Similarities Between Web Dubois And Booker T Washington

The Roads to Equality

Imagine a society where everyone is seen as equal; no matter race, gender orientation, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. How did you get there? What did the previous generations have to go through to reach complete equality? Why was this so important to them? Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois were two people who lived during the late 1800s and early-mid 1900s and who advocated for equality. For the people who lived during the generation of Booker T. and W. E. B., equality for colored people was important because they wanted to be seen as people and not objects. Even though Booker T. and W. E. B. advocated for equality of races, they had separate ideals for how to get there.

Booker T. Washington was

He wanted to do what those children were doing, but he was a slave, and it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write,” (Biography.com Editors). When Booker was 9 years old, his mother noticed his interest in learning, so she bought him a book on how to read and write, even though they were very poor at the time. Later, he was hired by Viola Ruffner to be a houseboy. She was a very strict with her employees, but she saw maturity, intelligence, and integrity in Booker, and eventually warmed up to him (Biography.com). “She understood his desire for an education and allowed him to go to school for an hour a day during the winter months,” (Biography.com Editors) according to Biography.com Editors. Over the years, he struggled with getting an education, but was offered a scholarship by General Samuel C. Armstrong after he saw his potential and desire to learn (Biography.com). This shaped his future ideas to improve education for minority peoples. So, “in 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Institute, a black school in Alabama devoted to training teachers,” (History.com Staff)

E.B. De Bois has also made a difference in the battle of equality. William Edward Burghardt, or “W. E. B.” was a writer, civil rights activist, and sociologist. He was born in 1868 into an environment in which he could have an education freely with white children, he called himself a “mulatto” which may have resulted in his easy access extensive education (Biography.com). According to Biography.com Editors, “In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the deep troubles of American racism,” (Biography.com Editors). This was the start of W. E.B.’s ideas that change should start now and that education was the most important tool anyone could have. He thought that voting is necessary to modern manhood and that color discrimination is unacceptable, especially in the case of education. After getting a Ph.D. from Harvard, W. E. B. published a book entitled The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Biography.com). According to Biography.com Editors, “In the study, he coined the phrase "the talented tenth," a term that described the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race,” (Biography.com Editors). Later, he criticized Booker T. at the Atlanta Compromise and rose to national prominence. W. E. B. said that Booker T. did not demand equality which is what the 14th Amendment states. The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays, was published