Assignment:
Read the excerpts from speeches by Booker T. Washington, Ida B.Wells and W.E.B. Dubois.
Note that Washington's speech is being given to white people.
Answer the questions. Use appropriate punctuation, spelling and grammar.
Answer in your own words.
Q1. What does Washington say black people's attitude should be about "common labor"?
Q2. What does Washington mean when he talks about fingers and the hand?
Q3. What THREE strategies is Well’s recommending in response to lynching?
Q4. What specific strategies is DuBois recommending? What are his goals?
Q5. Which in your view was the most effective strategy for late l9th century black Southerners to pursue? Washington’s, DuBois or Wells? Why?
A. Booker T Washington (1856-1915) Speech at the Atlanta Exposition, 1895
In 1895 Washington was the only African American invited to address the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. He was introduced as "a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization." This speech is sometimes known as the "Atlanta Compromise”.
“To those of my race who … underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next door neighbour, I would say: (make) friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.
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....
You [white Southerners] can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen....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. 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. …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.
Q1. What social strategy is Washington recommending?
Q2. What economic strategy is Washington recommending?
B. Ida B. Wells’s United States Atrocities, 1892.
…To the Afro-American the South says, ‘The white man must and will rule.’ There is little difference between the Ante-bellum South and the New South. Her white citizens are wedded to any method however revolting, any measure however extreme, for the subjugation of the young manhood of the dark race. They have cheated him out of his ballot, deprived him of civil rights or redress in the Civil Courts thereof, robbed him of the fruits of his labour, and are still murdering, burning and lynching him.
Lynching mania has raged again through the past twelve months with unabated fury. The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public sentiment demands and sustains such action…In the creation of this healthier public sentiment, the Afro-American can do for himself what no one else can do for him. The world looks on with wonder that we have conceded so much and remain law-abiding under such great outrage and provocation.
The Afro-Americans of Memphis denounced the lynching of three of their best citizens, and urged and waited for the authorities to act in the matter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so, and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about great stagnation every branch of business. Those who remained … injured the business of the street car company by staying off the cars…A meeting of white citizens….passed resolutions for the first time condemning (lynching) But they did not punish the lynchers.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is to be gained by a further sacrifice of manhood and self-respect. By the right exercise of his power as the industrial facto of the South, the Afro-American can demand and secure his rights, the punishment of lynchers, and a fair trial for members of his race accused of outrage.
Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Florida and Paducah, Kentucky and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun, and used it in self-defense. The lesson this teaches, and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man, who is always the aggressor, knows he runs a great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged, and lynched.”
Q1. What three strategies is Well’s recommending in response to lynching?
C. W.E.B. DuBois’s Niagara Address, 1906 (excerpt)
In detail our demands are clear and unequivocal. First, we would vote; with the right to vote goes everything: freedom, manhood, the honor of your wives, the chastity of your daughters, the right to work, and the chance to rise, and let no man listen to those who deny this.
Second. We want discrimination in public accommodation to cease. Separation in railway and street cars, based simply on race and color, is un-American, undemocratic and silly. We protest against all such discrimination.
Third. We claim the right of freemen to walk, talk, and be with them that wish to be with us. No man has a right to choose another man’s friends and to attempt to do so is an impudent interference with the most fundamental human privilege.
Fourth. We want the laws enforced against rich as well as poor; against Capitalist as well as Laborer; against white as well as black.
We are not more lawless than the white race, we are more often arrested, convicted and mobbed. We want justice even for criminals and outlaws. We want the Constitution of the country enforced. We want Congress to take charge of Congressional elections. We want the Fourteenth amendment carried out to the letter and every State disfranchised in Congress which attempts to disfranchise its rightful voters. We want the Fifteenth Amendment enforced and no State allowed to base its franchise simply on color.
Fifth. We want our children educated. The school system in the country districts of the South is a disgrace and in few towns and cities are the Negro schools what they ought to be. We want the national government to step in and wipe out illiteracy in the South. Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
And when we call for education we mean real education. We believe in work. We ourselves are workers, but work is not necessarily education. Education is the development of power and ideal. We want our children trained as intelligent human beings should be and we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate black boys and girls simply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people. They have a right to know, to think, to aspire.
These are some of the chief things which we want. How shall we get them? By voting where we may vote, by persistent, unceasing agitation, by hammering at the truth, by sacrifice and work.
Q1. What specific strategies is DuBois recommending? What are his goals?
Which in your view was the most effective strategy for late l9th century black Southerners to pursue? Washington’s, DuBois or Wells? Why?
Your answer must be, typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman font (size 12), one-inch margins on all sides, APA format.