Booker T Washington Essay

Booker T. Washington was born in 1856, nine years before the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Washington had spent his early childhood years as a slave. Once he was free, he learned to read and write, went to school, and became a teacher. Washington believed that the best way for African Americans to get ahead was to become financially independent. Washington also counseled black not to fight discrimination outright and accept their second-class status, at least temporarily. Many African Americans looked for black leaders for guidance on how to better their lives. He advised African Americans to work hard at being farmers, trades people, and worker in the industry. This approach, sometimes called “accommodationist” because it accommodated, or fit in with, wishes of many whites, won Washington the admiration and support of Southern whites. In front of an all- white audience, Washington declared his

To help educate blacks, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, which specialized in teaching practical skills such as farming, carpentry, and shoemaking. As has been noted “In all things social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. Not race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.” Not all African American agreed with Washington’s approach to civil rights. A new generation of leaders emerged, and they took a harder line toward civil rights. Du Bois had never known slavery. He was born three years after the passage of the Thirteen Amendment and he spent his early years not in slavery but in school. By the age twenty, Du Bois had a Bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, an all-black school in Nashville, Tennessee and by age twenty-seven, he had earned a PhD in the history from