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Advice to a Black Schoolgirl

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Advice to a Black Schoolgirl
INTRODUCTION: The Progressive age lasted from 1890s all the way to the 1920’s. The progressive age is a time of great depression and great hardship. During this time there was a lot of discrimination towards people of different races and low rights for women. There were promises made for the African Americans by the president, those promises were broke. With the writing during the progressive age is very enlightening due to the fact of the matter it is all about the wanting and needing of rights towards women and towards African Americans. Progressive Age is all about getting towards a better life style and becoming equal for everyone. A lot of changes have been made since the progressive age such as greater equality for African Americans and women both, also there is a lot more freedom for everyone. Many of the readings in “The American Reader: Words That Move a Nation” by Diane Ravitch, Progressive Age segment paints a picture of how life use to be back many years ago. W.E. B. Du Bois wrote a very enlightening letter directed towards an African American girl about furthering her education called “Advise to a Schoolgirl” (378). This letter can paint a picture of how scared African Americans are because of all of the prejudice towards them. Du Bois born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts went on and achieved his Ph.D. AT Harvard after attending Fish University. Ravitch states that Du Bois is “the most influential black intellectual in the first half of the twentieth century.” He published his most famous book in 1903 called The Souls of Black Folk, which got people’s attention about the big problem in the early twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1934 Du Bois was an editor of The Crisis a magazine from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. On January 7, 1905 Du Bois replies to a letter that he received from a white high school teacher from Berwyn, Pennsylvania. The letter that Du Bois received about a young African

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