Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois are two of the earliest and most well-known African-American reformers of the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries. They both wanted African-Americans to be seen as equals to whites but had very different ideals and ways on how African-American should go about doing it. This paper will talk about each of their ideas and which one might have been better. Booker Taliaferro Washington was born April 5, 1956 as a slave in Virginia. When he was nine years old, he and his family were freed from slavery after the 13th Amendment and moved to West Virginia. Booker wanted to go to school so he worked in a salt furnace and later a coal mine so he could get enough money to go to school and in 1872 he enrolled …show more content…
He preached a philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity, and accommodation. He said that African-Americans had to put up with discrimination and segregation for a while and focus on themselves. (www. pbs.org) He said that they needed to get on the same intellectual level as white people, so he encouraged parents to send their children to schools like Hampton and Tuskegee so that their children could learn the trade of white men and be able to do them just as good, if not, better than whites. He believed that education in farming, crafts, and industrial skills was the key to getting white people to seeing blacks as equals and accepting them into society. (www.pbs.org) …show more content…
Washington. While Washington preached a philosophy of African-Americans accepting the discrimination and working on bettering themselves, Du Bois said that Washington was, in actuality, encouraging the discrimination of blacks. Du Bois said that the only way for African-Americans to win political and social change was for the “talented tenth”, a group of people that the downtrodden masses would look to and rely on, to get these changes. He believed that in order for African-Americans to “get fair share of the economic pie” was for social and political change to be acquired first and foremost.