BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,The founder of the Tuskegee Institute (1882), an agricultural and vocational training school in Alabama, and who had been born into slavery, believed that blacks should concentrate on economic self-improvement rather than on demanding social equality and civil rights.
Massachusetts native, "Free-born" and Harvard-trained W.E.B.Du Bois attacked Washington's philosophy in his The Souls of Black Folks (1903). He believed that education for blacks had to include more than learning a trade, and he demanded access to higher education.
Indeed, Du Bois believed it would be this educated African-American elite that would lead the way to equality by using the ballot box in states where they could vote and “agitation,” or protest, where they could not.
The divisions within the African-American community on how best to achieve equality were reflected in the disparate philosophies of two men: Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
After Washington outlined his views in a speech in Atlanta in 1895, which included an apparent acceptance of segregation, his accommodationist position became known as the "Atlanta Compromise".
Du Bois although, recognizing Washington's speech as important,soon came to see Washington's ideas of "gradualism" for civil rights as "selling out" to many southerners who wanted to maintain the inferior status of blacks.
In Du Bois's view, "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission. "... [His] programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races".Although he shared the late Frederick Douglass's long-range goals of equality and integration, Washington renounced agitation and protest tactics. He urged blacks to subordinate demands for political and social rights.
In 1895 Washington gave his famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech. Although he shared the late Frederick Douglass's (1817–1895) long-range goals of equality (idea that all races are equal) and integration (bringing different races together), Washington criticized disturbing the peace and other protest strategies. He urged black people to drop demands for political and social rights, concentrating instead on improving job skills and usefulness. "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," he said. He appealed to white people to rely on loyal, proven black workers, pointing out that the South would advance to the degree that blacks were allowed to secure education and become productive. Washington's position so pleased whites, North and South, that they made him the new black spokesman. IN HIS SPEECH, MR WASHINGTON EQUATED THE NEWLY FREED SLAVE WITH A SHIP THAT WAS SAILING ON A FRESH WATER LAKE WHO'S CREW WAS DYING FROM THIRST AND WHEN THEY SAW ANOTHER SHIP THEY ASKED FOR WATER. THE OTHER SHIP REPLIED "CAST DOWN YOUR BUCKET WHERE YOU ARE"!
HE SAID THAT WE SHOULD "keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life". IN OTHER WORDS WE SHOULD JUST TAKE WHATEVER THE JOBS WERE THAT REQUIRED US TO USE OUR HANDS AND NOT OUR BRAINS. HE WENT ON TO SAY "It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities".. AND TO THE WHITE RACE HE SAID "Cast down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories.
DONT MISS THAT! HE SAID RUN "YOUR" FACTORIES! THATS WHERE THIS "WE DONT NEED NO DEGREE JUST A GOOD FACTORY JOB" MENTALITY CAME INTO OUR SOCIETY. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen".
CLEARLY MR WASHINGTON WAS SELLING US OUT! HE GOES ON TO SAY FURTHER THAT " As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.
WHAT? APPARENTLY HE HAD FORGOTTEN THAT WE WERE ALL OF THOSE THINGS BECAUSE WE WERE FORCED TO OUT OF THE THREAT OF PHYISCAL PUNISHMENT. THEN HE SAY'S THAT "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. IRONICALLY, SOCIAL EQUALITY NEVER CAME FROM NOT AGITATING AND FOLKES ARE TIRED OF OVER A CENTURY OF STRUGGLE, TOO! WE WANT SOME GOOD OL' "ARTIFICIAL FORCING" OF OUR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS AND THE OPENING UP OF OPPORTUNITIES ESPECAILLY FOR US! FINALLY, HE SAY'S "It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. 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" HOW COULD WE BE PREPARED TO EXERCISE THESE PRIVILAGES IF WE DIDNT GET THEM? NO ONE STARTS OUT BEING GOOD AT ANYTHING. NOT TO MENTION THAT WORKING IN A FACTORY IS HARD BACK BREAKING WORK. HADNT WE HAD ENOUGH OF THAT AFTER 400 YEARS OF SLAVERY? WHY SHOULD WE NOT BE ALLOWED TO GO TO THE OPRA HOUSE AND SPEND OUR DOLLARS ON THINGS WHICH WOULD GIVE US CULTURE AND A SENSE OF CIVILITY? UNFORTUNATELY, HE CONVINCED WHITE AMERICA THAT HE SPOKE FOR US ALL AND THEY TOOK THIS AND RAN WITH IT.
WHITE AMERICA, KNOWING THAT OUR FOCUS WOULD NOT BE ON THE JOBS THAT THEY NORMALLY OCCUPIED OR THE EDUCATIONS NEEDED TO QUALIFY FOR THOSE JOBS; SAW THIS AS A GREAT BOON TO THEM AND THEIR FUTURE PROSPECTS OF AQUIRING WEALTH AND POWER IN AMERICA. THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BOOKER T WASHINGTONS "ATLANTA COMPROMISE" ARE FAR MORE REACHING THAN WHAT WE UNDERSTAND. THE WHITES IN THE NORTH HATED US AND THE WHITES IN THE SOUTH HATED US AS WELL. SOME WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE THAT WHITE AMERICA WAS WILLING TO COMMIT SOCIO-ECONOMIC SUICIDE?THATS ABSURD.THEY LOVED BTW'S PROGRAM FOR OUR PEOPLE AND MARGINALIZED WEB DUBOIS AND "WHITE MAERICA" MADE BTW OUR SPOKESMAN.
THE FACT IS THAT IT WAS OUR OWN ENEMIES THAT SUPPORTED WASHINGTON. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD THINK THAT IF WHITE AMERICA DID NOT SEE HIS ACTIONS AS THOSE WHICH ACCOMADATED THEIR OWN INTEREST, THAT THEY WOULD HAVE DUBBED HIM THE SPOKESMAN OF THE BLACK RACE.
THATS JUST COMMON SENSE.
YEAH ITS SAD, BUT ITS TRUE.
YOUR ENEMY WONT SUPPORT POLICIES THAT HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO LIMIT HIS SUPERIORITY. BUT, HE WILL PROMOTE WHAT HE KNOWS WONT THREATEN THAT SUPERIORITY.
THE REAL PAWN WAS BOOKER T.
The Tuskegee Machine was in large part a collection of powerful Republican insiders, and with their fall from grace in the 1912 elections, there was little they could do to assist Booker T. Washington. Booker T's submissive message also became increasingly harder to sell among the black masses especially in the face of all the white attacks on innocent blacks.
