Compare And Contrast Washington And Dubois

In the early history of the civil rights movement two men, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, offered solutions to the cold discrimination of blacks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Washington taking the more incremental progressive approach was detested by Du Bois who took the radical approach of immediate and total equality both politically and economically. And although both views were needed for progress Washington's "don't rock the boat" approach seemed to be the most appropriate for the time. In 1890 the percentage of 5-19 year olds enrolled in school for whites was approximately 60% while the percent of blacks was roughly half that, which was a vast improvement over just thirty years before when black enrollment hovered near zero. That same year the illiteracy rate of the white population was at 10% while the percentage of the black population unable to read spiked at 60%. Both Washington and Du Bois recognized the gap but took completely different approaches to achieve a remedy. Washington himself was educated in Hampton, a Freedman's Bureau school. Some called him "the champion of education" as he went on to form
Instead he grew up a free man in Massachusetts and became the first man of his race to graduate from Harvard with a Ph.D. "The honor, I assure you, was Harvard's" he said. Du bois was a mixture of African, French, Dutch and Indian blood. He would later remark "thank god, no Anglo-Saxon". He demanded immediate and complete equality for blacks both socially and economically and founded the NAACP. Rejecting the subtle and separatist changes of Washington he demanded the "talented tenth" be given immediate and complete access to mainstream American life and supported "The Niagara Movement". A historian specializing in the history of blacks and a renowned sociologist, at the age of 93 he became a member of the communist party and exiled himself to