Booker T. Washington & Web Dubois

Two great leaders of the black community in the late 19th and 20th century Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois both had many differences between them based on background, philosophy, and accomplishments. Washington’s Philosophy was of self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation. He told blacks to temporarily abandon their efforts to win full civil rights and political power thus accept segregation and discrimination and instead to become skilled workers, hoping that if they became indispensable to the prosperity of the South, political and social rights would be granted to them. Others advocated struggle for civil rights, specifically the right to vote, on the theory that economic and social rights would follow. Most agreed that solutions would come gradually. Dubois thought Washington’s strategy would only serve only to perpetuate white oppression he instead advocated political action and a civil rights agenda. His philosophy of agitation and protest for civil rights flowed directly into the Civil Rights movement which began to develop in the 1950's and exploded in the 1960's.

Washington's first accomplishment Tuskegee Institute focus was industrial education, but the school did offer a number of academic courses. His work also influenced other black institutions of education in the South. Washington worked as the principal of Tuskegee from its founding in 1881 until his death in 1915. Tuskegee still exists today as Tuskegee University, a prominent historically black university. Another one was the Atlanta Compromise he announced at the Atlanta Exposition Speech which was an agreement that Southern blacks would work meekly and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education and due process in law. Blacks would not agitate for equality, integration, or justice, and Northern whites would fund black educational charities. Debois was against the compromise because the elements of the agreement were...