YOU SEE THE PROBLEM THAT YOU HAVE IS THAT YOU PERCIEVE THAT WASHINGTON IDEA OF HOW WE WERE TO BE EDUCATED WAS HIS OWN.
NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. SAMUEL C ARMSTRONG WAS THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS METHOD AND THE PERSON WHO "PUT" BOOKER T IN CHARGE OF TUSKEGEE.
Perhaps the best student of Armstrong’s Hampton-style education was Booker T. Washington. After coming to the school in 1872, Washington immediately began to adopt Armstrong’s teaching and philosophy. Washington described Armstrong as “the most perfect specimen of man, physically, mentally and spiritually the most Christ-like….” Washington also quickly learned the aim of the Hampton Institute. After leaving Hampton, he recalled being admitted to the school, despite his ragged appearance, due to the ability he demonstrated while sweeping and dusting a room. From his first day at Hampton, Washington embraced Armstrong's idea of black education. Washington went on to attend Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., and he returned to Hampton to teach on Armstrong's faculty. Upon Sam Armstrong's recommendation to Lewis Adams, Washington became the first principal of a new normal school in Alabama, which became Tuskegee University.
At the heart of the early Hampton-style education during Armstrong's tenure was this emphasis on labor and industry. However, teaching blacks to work was a tool, not the primary goal, of the Institute. Rather than producing classes of individual craftsmen and laborers, Hampton was ultimately a normal school (teacher's school) for future black teachers. In theory, these black teachers would then apply the Hampton idea of self-help and industry at schools throughout the U.S., especially the South. To this end, a prerequisite for admission to Hampton was the intent to become a teacher. In fact, "approximately 84 percent of the 723 graduates of Hampton’s first twenty classes became teachers."[10] Armstrong strove to instill in these disciples the moral value of manual labor. This concept became the crucial component of Hampton’s training of black educators.
NOT ENGINEERS, DOCTORS, LAWYERS OR PHYSICIST, JUST TEACHERS.
THIS WAS THE EXACT SAME EDUCATIONAL IDEOLOGY THAT WASHINGTON FOLLOWED TO THE "TEE".
ANYTHING BUT BEING EDUCATED "EN MASSE" AS MANUAL LABORERS MAKING BRICKS COULD HAVE BEEN A BETTER COURSE FOR OUR PEOPLE. THEY KNEW THAT DU BOIS' VISION FOR OUR PEOPLE WOULD HAVE WRESTLED A LOT OF POWER FROM THE HANDS OF WHITE AMERICA AND THATS WHY THEY FIRST REFUSED TO LET HIS MESSAGE TO BE VOICED ON THE WORLD STAGE AND THEN BLOCKED HIM COMING BACK TO AMERICA WITH THE SUPPORT THAT MESSAGE GARNERED. Legal troubles for Du Bois came in 1951 when he was indicted but later acquitted on charges that his Peace Information Center had failed to register as an agent for the Soviet Union. Largely considered a communist by the U.S State Department, he was denied a visa to travel to a peace conference in Brazil in 1952, the government saying the meeting was contrary to American interests. Following this incident, it became apparent to Du Bois that there was an active effort by some government operatives to sideline and eventually silence him. Growing increasingly frustrated by the U.S. government's efforts to silence him, Du Bois alligned himself more with the Communists and even began planning visits to communist China and the Soviet Union. Also while he was getting continually humiliated in the U.S., he discovered that his popularity back in Africa was at its peak and most African Nationalists adored him as The Father of Pan-Africanism. In 1958 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Department of State had no legal authority to ascertain American citizen's political beliefs as a condition for issuance of a passport. This greatly delighted Du Bois who finally ot his travel documents. That same year he visited the Soviet Union and met with Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev. He then followed this with a visit to China in April 1959, where he met Chinese President Mao Tse-tung.When Du Bois returned to the U.S. in the summer of 1959, he was again surprised when the U.S. State Department confiscated his passport. At this point, he lost all faith in the American government and began actively planning to settle abroad, preferably in his ancestral Africa. THIS IS WHAT WE "KNOW" THAT THIS GOVERMENT DOES TO PEOPLE WHO'S POLICIES WILL ACTUALLY "HELP" BLACK AMERICA; THEY RUN YOU OUT OF TOWN ON A RAIL.NOW, WHEN YOUR POLICIES WILL KEEP WHITE AMERICA IN POWER, THEY MAKE YOU THE "NEW BLACK LEADER" LIKE THEY DID WITH BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.THERE ARE SOME AMONGST US WHO WERE TAUGHT THAT DU BOIS RENOUNCED HIS CITIZENSHIP. THIS IS MERE PROPAGANDA. THE TRUTH IS THAT THERE IS A RECORD OF THOSE WHO HAVE RENOUNCED THEIR CITIZENSHIP AND DU BOIS IS NOT ON THAT LIST.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_United_States_citizens_who_relinquished_their_nationality#Unclear.2C_misreported.2C_or_rejected_casesUnclear, misreported, or rejected cases.Du Bois, a native of Massachusetts, moved to Ghana in 1961 at age 93 to manage the Encyclopedia Africana project. The U.S. State Department refused to renew his passport while he was living there, so Du Bois elected to become a citizen of Ghana. Some sources claim that he renounced U.S. citizenship, but David Levering Lewis' biography of him states that he did not.SINCE MR LEWIS HAS A PHD IN HISTORY AND IS A BLACK HISTORIAN I WOULD SUGGEST THAT "HIS" IS THE MORE ACCURATE OF THE TELLING OF THE LIFE OF DU BOIS. Lewis, David Levering (2009). W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography. Henry Holt and Co.. pp. 709-712. ISBN 978-0-8050-8769-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=BU4vH95YySgC. Footnote 39 on p. 841 states that "Du Bois did not renounce his citizenship" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/David-levering-lewis2-sm.jpgDavid Levering Lewis (born May 25, 1936) is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois (in 1994 and 2001, respectively). He is the first author to win two Pulitzer Prizes for biography for back-to-back volumes.[1]The author of eight books and editor of two more, Lewis's field is comparative history with special focus on twentieth-century United States social history and civil rights. His interests include nineteenth-century Africa, twentieth-century France, and Islamic Spain.Books by David Levering LewisW. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919, (Owl Books 1994). Winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and winner also of the Bancroft and Parkman prizes. W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 (Owl Books 2001). Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography (with Deborah Willis) A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois & African American Portraits of Progress, HarperCollins, 2003.
