Resources on Booker T. Washington vs W.E.B. DuBois Debate

See Washington’s own words at the end of his life, at http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.13/html/19.html and http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.13/html/20.html. (written in 1914-15)

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/1900/filmmore/reference/interview/washing_bookertdubois.html

 

Margaret Washington : “I don't think there's any question that Booker T. Washington did accept segregation. Booker T. Washington was an accommodationist. And his program was to accommodate the social and political situation of the South….

 

“Du Bois was not in complete disagreement with Booker T. Washington. Du Bois referred to Booker T. Washington as the greatest black leader since Frederick Douglass. And also referred to Washington as the most distinguished man, black or white, to come out of the South since the Civil War. So it wasn't as though Du Bois disagreed with Washington's program, but Du Bois felt that there was room for more than one solution to the problem. And just as Washington advocated vocational education for the majority of African Americans in the South, Du Bois felt yes, there were African Americans in the South, perhaps the majority who at that point in their historical development were better off with vocational education. But there were others among the race who needed to be the individuals who were at the top, the individuals who did the training, the individuals who were the intelligentsia. And that you needed this group of people. And I think that was the basis of their disagreement. Not that Du Bois felt that Washington was completely wrong, but that Washington needed to have more than just one way of approaching the problem. And then of course the other issue on which they disagreed was Du Bois did not feel that you could accommodate injustice. And he felt that Washington was placing upon his shoulders an extremely heavy responsibility by advocating that African Americans accommodate the social and political system in the South….

 

“So their experiences were different and this is very important in understanding how they saw the future of the race. But it's also important to keep in mind that for both of them, race uplift was the central key.

 

http://www.skidmore.edu/~mstokes/227/BTW.html, The Tactical Life of Booker T. Washington, by Mark Bauerlein, The Chronicle Review Volume 50, Issue 14, Page B12 :

For to cast Washington as a post-Reconstruction Uncle Tom toadying to wealthy whites and checking rival blacks is to ignore two contexts: first, the complex, heated circumstances in which Washington moved; and second, the many activist efforts Washington fostered on the sly. Both issued from a milieu foreign to our own, a bizarre medium of sectional resentments, racial/sexual fantasies, and naked power politics. To appreciate Washington's tactics, we must return to the 1890s social scene, when lynch law was an open question, the black vote a harbinger of Negro rule, Negro education a dubious good, and Reconstruction a bitter memory. In that setting he occupied a unique post: the polestar of racial dispute, the public appeaser and private troubleshooter. Each controversy, it seemed at the time, every white critic and black rival, jeopardized his life's work, and sometimes his life.

 

Conciliation was Washington's public pose. The other context mentioned above, his activist maneuvers, he kept quiet. Here are just a few of them:

* In the face of Jim Crow segregation, Washington openly discouraged anything but sober accommodation and going about one's business. Protests and boycotts, he argued, only made things worse. But when W.E.B. Du Bois filed a lawsuit against the Southern Railway for denying him a sleeping-car berth, Washington acted as a silent partner. He prodded Pullman Company President Robert Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln's son) to revise company policy, and coaxed Bookerites in Virginia and Tennessee to initiate similar lawsuits. In late 1902 Washington assured Du Bois, "if you will let me know what the total expense will be [for the court case] I shall be willing to bear a portion of it provided I can hand it to you personally and not have any connection with your committee."

* Publicly, Washington disapproved of any show of black force. But when Southern states began to disband colored militia in 1905, he asked Secretary of War William Howard Taft to intervene. And when President Roosevelt dismissed colored troops in Brownsville, Tex., after a skirmish with town residents, Washington lobbied him to reverse his decision, repeating his demand to the point of risking his support.

