Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.

Du Bois
Evaluating Sources
How did W.E.B Du Bois and Booker T. Washington respond to the industrial
Objective revolution, Jim Crow, and the Gilded age? Why did they develop different ideas
about the role of education and citizenship?

Brain Dump: Read the poem below. When you are done reading the poem, answer the
analysis questions that follow.

Booker T. and W.E.B. | By Dudley Randall (1969) | Original Source

1 “It seems to me,” said Booker T., 17 “It seems to me,” said Booker T.,
2 “It shows a mighty lot of cheek 18 “That all you folks have missed the boat
3 To study chemistry and Greek 19 Who shout about the right to vote,
4 When Mister Charlie needs a hand 20 And spend vain days and sleepless nights
5 To hoe the cotton on his land, 21 In uproar over civil rights.
6 And when Miss Ann looks for a cook, 22 Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
7 Why stick your nose inside a book?” 23 But work, and save, and buy a house.”

8 “I don’t agree,” said W.E.B., 24 “I don’t agree,” said W.E.B.,

9 “If I should have the drive to seek 25 “For what can property avail
10 Knowledge of chemistry or Greek, 26 If dignity and justice fail.
11 I’ll do it. Charles and Miss can look 27 Unless you help to make the laws,
12 Another place for hand or cook. 28 They’ll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
13 Some men rejoice in skill of hand, 29 A rope’s as tight, a fire as hot,
14 And some in cultivating land, 30 No matter how much cash you’ve got.
15 But there are others who maintain 31 Speak soft, and try your little plan,
16 The right to cultivate the brain.” 32 But as for me, I’ll be a man.”

33 “It seems to me,” said Booker T.—

34 “I don’t agree,”
35 Said W.E.B.

Analysis Questions:

1) Sourcing: Is this a primary or secondary source about the ideas of Booker T. Washington (1856 -
1915) and W.E.B Du Bois (1868 - 1963)?

It’s a primary source because it is directly quoting what the two men are saying.

2) Close Reading: According to this poem, what issue do Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du
Bois disagree on? What are their different ideas?

Washington and DuBois disagree on education and what career path people should choose.
Washington wants people to follow a secondary education and go with a career path that uses the brain
instead of muscle. DuBois wants people to go into the workforce by finding a trait and becoming good
at it.
 3) Corroboration: If you wanted to confirm the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois,
what kinds of primary sources could you research? Documents written by the individual. Books
or speeches.

You could research their debates and books or speeches they wrote/gave.

Document Analysis - Directions: You have been assigned to learn about Booker T. Washington
or W.E.B. Du Bois. Read the biography of your assigned historical figure and the primary source
document that follows. When you are done, answer the analysis questions and be prepared to
share your work. After you have shared, complete the table below.

Circle the terms that best fit the historical figure in each column. You may circle more than one if you
think both apply.

Booker T. Washington W.E.B Du Bois

Vocational (work based) Vocational (work-based)

Education

Academic (classical) Academic (classical)

Must be demanded by virtue of Must be demanded by virtue of

citizenship citizenship

Rights /
Equality
Must be earned as the result of Must be earned and the result of
struggle struggle

African Americans should seize it African Americans should seize it

Political Power
African Americans shouldn’t worry African Americans shouldn’t worry
about this right now about this right now
 Booker T Washington | Image from Library of Congress
Born a slave on a Virginia farm, Washington (1856-1915) rose to become one of the
most influential African-American intellectuals of the late 19th century. As a child, he
worked in a salt furnace and served as a houseboy for a white family. Washington
was educated at Hampton Institute, one of the earliest freedmen’s schools devoted
to industrial education Growing up during Reconstruction, he came to believe that
postwar social uplift of African Americans should not begin with the acquisition of
political and civil rights, but instead, economic self-sufficiency. In 1881, he founded
the Tuskegee Institute, a black school in Alabama devoted to industrial and moral
education and to the training of public school teachers. Washington was also behind the formation of
the National Negro Business League 20 years later, and he served as an adviser to Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Primary Source Document - The Atlanta Compromise (original document): On September 18

1895, Booker T. Washington spoke before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States
and International Exposition in Atlanta, this speech became known as the “Atlanta Compromise”.