THE REAL PAWN WAS BOOKER T.The Tuskegee Machine was in large part a collection of powerful Republican insiders, and with their fall from grace in the 1912 elections, there was little they could do to assist Booker T. Washington. Booker T's submissive message also became increasingly harder to sell among the black masses especially in the face of all the white attacks on innocent blacks.
HISTORY IS QUITE CLEAR ON THIS MATTER. IT EXPLAINS SO MUCH OF WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE ARE, THE WAY WE ARE THAT I WAS BRIEFLY SICKENED TO MY STOMACH WHEN I READ ABOUT HOW THE ATLANT COMPROMISE AFFECTED THE LIFE OF A MAN NAMED DR. EDWARD BOUCHET. http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/physics/bouchet_edward_alexander.html1878 DR BOUCHET WAS The first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Science HE MAJORED IN (Physics - Yale University) and only the sixth American "of any race" to possess a Ph.D. in Physics. Dr. Bouchet taught chemistry and physics for twenty-six years at THE INSTITUE FOR COLORED YOUTH IN PHILADELPHIA. By the turn of the century, a new set of ICY managers emerged, more receptive to the industrial education philosophy of Booker T. Washington than to academic education for blacks. In their efforts to redirect the school's programs,the Institute's college preparatory program was discontinued.THE THEN all-white board in 1902 fired all the teachers including Bouchet. Perhaps the most highly educated person in the the state, who inspired both black and white young people ALIKE and replaced them with instructors committed to industrial education. IN LESS THAN "7" YEARS THE WAY IN WHICH BLACK AMERICANS WERE TO BE EDUCATED WAS TOTALLY CHANGED AND "ALL" OF THE INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE COUNTRY FOLLOWED THIS MANDATE. BOOKER T WASHINGTONS "ATLANTA COMPROMISE" NOT ONLY DESTROYED DR. BOUCHET'S CAREER BUT, IT DESTROYED THE EDUCATIONAL MIND-SET OF OUR PEOPLE FOR OVER A HUNRED YEARS
Until the time of DuBois, Washington was among the premier of black activists. Washington's views "racial uplift" for the masses are criticized by many today as more conciliatory than in the definite interests of blacks in America. Washinton's views on "racial uplift" were that Washington offered black acquiescence in disenfranchisement and social segregation if whites would back the idea of black progress in education, agriculture, and economics. Agriculture to Washington was one of the soul ideas of his "racial uplift" theory. Washington had found Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in black belt Alabama. He used a sharp political ability to gain his way with the whites of both the North and the South. He convinced Southerners everywhere right up to the governor that his school had education that would keep blacks "down on the farm". And to the Northerners right up to the rich that controlled everything like the Rockefellers he promised the inculcation of the Protestant work ethic all the while promising to blacks in the South that industrial education would give them the tools to have their own lands and businesses. Dubois horribly disagreed with many of Washington's opinions, but also garnered a respect for him as one of the first true black intellectuals who tried to help the black race."One hesitates, therefore, to criticize 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 captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world". In The Souls of Black Folk in the chapter entitled Of Booker T. Washington and Others he criticizes Washington for his stance on civil rights issues. LETS LISTEN TO HIS CONTEMPORARY, MR DU BOIS.http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/documents/DuBonBTW.htmMr. 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 had 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: The disfranchisement of the Negro. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of 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.... 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. Mr. Washington was not absolutely opposed to college training and sent his own children to college. But he did minimize its importance, and "discouraged the philanthropic support of higher education". 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.WASHINGTON WAS A BIG-AZZ SELL-OUT!HIS HYPOCRITICAL AZZ SENT HIS OWN KIDS TO COLLEGE AND THEN DISCOURAGED OTHER BLACK PEOPLE FROM DOING THE SAME THING AS WELL AS THOSE THOSE IN THIS COUNTRY WHO WANTED TO FUND THE EDUCATIONS OF OUR PEOPLE!
WHEN THIS MAN UNEQUIVICALLY SAID THAT WE DID NOT NEED TO GET POST-SECONDARY EDUCATIONS AND THEN DISCOURAGED THE FEW WHITE BENEFACTORS THAT WE HAD FROM SETTING UP A "NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL FUND". THAT WAS DAMAGING TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE.
ONE HAS TO LOOK AT THIS PERIOD OF TIME IN HISTORY THROUGH ITS OWN LENSE.
NOW MY DEAR FRIEND HAS SUGGESTED THAT THESE FOLKES WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THESE DEGREE'S AND CAME HOME TO BECOME UN-EMPLOYED. HOWEVER, THAT PERCEPTION IS FROM HIS 21ST CENTURY THINKING.
In 1900, about 2 percent of the college-age population enrolled in higher education. That number is around 65 percent today.
SO THERE'S NO WAY OUR PEOPLE WOULD HAVE GONE THROUGH WHAT GRADUATES OF INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING EXPERIENCE TODAY. IF ANYTHING THE AFFECT WOULD HAVE BEEN QUITE THE OPPOSITE.
"IF" WE WERE "mostly illiterate facing a labor competition from the wave of European immigration, increased violence, and retaliation for gaining freedom". THEN THE ARMING OF OUR PEOPLE WITH DEGREE'S WOULD HAVE BEEN THE MOST VIABLE SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM.
What would a leader with 19th century experiences have thought the best course?
