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Washington vs. Du Bois on Black Rights

W.E.B. Du Bois was a stronger supporter of African American rights than Booker T. Washington. Du Bois rejected Washington's message that black people should focus on industrial education and making peace with white southerners. Instead, Du Bois called for political power, insistence on civil rights, and higher education for African Americans. He criticized Washington for accepting the idea that black people were inferior to white people and for asking black people to give up their right to vote, civil rights protections, and funding for education of black youth.

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54 views2 pages

Washington vs. Du Bois on Black Rights

W.E.B. Du Bois was a stronger supporter of African American rights than Booker T. Washington. Du Bois rejected Washington's message that black people should focus on industrial education and making peace with white southerners. Instead, Du Bois called for political power, insistence on civil rights, and higher education for African Americans. He criticized Washington for accepting the idea that black people were inferior to white people and for asking black people to give up their right to vote, civil rights protections, and funding for education of black youth.

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CHQ:Who is a stronger supporter of African American rights? Washington or Du Bois?

Document A: Booker T. Washington (Modified)


Booker T. Washington was born a slave in 1856 and was nine years old when slavery ended.
He became the principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a school designed to teach
blacks industrial skills. Washington was a skillful politician and speaker, and he won the support
of whites in the North and South who donated money to the school. On September 18, 1895,
Booker T. Washington spoke before a mostly white audience in Atlanta.

Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our
freedom we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in
Congress or the state legislature was more attractive than starting a small
farm. To those of my race (black people) I would say: “Cast down your
bucket where you are”— cast it down in making friends with the Southern
white man, who is your next-door neighbor. Cast it down in agriculture,
mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service. No race can be successful
until it learns that farming is as important as writing a poem. We have to
begin at the bottom, not the top. We have helped white people in the past
and we will help them in the future.
Source: Excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s ‘Atlanta Compromise’ speech, 1895.
CHQ:Who is a stronger supporter of African American rights? Washington or Du Bois?

Document B: W.E.B. DuBois (Modified)


The most influential public critique of Booker T. Washington came in 1903 when black leader
and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois published an essay in his book, The Souls of Black Folk. DuBois
rejected Washington’s message and instead called for political power, insistence on civil rights,
and the higher education of African-American youth.

The worst thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the rise
of Mr. Booker T. Washington. Mr. Washington accepts that black people
are less than white people. Mr. Washington does not ask for black people
to have equal rights. He asks that black people give up three things: First,
political power; Second, insistence on civil rights; Third, education of Negro
youth. He wants to concentrate on working on farms, in factories, and
calming down the South. What do we get from this peace? Three things: 1.
Loss of the right to vote; 2. The law says black people are less than white
people; 3. Things that help black people are losing money. Mr.
Washington’s words made white people think black people should solve
their own problem, and white people do not need to help.
Source: W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903).

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