Overcoming Racism
The two most active participants in the civil rights movement during the late nineteenth century were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. Both African-American gentlemen had strong views and plans to complete their goals to get equality for blacks in America. Each expressed their opinions openly and were well known across the nation for their efforts and were cited most notably for their speech and book respectively, Wahshington’s 1895 “Atlanta Exposition Address” and Dubois’s Soul’s of Black Folk. Although both scripts made a great impact and had the same goal in mind, the two had a vast difference in opinions about what was the best way to go about the fight.
While Washington wanted blacks to take personal responsibility in improving making changes occur and creating a better life for them, Dubois wants African-American’s to fight for their rights and force people to see that discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated in our nation. Dubois advocated blacks to continually spread the word that discrimination was wrong, that blacks needed education as much if not more to become equal with the whites, and that voting was a right that should be given to any man in the union regardless of color. Dubois wanted African-American’s to stop looking at themselves to blame and start voicing their opinion’s and put pressure on the rest of society to change their view on how blacks are treated and the rights they are negated.
The two men would be somewhat rivals on the same team during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with their conflicting ideas, but the impact of both men would be felt and still pondered over today. In my opinion it is tough to compare the two ideas because of when and who they were addressed to. Washington’s address was in the south in Atlanta and he spoke a lot of the “old south” and how it used to be. These words really hit home with audience because they were from the south and most were had a memory of...