In "SOULS", Du Bois, while praising Washington for his contributions to the progress of the race, also criticized Washington for his failures to speak out in its behalf: "... so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North and South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and education of our brighter minds -- so far as he, the South or the Nation does this -- we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them."W.E.B. Du Bois'comments on Booker T. Washington.THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK marks the beginning of Du Bois' transition from a scholar to an activist. He criticized Washington in a number of articles, and in 1905 he formed a civil rights organization, The Niagara Movement, which, although short-lived, was a precursor of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), which Du Bois helped found in 1909. http://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/search/viewer.php?id=new_haven_78.02.02_u"It startled the nation," wrote DuBois, "to hear a Negro advocating such a program 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." Northern whites saw in Washington's doctrine a peace formula between the races in the South. Southern whites liked the program because it did not involve political, civil, and social aspirations, and it would consign the Negro to an inferior status.Because Washington's program conciliated whites, substantial contributions from white philanthropists were given to Tuskegee and other institutions that adopted the Washington philosophy. Washington's prestige grew to the point where he was regarded as the spokesman for the entire Negro community. With strong white support, Washington became the outstanding black leader not only in the fields of education and philanthropy, but in business and labor relations, politics and all public affairs.Washington's career is full of paradoxes. He advised blacks to remain in the South and avoid politics and protest in favor of economic self-help and industrial education. But he became a powerful political boss and dispenser of patronage, the friend of white businessmen like Andrew Carnegie, and advisor of presidents. Washington publicly accepted without protest racial segregation and voting discrimination, but secretly financed and directed many court suits against such proscriptions of civil rights. He preached a gospel of Puritan morality and personal cleanliness, yet engaged in acts of sabotage and espionage against his black critics. Before whites he was a model of humility and ingratiation; to his staff and students at Tuskegee he was a benevolent despot.Several Negro leaders voiced their opposition to Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" with its admonition to work and wait. They could not topple Washington from powerThe following year, William Du Bois and twenty-two other prominent African Americans signed a statement claiming: "We are compelled to point out that Mr. Washington's large financial responsibilities have made him dependent on the rich charitable public and that, for this reason, he has for years been compelled to tell, not the whole truth, but that part of it which certain powerful interests in America wish to appear as the whole truth."MAN THIS GUY WAS A TRAITOR! YEAH, I KNOW ALL ABOUT HIS "SECRET MISSIONS". TO THAT I SAY THIS "A SECRET FRIEND IS WORSE THAN AN OPEN ENEMY".REGARDLESS OF HOW HE WOULD OCCASIONALLY SPEND SOME OF HIS WEALTH TOWARDS THESE LITIGATIONS, PERHAPS TO EASE HIS OWN CONSCIOUS, THE FACT REMAINS IS THAT WHEN THE PERCIEVED NATIONAL LEADER OF OF BLACK FOLKES IN AMERICA WAFFLES ON THE UNFAIRNESS OF HOW WE WERE TREATED IN PUBLIC; WHATEVER HE DID IN PRIVATE WAS OF NO REAL CONSEQUENCE.WITHOUT PUBLICALLY SPEAKING OUT ON BEHALF OF OUR HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS HE GAVE THE IMPRESSION TO WHITE AMERICA, THAT IT WAS OKAY TO MISTREAT US BECAUSE, "HELL! EVEN THEY LEADER AINT MAD ABOUT IT"
WHEN THIS MAN UNEQUIVICALLY SAID THAT WE DID NOT NEED TO GET POST-SECONDARY EDUCATIONS AND THEN DISCOURAGED THE FEW WHITE BENEFACTORS THAT WE HAD FROM SETTING UP A "NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL FUND". THAT WAS DAMAGING TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE. ONE HAS TO LOOK AT THIS PERIOD OF TIME IN HISTORY THROUGH ITS OWN LENSE.NOW MY DEAR FRIENDS HAVE SUGGESTED THAT THESE FOLKES WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THESE DEGREE'S AND CAME HOME TO BECOME UN-EMPLOYED. HOWEVER, THAT PERCEPTION IS FROM HIS 21ST CENTURY THINKING. In 1900, about 2 percent of the college-age population enrolled in higher education. That number is around 65 percent today. SO THERE'S NO WAY OUR PEOPLE WOULD HAVE GONE THROUGH WHAT GRADUATES OF INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING EXPERIENCE TODAY. IF ANYTHING THE AFFECT WOULD HAVE BEEN QUITE THE OPPOSITE. "IF" WE WERE "mostly illiterate facing a labor competition from the wave of European immigration, increased violence, and retaliation for gaining freedom". THEN THE ARMING OF OUR PEOPLE WITH DEGREE'S WOULD HAVE BEEN THE MOST VIABLE SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM. What would a leader with 19th century experiences have thought the best course?ANYTHING BUT BEING EDUCATED "EN MASSE" AS MANUAL LABORERS MAKING BRICKS COULD HAVE BEEN A BETTER COURSE FOR OUR PEOPLE.
THE TRUTH IS THAT HE COVETED THIS POSITION OF "NATIONAL BLACK SPOKESMAN. PERHAPS IT WAS DUE TO THE FACT THAT HE WAS RECIEVING LARGE ENDOWMENTS FROM PEOPLE LIKE CARNEGIE AND THEY THREATENED TO CUT HIM OFF, THAT HE LET HIMSELF BE THE "CHOSEN ONE". NEVERTHELESS, IT SIMPLY DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ENCOURAGE A PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN THE SLAVE LABOR WHO BUILT THIS COUNTRY WITH NO COMPENSATION TO CONTINUE TO DO SO FOR "LITTLE" COMPENSATION.
LIKE MOST TRUE FRAUDS, WHERE DID WASHINGTON WIND UP AFTER BEING APPOINTED BY WHITE AMERICA TO BE OUR LEADER? WITH A CUSHY GOVERNMENT JOB AND GETTING MORE DONATIONS TO HIS INSTITUTE AND OTHER CAUSES THAN HIS WILDEST DREAMS COULD HAVE IMAGINED.
WASHINGTON DIDNT REFLECT THE THINKING OF HIS ERA WHEN IT CAME TO BLACK PEOPLE AT ALL. IRONICALLY, HERE WE ARE 136YRS LATER AND WHAT IS THE GLARING NEED OF OUR PEOPLE TODAY? COLLEGE DEGREE'S!WE HAVE THOUSANDS OF HIGH-TECH JOBS IN THIS COUNTRY WHICH OUR PEOPLE CAN'T FILL BECAUSE THEY LACK THE NECCESSARY EDUCATIONS TO COMPETE FOR THEM LET ALONE EVEN APPLY FOR THE JOBS.CERTAINLY, ""WASHINGTON'S SPEECH HAS DONE US MORE HARM THAN ANY ONE THING THAT WHITE PEOPLE HAVE DONE TO US SINCE SLAVERY". BUT HIS POLICIES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS SPEECH DID NOT JUST AFFECT THOSE DECENDANTS OF AFRICAN SLAVES IN AMERICA, THEY AFFECTED US ALL OVER THE GLOBE.AMERICA'S DECISION TO FORGO THE POST-SECONDARY EDUCATIONS OF THE DECENDANTS OF SLAVES IN THIS LAND ALSO MEANT THAT THE SAME POLICIES WERE IMPLEMENTED IN THE REST OF THE WORLD WHERE WE HAD BEEN TAKEN AS WELL.