...the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and
inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the
bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial
skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or
truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate
vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once
came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us
water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.”
And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The
captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full
of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on
bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly
relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your
bucket where you are”...

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions…. 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 among 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 of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to
contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized...The opportunity to earn a dollar
in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house...

Analysis Questions:

1) Sourcing: How do you think Booker T. Washington’s background impacted his ideas about
African American education and economic pursuits?

Because he was a former slave and knew what it was like to live without income, he wanted to tell
people to create income as soon as possible so others dont have to struggle like he did.

2) Contextualization: How do you think the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age impacted his
ideas?

3) Contextualization: How do you think the Jim Crow Era he was living in impacted his ideas?

4) Close Reading: According to Booker T. Washington, why is it important for African Americans to
learn a trade or industrial skill rather than pursuing political rights?

5) Close Reading: Which statement below do you think Booker T. Washington would support? Cite
evidence from the text to support your claims:

● Political power and civil rights must be earned, and they are the results of struggle and
self improvement.

● Political power and civil rights must be demanded. African Americans must seize them
from American society and should have already earned them by virtue of citizenship.
 W.E.B Du Bois | Image from Library of Congress
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois’s family was part of a small free
black community who owned land in the state. His ancestors were both white and
black. Educated at Fisk University (1885-1888), Harvard University (1888-1896), and
the University of Berlin (1892-1894), Du Bois studied with some of the most
important social thinkers of his time and then embarked upon a seventy-year career
that combined scholarship and teaching with lifelong activism in liberation struggles.
He earned fame for the publication of such works as Souls of Black Folk (1903), and was a founding
officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and editor of its
magazine. Dubois also taught at Wilberforce University and Atlanta University, and chaired the Peace
Information Center.

Primary Source Document A - Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others (original document) -
The most influential public critique of Booker T. Washington’s policy of racial accommodation
and gradualism came in 1903 when black leader and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois published an
essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk.

Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr.
Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day
of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the
freedmen's sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite
programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so
much sentiment on Negroes [during Reconstruction], and was concentrating its energies on Dollars….

...Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but
adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual
economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming
a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the
higher aims of life...

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, the accumulation of wealth, and
conciliation (placating) of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for
over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the
palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His
doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the
Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden
belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting
these great wrongs…By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the
world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would
fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."

Primary Source Document B - Talented Tenth (original document) - The idea of the talented
tenth came from Northern philanthropists who were mostly white. The idea was published by W.E.B
Du Bois in his essay the Talented Tenth which appeared in a collection of essays by African American
leaders titled The Negro Problem in 1903.

...The Negro race, like all 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...How then shall the leaders of a
struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one
answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and universities of
the land…

I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too. I
believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education since
the war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the object of all true
education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are two means of making
the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in which he
works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family what life means; to train him to
think and read and understand the classics and philosophy; the second is to give him sufficient
intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro
college and college-bred men—not a quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too
many college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented
Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good system of common schools, well-taught,
conventionally located and properly equipped …

...Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the
right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work—it must teach Life. The
Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among
their people. No others can do this and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all
other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

Analysis Questions:

1) Sourcing: How do you think W.E.B Du Bois’s background impacted his ideas about African
American education and economic pursuits?
2) Contextualization: According to Primary Source Document A, how does W.E.B. Du Bois think
that the Gilded Age and the Industrial Revolution impacted or shaped Booker T. Washington’s
ideas?

3) Contextualization: How do you think the Jim Crow Era he was living in impacted W.E.B. Du
Bois’s ideas?

4) Close Reading: According to Primary Source Document B, what kind of education should African
Americans attain?

5) Close Reading: Which statement below do you think W.E.B. Du Bois would support? Cite
evidence from primary source document a and / or b to support your claims:

● Political power and civil rights must be earned, and they are the results from struggle and
self improvement.

● Political power and civil rights must be demanded. African Americans must seize them
from American society and should have already earned them by virtue of citizenship.