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DBQ: Using the 7 Documents Provided, Compare the Ideas of Booker T

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DBQ: Using the 7 Documents Provided, Compare the Ideas of Booker T DBQ: Using the 7 documents provided, compare the ideas of Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and develop an argument in support of one or the other. Excerpt from “The Talented Tenth” from The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative Negros of To-day Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois ​ “Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress; …” “The negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education then, among negroes, must first of all deal with the “Talented Tenth” it is the problem of developing the best of this race that they may guide the race away from the contamination and death of the worst.” Excerpt Booker T. Washington “Through progress at Tuskegee, Washington showed that an oppressed people could advance. His concept of practical education was a contribution to the general field of education. His writings, which included 40 books, were widely read and highly regarded. Among his works was an autobiography titled "Up From Slavery" (1901), "Character Building" (1902), "My Larger Education" (1911), and "The Man Farthest Down" (1912). Washington settled into the national scene on opening day of the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 when he spoke about "The New Negro," one with "the knowledge of how to live ... how to cultivate the soil, to husband their resources, and make the most of their opportunities." Excerpt from Washingtons Atlanta compromise speech Booker T. Washington “Cast down your buckets where you are... In all things that are purely social... we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” “Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.” "The wisest of my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a dollar in an opera house." Excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by Dr. W.E.B Du Bois ​ ​ “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife [conflict],—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face” W. E. B. Du Bois, Three African-American Classics: up from Slavery, the Souls of Black Folk ​ and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass “Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.” Comparing Booker T. Washington and Dr. W.E.B Du Bois on suffrage “In terms of voting, DuBois believed that agitating for the ballot was necessary, but opposed giving the vote to the uneducated blacks. He believed that economic gains were not secure unless there was political power to safeguard them. This is shown in this comment from DuBois regarding Booker T. Washington: "He (Washington) is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage" (DuBois 68). Washington, on the other hand, felt that DuBois' militant agitation did more harm than good and served only to irritate southern whites. "I think, though, that the opportunity to freely exercise such political rights will not come in any large degree through outside or artificial forcing…" (Washington 234).” Dubois critique on Washington Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission, but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his program unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington's program naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Word and Money, to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life... Mr. Washington's program practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things. First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth, and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South... As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred: 1. The disenfranchisement of the Negro. 2. The legal creation of a distinct class of civil inferiority for the Negro. 3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro. These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. WAshington's teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of a doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question then comes: is it possible and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meager chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No. Black Americans do not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civil rights and to be educated will come in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet, but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them, that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually... that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys. .
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