WE WERE SENDING OUR CHILDREN TO COLLEGE TO GET DEGREE'S. THEN BECAUSE OF THIS ONE MAN, THE PLUG WAS PULLED ON THE ENTIRE IDEOLOGY OF EDUCATING BLACKS IN SCIENCE AND MATH. HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT "this man provided one of many solutions to take on our enemy" WHEN IT WAS OUR ENEMY THAT PROMOTED HIM?HUH?I KOW WHITE FOLKES AINT AS SMART AS US BUT ITS HARD TO IMAGINE THAT THEY WOULD HAVE SUPPORTED A PROGRAM THAT THEY KNEW WOULD LEAD TO THE LOSS OF THEIR SOCIO-ECONOMIC POWER IN THIS LAND.IF YOU WANNA FIND THE SOLUTION TO CONQUERING ONES ENEMY, IT WONT BE FOUND IN THE PROGRAMS THAT YOUR ENEMY EMBRACES, WHICH WAS BTW'S PROGRAM.DATS JUST COMMON DAMN SENSE!
A SIMPLE SEARCH OF THE BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAD GOTTEN DEGREE'S PRIOR TO THIS SPEECH AND THE NUMBER OF THEM WHO GOT THEM AFTER WILL SHOW A HUGE DROP OFF IN THE NUMBER OF BLACK COLLEGE GRADUATES.
JUST LOOK AT DR. BOUCHET, FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN WITH A PHD IN PHYSICS. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR US TO PRODUCE MORE? IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY IT WAS ABOUT 20 YRS. AND, HOW MANY HAVE WE HAD SINCE? VERY FEW, I CAN ASSURE YOU.
THE TRUTH IS HAD WASHINGTON NOT GIVEN THAT SPEECH AND BECAME THE WHITE MAN'S LAP-DOG, WE SHOULD HAVE HAD EVEN MORE BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAD PHD'S IN PHYSICS. PARTIALLY BECAUSE DA FIRST BROTHER TO GET ONE WAS TEACHING IT IN HIGH SCHOOL!
WASHINGTON'S SPEECH HAS DONE US MORE HARM THAN ANY ONE THING THAT WHITE PEOPLE HAVE DONE TO US SINCE SLAVERY.
HAD WE BEEN FINANCED FOR EDUCATIONS AS MANY WHITE PEOPLE WANTED TO DO FOR US, THEN WE WOULD HAVE HAD WEALTH UNTOLD!
IMAGINE AN AMERICA WHERE ALL OF ITS BLACK RESIDENTS WERE KNOWN TO BE STUDENTS OF MATH AND SCIENCE.
AINT NOBODY "PROFILING" ASIANS BECAUSE THEY KNOW THOSE FOLKES IS ALL ABOUT "SUPERIOR" EDUCATIONS.
AINT NOBODY STANDING ON THE CORNERS OF ASIAN AMERICA SLINGIN CRACK ROCK CUS THEM FOLKES KNOW THEY'LL MAKE MORE MONEY AS ENGINEERS AND DOCTORS THAN ANY DOPE-DEALER WOULD.
IMAGINE AN AMERICA WHERE IF YOU HAD A PROBLEM WITH YOU COMPUTER THAT YOU INSTANTLY LOOKED TO FIND A BLACK PERSON BECAUSE THEY ALL HAVE BEEN TRAINED IN THIS AREA AND KNOW IT LIKE INDIANS IMAGINE AN AMERICA WHERE ALL OF ITS BLACK RESIDENTS WERE KNOWN TO BE STUDENTS OF MATH AND SCIENCE.AINT NOBODY "PROFILING" ASIANS BECAUSE THEY KNOW THOSE FOLKES IS ALL ABOUT "SUPERIOR" EDUCATIONS.AINT NOBODY STANDING ON THE CORNERS OF ASIAN AMERICA SLINGIN CRACK ROCK CUS THEM FOLKES KNOW THEY'LL MAKE MORE MONEY AS ENGINEERS AND DOCTORS THAN ANY DOPE-DEALER WOULD.IMAGINE AN AMERICA WHERE IF YOU HAD A PROBLEM WITH YOU COMPUTER THAT YOU INSTANTLY LOOKED TO FIND A BLACK PERSON BECAUSE THEY ALL HAVE BEEN TRAINED IN THIS AREA AND KNOW IT LIKE INDIANS OR ORIENTALS. CLEARLY THIS STRATEGY HAS WORKED FOR ALL OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME TO THIS COUNTRY WELL AFTER OUR ARRIVAL. IT CAN NOT BE SAID BY OUR PAST, PRESENT OR FUTURE LEADERS THAT THIS FORMULA WAS NOT KNOWN, AS DU BOIS "TALENTED TENTH" PROGRAM WAS AIMED EXACTLY IN THIS DIRECTION.
YET, WASHINGTON IN FACT SPOKE AGAINST THE FUNDING OF AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM FOR OUR PEOPLE.
BROTHER, DONT KID YOURSELF WASHINGTON KNEW THAT HIS PROGRAM WOULD NOT ADVANCE THE RACE. THATS WHY HE HAD HIS LITTLE SECRET MISSIONS OF FILING LAW-SUITS ON BEHALF OF A FEW BLACK FOLKES WHO WAS CATCHING HELL.
IF HE THOUGHT WHAT HE WAS DOING WOULD HELP US THEN HE WOULD HAVE NOT DONE A DAMN THING IN SECRET.
It did not seem fair, for instance, that on the one hand Mr. Washington should decry political activities among Negroes, and on the other hand dictate Negro political objectives from Tuskegee. At a time when Negro civil rights called for organized and aggressive defense, he broke down that defense by advising acquiescence or at least no open agitation. During the period when laws disfranchising the Negro were being passed in all the Southern states, between 1890 and 1909, and when these were being supplemented by "jim-crow" travel laws and other enactments making color caste legal, his public speeches, while they did not entirely ignore this development, tended continually to excuse it … All this naturally aroused increasing opposition among Negroes and especially among the younger class of educated Negroes, who were beginning to emerge here and there, particularly from Northern institutions.
http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/documents/DuBonBTW.htm
With the backing of white benefactors and officials, he was the topmost supervisor of black politics and advancement. The school he managed, Tuskegee Institute, was one of the wealthiest seats of learning in the South, and a network of graduates, employees, and operatives ("Bookerites") spread across the nation as the Tuskegee Machine, an affiliation mighty enough to control hiring, suppress opposition, and funnel monies accordingly. As W.E.B. Du Bois put it years later, "Not only did presidents of the United States consult Booker T. Washington, but governors and congressmen; philanthropists conferred with him, scholars wrote to him. ... After a time almost no Negro institution could collect funds without the recommendation or acquiescence of Mr. Washington. Few political appointments of Negroes were made anywhere in the United States without his consent."
