Blog #10

 

 

Both Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois had a major impact for fellow African Americans in their own time and in subsequent decades. Washington had been raised a slave, and was educated by a white mentor. Because of this, he was an avid supporter of the virtues of manual and industrial training and believed physical labor allows for discipline and self-improvement, and was more widely recognized because of the accommodating quality of his public statements, which made him especially popular among the influential whites of the time. He wanted blacks to looks to Southern Whites for economic opportunity, and to accept their place in society, seeking improvement through honest hard work. Dubois, on the other hand, had quite the opposite upbringing and also a different educational philosophy. He was born free in the North, went to a public school in Massachusetts, and became the first African American to earn a PhD at Harvard. Because of this, he was strongly against accommodating and finding your place in society like Washington encouraged. He believed Blacks needed thoughtful and articulate leaders in order to improve their status, which meant that they should be pursuing higher education. Dubois argues that higher education was the most pressing matter for African Americans, and described his views as “a gospel of work and money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims in life.”