Booker Taliaferro Washington represents the last generation of African Americans born in slavery. He was born in 1856 in the state of Virginia as a slave and was freed in 1865 as the civil war ended. After working for years in different manual jobs, Washington finally gots an education at Virginia Union University. He soon became a great and influential spokesman and leader for the black community in the United States. He believed that black citizens should temporarily abandon their fights for full civil rights and focus more on getting industrial jobs, saying that this would help the African American community get stable and be stronger to go forward in the future. For Washington, the acceptance of blacks by the white community had to go through a temporarily acceptance of discrimination and segregation. This strategy was suppose to wipe off the divisions between the two races and would leads to equal citizenship for all. These sentiments were later called the “Atlanta compromise.” Washington was received at the white house 1901 to defend his ideas. Among his generation, he was definitely the most influential spokesman.
Nonetheless, Washington encountered some opposition to this strategy in his own community. Indeed W.E.B Dubois deplored Washington's emphasis on industrial skills rather than academic development and civil rights.
I found really interesting to see how the black community did not have a common standpoint in the strategy to adopt in order for black people to achieve equal citizenship and civil rights. The personality of Washington could be related to Fredrick Douglass in that they have both been influential spokesman of the African American community.
It is indeed interesting to see different perspectives on how to get rid of discrimination. However, above all the misagreements that could have happened between Du Bois and Washington, I think that the best weapon against discrimination has actually been the combined power of all those point of views and ideas, and their confrontation as well. It would be like attacking the problem from different sides, piercing its numerous weaknesses. From our situation today, we can say that there is still a lot of work to do until we achieve perfect equality among races, and still today, many opinions are given on what there is to do. And I believe that it is through the melting of all those ideas that we are going to head towards a world of freedom, where the color of one's skin won't determine the way he or she is regarded and treated.
ReplyDeleteJust by the looks of it, this guy seems very influential. I have always wondered what it would be like to listen to a powerful African-American speaker during this time period. Watching videos of Martin Luther King have given me a hint of what it was like, however things are always better in real life. Booker T. Washington seems like the type of guy that could look deep into your soul and capture the emotions of listeners. I wish I could have experienced the power and hope that these influential character's would put on display. You don't find those kind of people very often anymore.
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