But how did Washington use his power? From our perspective two generations past civil rights, abominably. From 1890 to 1910, an era of Jim Crow mania, twice-a-week lynchings, and disfranchisement codes, Washington offered African-Americans a message of, at best, hard work and consumer thrift, and, at worst, conciliation and self-reproach. As a race advocate he hailed rising black land ownership, small business start-ups, and taxable income, and centered the Tuskegee curriculum on "industries at which our men and women can find immediate employment."
But when Southern politicians denounced the black vote as a corrupt bloc on sale to the highest bidder, Washington advised his brethren that it was better not to vote than to antagonize white neighbors. When hysterical racists such as Thomas Edward Watson accused black men of degenerate lust for white women, Washington merely softened the notion, saying that some black vagrants indeed preyed on white women and should be rooted out of black communities. When militant African-Americans demanded boycotts and protests against white violence and unequal facilities, Washington treated them as enemies, editorializing (anonymously) against them, planting spies in their ranks, and steering white donors elsewhere. Activism should wait, he maintained, for "the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly." The same goes for culture: "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."
To militants such as Du Bois, and to us today, Washington's accommodationism is an abasement. After Washington's death, Du Bois wrote, "we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and public school, and the firmer establishment of color caste in this land."
•
In our own time Washington stands as but a curiosity, the culpable antagonist of Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and the NAACP. In 1990, when Publications of the Modern Language Association issued a special number on African and African-American literature, Washington earned but two glancing citations. About a year ago, at an American-studies conference, a distinguished scholar delivered a talk on the paradigm of the post-Reconstruction black intellectual, Du Bois serving as model. In the discussion, when I asked how Washington fit into the scheme, the lecturer replied, "I can pretty much do without Booker T."
THE TRUTH IS THAT HE COVETED THIS POSITION. PERHAPS IT WAS DUE TO THE FACT THAT HE WAS RECIEVING LARGE ENDOWMENTS FROM PEOPLE LIKE CARNEGIE AND THEY THREATENED TO CUT HIM OFF, THAT HE LET HIMSELF BE THE "CHOSEN ONE". NEVERTHELESS, IT SIMPLY DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ENCOURAGE A PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN THE SLAVE LABOR WHO BUILT THIS COUNTRY WITH NO COMPENSATION TO CONTINUE TO DO SO FOR "LITTLE" COMPENSATION.LIKE MOST TRUE FRAUDS, WHERE DID WASHINGTON WIND UP AFTER BEING APPOINTED BY WHITE AMERICA TO BE OUR LEADER? WITH A CUSHY GOVERNMENT JOB AND GETTING MORE DONATIONS TO HIS INSTITUTE AND OTHER CAUSES THAN HIS WILDEST DREAMS COULD HAVE IMAGINED.WASHINGTON DIDNT REFLECT THE THINKING OF HIS ERA WHEN IT CAME TO BLACK PEOPLE AT ALL.WE WERE SENDING OUR CHILDREN TO COLLEGE TO GET DEGREE'S. THEN BECAUSE OF THIS ONE MAN, THE PLUG WAS PULLED ON THE ENTIRE IDEOLOGY OF EDUCATING BLACKS IN SCIENCE AND MATH.A SIMPLE SEARCH OF THE BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAD GOTTEN DEGREE'S PRIOR TO THIS SPEECH AND THE NUMBER OF THEM WHO GOT THEM AFTER WILL SHOW A HUGE DROP OFF IN THE NUMBER OF BLACK COLLEGE GRADUATES.JUST LOOK AT DR. BOUCHET, FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN WITH A PHD IN PHYSICS. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR US TO PRODUCE MORE? IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY IT WAS ABOUT 20 YRS. AND, HOW MANY HAVE WE HAD SINCE? VERY FEW, I CAN ASSURE YOU.THE TRUTH IS HAD WASHINGTON NOT GIVEN THAT SPEECH AND BECAME THE WHITE MAN'S LAP-DOG, WE SHOULD HAVE HAD EVEN MORE BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAD PHD'S IN PHYSICS. PARTIALLY BECAUSE DA FIRST BROTHER TO GET ONE WAS TEACHING IT IN HIGH SCHOOL!WASHINGTON'S SPEECH HAS DONE US MORE HARM THAN ANY ONE THING THAT WHITE PEOPLE HAVE DONE TO US SINCE SLAVERY.HAD WE BEEN FINANCED FOR EDUCATIONS AS MANY WHITE PEOPLE WANTED TO DO FOR US, THEN WE WOULD HAVE HAD WEALTH UNTOLD!YET, WASHINGTON IN FACT SPOKE "AGAINST" THE FUNDING OF AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM FOR OUR PEOPLE.BROTHER, DONT KID YOURSELF WASHINGTON KNEW THAT HIS PROGRAM WOULD NOT ADVANCE THE RACE. THATS WHY HE HAD HIS LITTLE SECRET MISSIONS OF FILING LAW-SUITS ON BEHALF OF A FEW BLACK FOLKES WHO WAS CATCHING HELL.IF HE THOUGHT WHAT HE WAS DOING WOULD HELP US THEN HE WOULD HAVE NOT DONE A DAMN THING IN SECRET.SORRY TO TARNISH THE IMAGE OF WHO WE THOUGHT WAS A GREAT BLACK MAN. BUT, HISTORY HAS SPOKEN AND THE EVIDENCE