Booker T Washington Vs Dubois

Thirty years after the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were passed, race relations continued to be issue in the United States. These laws, which prohibited slavery and gave black men the opportunities to vote and be recognized as a citizen, were great progress in the journey towards racial equality. However, there was still tension between whites and African Americans. Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Institute, was and African American man who was asked to speak before a white audience at the Cotton skate and International exposition in Atlanta (“Booker T. Washington”). Washington advocated that becoming more involved in industry and being a crucial part of society were the best ways to gain equal social rights (Cochran Lecture, 09/28/17). A few years later W.E.B. Dubois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in response to Washington’s speech. Although …show more content…
Both are calling for an effort from both sides to work together. In Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech he states: “Cast down your bucket where you are-cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded” (“Booker T. Washington”). He is addressing this to his fellow black man because he is emphasizing to them how important it is to reach out to the white men in order better their lives whether that be by working in the fields or factories but ultimately by contributing to society. Continuing with the point that race relations are distant, W.E.B. DuBois describes races relations at this time as: “It is usually possible to draw in nearly every Southern community a physical color-line on the map, on the one side of which Whites dwell and on the other Negroes” (DuBois, 108). This gives a sense as to the segregation that was prevailing in the South years after the slaves had been declared

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