A brief look at the background of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois as a set up to their ideas as to how best to achieve African American equality in the United States in the early 20th Century.

1. Accomodation
v.
Reform

2. Up From Slavery
• Booker T. Washington
was born a slave in
1856.
• Because of his
family’s poverty, he
was forced to start
working at the age of
9, first in a salt
furnace then in a coal
mine.

3. Up From Slavery
• Realizing the importance of
education, he went to the
Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute in Virginia
in 1872.
• In order to pay for it, he worked
as a janitor.

4. Up From Slavery
• In 1881, he was called upon
to be the leader of the
Tuskegee Institute in
Alabama and turned it into a
successful institution.

5. Up From Slavery
• He believed that the interests
of African Americans could
be best served by learning
craft and industrial skills

6. Up From Slavery
• He thought that they should
put aside their goal to win
full civil rights and political
power in order to achieve
economic security with
industrial and farming skills.

7. Up From Slavery
• So, temporarily, African
Americans would accept
segregation and discrimination,
believing that their achieving
wealth would win them the
respect and admiration of
whites.

8. Up From Slavery
• In 1895, he laid out his plan
in his Atlanta Exposition
Speech, later called the
“Atlanta Compromise” by his
critics.

9. Up From Slavery
• In 1901, he published his
autobiography, Up From
Slavery, in which discussed the
importance of learning a trade,
as well as proper manners and
hygiene, if African Americans
were ever going to be accepted
by whites.

10. Read speech and find examples of
Washington’s ideas.

11. Souls of Black Folks
• W.E.B. DuBois was
born in 1868 and raised
in Massachusetts.
• He graduated early
from Fisk University
(one of the schools set
up under the
Freedman’s Bureau)
, finishing his degree
work in 1888.

12. Souls of Black Folks
• In 1895, he became the first
African American to receive a
Ph.D. from Harvard
University in History.

13. Souls of Black Folks
• He wanted to believe that
whites would end segregation
based on social science, but
soon realized that they only
way to end it was through
agitation.

14. Souls of Black Folks
• He challenged Booker T.
Washington’s ideas (calling his
speech the “Atlanta
Compromise”) and argued in his
book The Souls of Black Folks
that Washington’s plan kept
African Americans down.

15. Souls of Black Folks
• In 1905, he began the Niagara
Movement, which advocated
for civil rights for African
Americans.

16. Souls of Black Folks
• While this failed, it became
the first step in forming the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People (N.A.A.C.P.) in 1909.

17. Souls of Black Folks
• He advocated for further
education to improve the
leadership abilities of the
most able 10% of the African
Americans, called “the
talented tenth.”

18. Souls of Black Folks
• In the 1930s, during a fight with
the leadership of the
N.A.A.C.P., he began to
advocate for “voluntary
segregation,” believing that
African American children
would learn better from African
American teachers.

19. Read Declaration of Principles and
find examples of DuBois’ ideas.