CLEARLY SHOWS THAT BOOKER T. WASHINGTON SOLD OUT HIS PEOPLE FOR FINANCIAL GAIN. ITS AN OLD STORY, NOTIHNG NEW ABOUT THAT AT ALL.NOW AS TO THE SUGGESTION THAT IF WE HAD "INSISTED" ON OUR RIGHTS TO GET COLLEGE DEGREE'S INSTEAD OF ACCEPTING MR. WASHINGTONS "COMPROMISE" THAT THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE LYNCHINGS AND MURDERS OR THE RE-EMERGENCE OF ANOTHER CIVIL WAR.CONSIDER THIS, DID NOT GOING TO COLLEGE SAVE US AS A PEOPLE FROM LYNCHINGS AND MURDER?NOPE!THE DEGREE AND SCALE "COULD" HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT. BUT, I DOUBT THAT SERIOUSLY.AMERICA HAD JUST GOTTEN OVER THE BLOODBATH CALLED THE CIVIL WAR AND IT WAS IN NO MOOD TO RE-FIGHT THOSE BATTLES. ITS SAFE TO SAY THAT AMERICA DIDNT HAVE THE STOMACH FOR ANOTHER BLOOD LETTING.BOOKER T. IS ON RECORD FOR THWARTING THOSE ATTEMPTS BY BENEVOLENT WHITE FOLKES TO ESTABLISH A NATIONAL COLLEGE FUND FOR US!!BOOKER T. SOLD OUR AZZES OUT JUST LIKE THE AFRICAN RULERS WHO SOLD US INTO SLAVERY, IT WAS JUST ANOTHER TYPE OF SLAVERY; THATS ALL! FACTORY JOBS! IF YOU LOOK AT BOOKER T.'S RHETORIC, IT DOESNT MATCH HIS OWN PRACTICE. CONTRARY TO DU BOIS DEMAND THAT OUR PEOPLE BE ALLOWED TO ATTEND THIS NATIONS INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING, WASHINGTON SAID WE DID'NT NEED THAT. Northern whites saw in Washington's doctrine a peace formula between the races in the South. Southern whites liked the program because it did not involve political, civil, and social aspirations, and it would consign the Negro to an inferior status.Because Washington's program conciliated whites, substantial contributions from white philanthropists were given to Tuskegee and other institutions that adopted the Washington philosophy. THOSE ARE THE "HISTORICAL" FACTS THAT WE DARE NOT IGNORE.WOULD NOT COMMON SENSE DICTATE THAT NO BLACK PERSON WOULD BE EMBRACED SO WHOLE-HEARTEDLY BY WHITE AMERICA IF HIS POLICIES ACTUALLY WERE GOING TO BENEFIT OUR PEOPLE?POLICIES THAT ENSURED THAT WE AS A PEOPLE WOULD CONTINUE TO BE THE LABOR FORCE AND NOT THE INTELLECTUAL FORCE OF THIS NATION WOULD BE AND WAS THE GREATEST GIFT THAT A BLACK MAN COULD MAKE TO WHITE AMERICA.YEAH, I KNOW THIS AINT POPULAR. BUT WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT BEING "POPULAR". WE'RE TALKING ABOUT WHAT DID AND DID NOT HAPPEN AS HISTORY RECORDS.WHAT DID HAPPEN WAS THAT THE MASSIVE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM THAT THE NEWLY FREED SALVE NEEDED WAS DIVERTED AND DISCOURAGED BY BTW.WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN WAS THE REMOVAL OF THE FORMER SLAVE FROM THE RANKS OF BEING A "MANUAL" LABORER.HERE WE SIT A HUNDRED YEARS LATER AND WE'RE STILL "MANUAL LABORERS".WHY? BECAUSE BTW SAID THAT WE SHOULD "keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life". IN OTHER WORDS WE SHOULD JUST TAKE WHATEVER THE JOBS WERE THAT REQUIRED US TO USE OUR HANDS AND NOT OUR BRAINS.HISTORY IS NOT "FOGGY" WHEN IT COMES TO THIS PERIOD OF TIME.CLEARLY THIS POLICY PRMOTED BY BTW WAS AS DAMAGING AS ANYTIHNG DONE TO US BY WHITE AMERICA SINCE SLAVERY BECAUSE IT MANDATED THAT WE WOULD STILL BE THE SLAVE LABOR FORCE OF THIS NATION.IRONICALLY AND HYPOCRITICALLY; HE SENT HIS OWN KIDS TO COLLEGE.At Hampton, his studies focused on the acquisition of industrial or practical working skills. A course study that Washington saw fit, was a course study that trained Southern blacks to become farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, sewing women, house keepers, and later tailors. TRANSLATED: MANUAL LABOR JOBS.One of the biggest disagreements in philosophies between the two was over the issue of black suffrage. In terms of voting, DuBois believed that agitating for the ballot was necessary, but opposed giving the vote to the uneducated blacks. He believed that economic gains were not secure unless there was political power to safeguard them. This is shown in this comment from DuBois regarding Booker T. Washington: "He (Washington) 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" (DuBois 68). Washington, on the other hand, felt that DuBois' militant agitation did more harm than good and served only to irritate southern whites. "I think, though, that the opportunity to freely exercise such political rights will not come in any large degree through outside or artificial forcing…" (Washington 234). Washington urged blacks to "accept discrimination" for the time being and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed in education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. This, he said, would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated into all strata of society.WELL, WE KNOW THAT DID'NT WORK. WE'VE WORKED HARD AND GAINED "SOME" MATERIAL PROSPERITY AND IT HAS'NT HELPED US AT ALL.ITS TIME TO EXPOSE THIS MINDLESS, SELF-SERVING IDEOLOGY PERPETRATED ON US BY BOOKER T. FOR WHAT IT WAS.HIS BENEFIT AT OUR EXPENSE!
