Washington Vs. Dubios

The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 was the initial step officially marking the ending of American slavery, but it also marked the beginning of an equally or more horrifying enslavement of the African mind, body, and spirit. Releasing thousands of slaves without any means of supporting themselves or their families, the governing white powers were able to institute an unofficial form of slavery that was meant to keep the African American community indebted to their white superiors, thereby, maintaining a faÐ*ade of freedom and prosperity while simultaneously procreating and sustaining the premise of white supremacy. Despite the abolition of slavery, it was this ideal of white supremacy that stimulated the immobilization of African American social, economic, and political progress through the strict enforcement of the Jim Crow Laws-- a set of laws lasting from 1877 to the 1960's meant to designate African Americans as second class citizens by subjecting them to most demeaning and inferior circumstances. Growing impatient of waiting for their environment to change, the African American community was in need of a leader to help decipher a course of action that could improve circumstances. Two of the most influential and brilliantly outspoken African American leaders to arise during this time period were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois. Although their ultimate goal was similar, their views of how to obtain equality and better living conditions for the African community varied greatly.

Booker T. Washington ideals encouraged African Americans to take pride in their craft, work hard at it, gain wealth and land, and then white Americans would acquire a type of respect for their accomplishments. In an excerpt from Leon Litwack's Trouble in Mind, Washington expresses his belief that gain of economic security by African Americans would blur the lines creating racial barriers.

The challenge, then, could hardly be clear: Black people must assume responsibility for their own destiny. If they transformed themselves, embraced the work ethic, acquired property, improved their moral virtues, the legal extralegal disabilities now imposed on them would disappear. "Prosperity, brains, and character will settle the question of civil rights" Of what use was the ballot, Washington asked, when economic dependence translated so easily into political dependence?(Litwack 147)

Although Washington worked for the advancement of African American's, his belief that African Americans and white Americans should work together in a dually beneficial manner, favor of vocational education, and lack of support for more direct and confrontational issues such as the right of suffrage earned him the title of an accommodationist.

Unlike Washington, Dubois embodied the anger and restlessness of many individuals during the Jim Crow Era. Believing African Americans were not second class citizens and should be endowed with the same opportunities and human rights as white Americans, Dubois took the very opposite position of Washington asserting a sense that African Americans should demand their rights. For individuals such as Dubois who believed African Americans should stand tall and maintain a strong sense of dignity, Dubois's ideals were considered a betrayal and impediment to the African American race. These feelings of contempt and betrayal could not have been more evident then expressed in Dubois's criticism of Washington's Atlanta Compromise in an entire chapter devoted to discrediting Washington in his book The Souls of Black Folk. During Dubois's speech, he accused Washington of being a pun for the white race hindering the growth of African American youth by opposing higher education. While Dubois's demand for action and higher standard of living, an increase in graduate level education among young African Americans, and most notable the right cast the ballot were understandable desires, his criticism of Washington was a gross misrepresentation of the character and ideals exemplified by Washington.

Booker T. Washington's most prevalent insight into the African American dispiriting position during the Jim Crow Era was the desperate need for survival and accumulation of the necessary economic stature to increase the chances of the next generation successful progression in social,