* The Tuskegee Machine was a domineering monolith, intent on turf preservation, gobbling up Negro-directed philanthropy and litmus-testing everyone. But it was also a financial distribution center. Through Tuskegee, monies could be collected en masse, then dispensed accordingly -- a court case here, a newspaper there -- the beneficiaries sometimes having no relation to Tuskegee interests. Moreover, it served as the major African-American research apparatus of the time. Starting in the 1880s, Tuskegee compiled information on race issues, including lynchings, and Tuskegee lieutenants monitored the national press with zeal. Francis J. Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison remarked, "You seem to keep as closely in touch with the Southern press ... as if you were an editor. I am constantly surprised by the way in which you sweep the field and the horizon North and South with your telescope." Today, the Tuskegee clippings files form a rich archive of historical materials.

“One could list many more clandestine deeds and fill out the record of Washington's achievement. Nobody can deny his periodic groveling, but a reasoned accounting of his import must include these activist plots, however covert they were”

 

http://www.rit.edu/~nrcgsh/bx/bx08b.html

 

Norman Coombs: “Booker T. Washington developed a leadership style based on the model of the old plantation house servant. He used humility, politeness, flattery, and restraint as a wedge with which he hoped to split the wall of racial discrimination. His conciliatory approach won the enthusiastic support of the solid South as well as that of influential Northern politicians and industrialists, Their backing gained him a national reputation and provided him with easy access to the press. Members of his own community were filled with pride to see one of their own treated with such respect by wealthy and influential leaders of white America. When Theodore Roosevelt entertained Washington for dinner at the White House, the Afro-American community was overjoyed. However, some whites believed that it had been a dangerous breach of etiquette. Nevertheless, there were those within the Afro-American community who were not enthusiastic about their new leader. They believed that conciliation was the road to surrender and not the way to victory.

 

Gradually, as the white citizens realized that the school was not developing aggressive blacks and that the students were providing a contribution to the community, they came to accept it and to help it to develop by contributing funds and supplies. They found that Tuskegee students were hard-working, courteous, and humble instead of being self-assertive and articulate. They realized that their fears of educating the ex-slave had been unfounded.

 

A delegation was sent to the nation's capital to request financial aid from a Congressional committee. Booker T. Washington was included in the delegation as a token that there was backing from all portions of the community for the project. Speaking to the committee, Washington said that:

 

"the Negro should not be deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone would not save him, and that to back the ballot he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race without these elements could permanently succeed."

 

The delegation admitted that his oratory had significantly helped their cause. They were impressed with his racial views, particularly when he stated that character development was more important than political agitation. This was a position which they could whole-heartily endorse.

 

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This proposal brought forth thunderous applause. He went on to say that the wisest in his race were aware that fighting for social equality was folly. The ex-slave, he believed, must first struggle and prepare himself for the assumption of his rights, which were privileges to be earned. While he did believe that his people would receive their full rights at some future date, he insisted that "The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house."  Economic opportunity was far more important than either social equality or political rights. He closed the speech by praising the Exposition for the effect it would have in bringing fresh material prosperity to the South,

and added:

 

". . . yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice,

in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth…."

 

The Atlanta Compromise was to be the means to an end and not an end in itself. If the ex-slave would start at the bottom, develop manners and friendliness, Washington believed that he could make his labor indispensable to white society. Acceptance of segregation was, at that time, a necessary part of good behavior. If the whites, in turn, opened the doors of economic opportunity to the ex-slave instead of importing more European immigrants, Washington said that the nation would have an English-speaking non-striking labor force. Gradually, individual

Afro-Americans would gain trust, acceptance, and respect. The class line based on color would be replaced by one based on intelligence and morality….

 

There were two bases for Washington's belief that the Negro should start at the bottom and work his way up. The nineteenth-century economic creed had taught that hard work unlocked the  door which led from rags to riches. This teaching was also reinforced by Washington's own experience. Born in slavery and poverty, he rose from obscurity to fame and influence through honesty and industry. However, Washington seemed unaware that the most which his policy could ever achieve was a token acceptance which would leave the Negro masses behind.

 

See also: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6159