WE" HAVE TO CHANGE THE WAY "OUR" PEOPLE THINK!Booker T. Washington generally encouraged blacks to advance in society gradually. He wanted them to continue working manual labor and farming jobs, not ones that involved higher education and potential for higher pay and more equal social status with whites.This would be rejected today most likely because it encourages people disadvantaged by society to "stay in their place" and gradually wait for change
Dubois focused on a strategy called the gradualist political strategy. The gradualist political strategy tells that Dubois was very focused on blacks being book smart to get any where in life. He believed that they should be just like whites, with high education and IQ’s which all comes from reading, writing, and organized education. He wanted the blacks to have intellectual advances in their race. The smarter the blacks got, the more equal they were to the whites is what Dubois believed. Dubois asserted that economic security was not enough and blacks should become educated. Dubois mainly took Booker T. Washington’s ideas and took them a step further. While Booker T. Washington just wanted the blacks to have opportunities without equally, Dubois wanted the full package. He wanted blacks to have the opportunities as well as being equal to the whites.Back in the time, the leader that was the most realistic was Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washington understood that blacks would never be equal to whites and instead of fighting with it he accepted it. By understanding that the blacks would never be equal it prevented them from wasting anytime trying to become better individuals. Booker T. Washington took the idea of never getting past racism and preached about it. Instead of preaching that one day the blacks would have equality and preaching wrong, Booker T. Washington preached to them that being equal is not what it is all about. NOW, IF BEING "EQUAL" ISNT WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT THEN WHAT IS?THIS FOOL SOLD US OUT!LISTEN TO DU BOIS ON WASHINGTON'S SELL-OUT AZZ!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 race. 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. 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 had 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: The disfranchisement of the Negro. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of 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.... 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.It did not seem fair, for instance, that on the one hand Mr. Washington should decry political activities among Negroes, and on the other hand dictate Negro political objectives from Tuskegee. At a time when Negro civil rights called for organized and aggressive defense, he broke down that defense by advising acquiescence or at least no open agitation. During the period when laws disfranchising the Negro were being passed in all the Southern states, between 1890 and 1909, and when these were being supplemented by "jim-crow" travel laws and other enactments making color caste legal, his public speeches, while they did not entirely ignore this development, tended continually to excuse it … All this naturally aroused increasing opposition among Negroes and especially among the younger class of educated Negroes, who were beginning to emerge here and there, particularly from Northern institutions. http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/documents/DuBonBTW.htmWith the backing of white benefactors and officials, he was the topmost supervisor of black politics and advancement. The school he managed, Tuskegee Institute, was one of the wealthiest seats of learning in the South, and a network of graduates, employees, and operatives ("Bookerites") spread across the nation as the Tuskegee Machine, an affiliation mighty enough to control hiring, suppress opposition, and funnel monies accordingly. As W.E.B. Du Bois put it years later, "Not only did presidents of the United States consult Booker T. Washington, but governors and congressmen; philanthropists conferred with him, scholars wrote to him. ... After a time almost no Negro institution could collect funds without the recommendation or acquiescence of Mr. Washington. Few political appointments of Negroes were made anywhere in the United States without his consent." In our own time Washington stands as but a curiosity, the culpable antagonist of Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and the NAACP. In 1990, when Publications of the Modern Language Association issued a special number on African and African-American literature, Washington earned but two glancing citations. About a year ago, at an American-studies conference, a distinguished scholar delivered a talk on the paradigm of the post-Reconstruction black intellectual, Du Bois serving as model. In the discussion, when I asked how Washington fit into the scheme, the lecturer replied, "I can pretty much do without Booker T."
•
But how did Washington use his power? From our perspective two generations past civil rights, abominably. From 1890 to 1910, an era of Jim Crow mania, twice-a-week lynchings, and disfranchisement codes, Washington offered African-Americans a message of, at best, hard work and consumer thrift, and, at worst, conciliation and self-reproach. As a race advocate he hailed rising black land ownership, small business start-ups, and taxable income, and centered the Tuskegee curriculum on "industries at which our men and women can find immediate employment."
But when Southern politicians denounced the black vote as a corrupt bloc on sale to the highest bidder, Washington advised his brethren that it was better not to vote than to antagonize white neighbors. When hysterical racists such as Thomas Edward Watson accused black men of degenerate lust for white women, Washington merely softened the notion, saying that some black vagrants indeed preyed on white women and should be rooted out of black communities. When militant African-Americans demanded boycotts and protests against white violence and unequal facilities, Washington treated them as enemies, editorializing (anonymously) against them, planting spies in their ranks, and steering white donors elsewhere. Activism should wait, he maintained, for "the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly." The same goes for culture: "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."
To militants such as Du Bois, and to us today, Washington's accommodationism is an abasement. After Washington's death, Du Bois wrote, "we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and public school, and the firmer establishment of color caste in this land."
•
LISTEN TO HIS CONTEMPORARY, MR DU BOIS.http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/documents/DuBonBTW.htmMr. 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 had 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: The disfranchisement of the Negro. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of 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.... 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. Mr. Washington was not absolutely opposed to college training and sent his own children to college. But he did minimize its importance, and "discouraged the philanthropic support of higher education". 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.WASHINGTON WAS A BIG SELL-OUT!HIS HYPOCRITICAL AZZ SENT HIS OWN KIDS TO COLLEGE AND THEN DISCOURAGED OTHER BLACK PEOPLE FROM DOING THE SAME THING AS WELL AS DISCOURAGING THOSE WHITE FOLKES IN THIS COUNTRY WHO WANTED TO FUND THE EDUCATIONS OF OUR PEOPLE FROM DOING SO!
DID WASHINGTONS PLAN WORK?
NOPE!
IT WAS A MISERABLE FAILURE BECAUSE INSTEAD OF "ALL" OF US MOVING FOWARD, MOST OF US ARE STILL MANUAL LABORERS IN NEED OF A DEGREE IN TECHNOLOGIES AND SCIENCE; WHERE THE REAL JOBS WERE THEN, NOW AND WILL BE IN THE FUTURE.
WE NEEDED A MASSIVE COLLEGE TRAINING PROGRAM, THEN AND NOW.
WASHINGTONS VOCATIONAL TRAINING WAS AIMED AT AND ACCOMPLISHED EXACTLY WHAT HE PROMISED WHITE AMERICA IT WOULD, keep blacks "down on the farm".
YOU KNOW THE HARM OR GOOD OF WASHINGTONS PROGRAM CAN BE EVALUATED BY ONE SIMPLE MEASURE?
IF IT WOULD HAVE ACTUALLY WRESTLED SOCIO-ECONOMIC POWER FROM THE HANDS OF WHITE AMERICA, THEN THEY WOULD'NT HAVE SUPPORTED IT YOU KNOW THE HARM OR GOOD OF WASHINGTONS PROGRAM CAN BE EVALUATED BY ONE SIMPLE MEASURE?IF IT WOULD HAVE ACTUALLY WRESTLED SOCIO-ECONOMIC POWER FROM THE HANDS OF WHITE AMERICA, THEN THEY WOULD'NT HAVE SUPPORTED IT
THATS WHY WHITE AMERICA BOUGHT IT AND TOSSED DU BOIS ASIDE. THEY KNEW THIS PLAN WOULD ASSURE THEM A LEG UP IN THE LEADING PROFESSIONS OF THE DAY.
BLACK PEOPLE IN AMERICA HAVE TO GO BACK OVER OUR PAST AND ROOT OUT ALL OF OUR FALSE HERO'S AND BULLCHIT LEGENDS; LIKE BOOKER T., AS WELL AS THE IDEOLOGIES THAT THEY ASCRIBED TO. WHOEVER THEY ARE AND WHATEVER REVERENCE THAT WE AS A PEOPLE HAVE FOR THEM OR WHAT THEY TAUGHT, IT MUST ALL BE DISCARDED. SO, THAT WE MAY PROCEDE TOWARDS SOMETHING OTHER THAN MORE OF THE SAME MISERY THAT WE'VE BEEN EXPERIENCING FOR THE LAST 136YRS FROM FOLLOWING THIER MINDLESS AND SELF-SERVING PHILOSOPHIES.IN THE WORDS OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” ― Frederick Douglass"