
Then came the Revolution of 1876, the suppression of the Negro votes, the changing and
shifting of ideals, and the seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass, in his old age, still
bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood,—ultimate assimilation through self-assertion,
and on no other terms. For a time Price arose as a new leader, destined, it seemed, not to give
up, but to re-state the old ideals in a form less repugnant to the white South. But he passed
away in his prime. Then came the new leader. Nearly all the former ones had become leaders by
the silent suffrage of their fellows, had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually,
save Douglass, little known outside their race. 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. Naturally the Negroes 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. The rich and dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race
problem, but was investing largely in Southern enterprises, and welcomed any method of
peaceful coöperation. Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr.
Washington’s leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed.
15
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but
adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual
economic development, and 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. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are
coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore
intensified; and Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the
Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given
impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high
demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all
the Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission
is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such
crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people
who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
16
In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr.
Washington distinctly asks 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. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over
fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the
palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington’s teachings; but his
propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The
question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective
progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and
allowed only the most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and
reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No. And Mr. Washington
thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
17
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly
impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to
defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic
inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher
learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day
were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.
This triple paradox in Mr. Washington’s position is the object of criticism by two classes of
18
colored Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through Gabriel,
Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge; they hate the white
South blindly and distrust the white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite action,
think that the Negro’s only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United States. And
yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually made this programme seem hopeless than
the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies,
Hawaii, and the Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying and brute
force?
19
The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said little aloud.
They deprecate the sight of scattered counsels, of internal disagreement; and especially they
dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a general discharge
of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless, the questions involved are so
fundamental and serious that it is difficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E.
Bowen, and other representatives of this group, can much longer be silent. Such men feel in
conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to ability.
They acknowledge Mr. Washington’s invaluable service in counselling patience and courtesy in
such demands; they do not ask that ignorant black men vote when ignorant whites are debarred,
or that any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage should not be applied; they know that the low
social level of the mass of the race is responsible for much discrimination against it, but they also
know, and the nation knows, that relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of
the Negro’s degradation; they seek the abatement of this relic of barbarism, and not its
systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies of social power from the Associated
Press to the Church of Christ. They advocate, with Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro
common schools supplemented by thorough industrial training; but they are surprised that a
man of Mr. Washington’s insight cannot see that no such educational system ever has rested or
can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college and university, and they insist
that there is a demand for a few such institutions throughout the South to train the best of the
Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and leaders.
20
This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward the white South;
they accept the “Atlanta Compromise” in its broadest interpretation; they recognize, with him,
many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment, in this section; they know
that no easy task has been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But,
nevertheless, they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in
indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising
uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging
their fellows to do the same, but at the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to
their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility. They
do not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come in a
moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a
trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights
is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way
for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the
contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to
modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as
well as white boys.
21
In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their people, even at
the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a
heavy responsibility,—a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the struggling masses, a
responsibility to the darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American
experiment, but especially a responsibility to this nation,—this common Fatherland. It is wrong to
encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply
because it is unpopular not to do so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between
the North and South after the frightful differences of a generation ago ought to be a source of
deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if
that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black
men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are
really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a
course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr.
Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for
a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
22
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of
Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for
it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South
toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not “solid”;
it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy;
and to praise the ill the South is to-day perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good.
Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,—needs it for the sake of her
own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral
development.
23
To-day even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in
all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his
competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a
menace in his upward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help
him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools,
and to protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the moneymakers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country
districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to
disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are
easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and
prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against “the South” is unjust; but to use the
same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas
Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of
thinking black men.
24
It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has
opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the
Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in other
ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate
happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct
impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present
attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of
the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his
future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous halftruth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are
potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second, industrial and common-school
training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained
by higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was
possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great
truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that
unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative
of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.
25
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised.
His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro
problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators;
when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend
not our energies to righting these great wrongs.
26
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her
full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in
guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by
diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this
country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
27
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward
movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington
preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and
strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God
and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice,
North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating
effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter
minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly
oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the
world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers
would fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The Talented Tenth
W.E.B. Du Bois
September 1903
In this article Du Bois spells out his objections to Booker T. Washington’s emphasis on manual and
industrial training for African Americans, and makes a case that a “Talented Tenth” of black youth
ought to receive a college or university education. Follow this format in citing from this work:
(Talented Tenth). Since it is a brief article, no page number is necessary.
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of
education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of
developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and
death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate
task. . . . If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not
necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not,
in nature, men. . . .
From the very first it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and
elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and
race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the
work of natural internal leadership? Negro leadership therefore sought from the first to rid the race
of this awful incubus that it might make way for natural selection and the survival of the fittest. . . .
Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort
and example of this aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth
civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward
that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their
vantage ground. This is the history of human progress . . . .
How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few
strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be
schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. . . .
All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its
yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and
befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their
bellies, and no God greater than Gold. . . .
The college-bred Negro . . . is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of
the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social movements. It need hardly
be argued that the Negro people need social leadership more than most groups; that they have no
traditions to fall back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well defined
social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully evolved. The preacher was, even before
the war, the group leader of the Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally
this preacher was ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the older type by
better educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct work and by direct influence on other
preachers, and on congregations, the college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory
work and moral inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated.
It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college has found its peculiar
function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how mighty a revolution has been thus
accomplished. To furnish five millions and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race
and blood, in one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but very important one, in
that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses
of the blacks in contact with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities
and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were first teachers, and then
teachers of teachers. And here it is that the broad culture of college work has been of peculiar
value. Knowledge of life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro’s deepest
ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been simply for bread winning,
but also for human culture, has been of inestimable value in the training of these men. . . .
There must be teachers, and teachers of teachers, and to attempt to establish any sort of a system
of common and industrial school training, without first . . . providing for the higher training of the
very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds. School houses do not teach
themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living
human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath
of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian
or American. . . .
I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of teaching the Negro to
work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem to depreciate in the slightest degree the important
part industrial schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I do say, and insist upon
it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, to imagine that its own work can be
accomplished without providing for the training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its
own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public schools.
But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of schools; it is much more a
matter of family and group life - the training of one’s home, of one’s daily companions, of one’s
social class. Now the black boy of the South moves in a black world - a world with its own leaders,
its own thoughts, its own ideals. In this world he gets by far the larger part of his life training, and
through the eyes of this dark world he peers into the veiled world beyond. Who guides and
determines the education which he receives in his world? His teachers here are the group-leaders
of the Negro people---the physicians and clergymen, the trained fathers and mothers, the
influential and forceful men about him of all kinds; here it is, if at all, that the culture of the
surrounding world trickles through and is handed on by the graduates of the higher schools. Can
such culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we afford to ignore it? Do you think that if
the leaders of thought among Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers, that they will have no
leaders? On the contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold the places they so largely
occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you
must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership, or
you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless misguided rabble.
I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys,
too. I believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro
education since the war has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the
object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are
two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and
community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family
what life means; the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an
efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men--not a
quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many college-br...
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