AN ANALYSIS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS,
1900-1972
A THESIS PRESENTED BY
MUTLU ÇALIŞKAN
to
THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES IN
PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY
BİLKENT UNIVERSITY
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of History.
Asst. Prof. Russell L. Johnson Supervisor
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of History.
Dr. Walter E. Kretchik
Examining Committee Member
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of History.
Asst. Prof. Thomas Winter Examining Committee Member
Approval of the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences
Prof. Dr. Kürşat Aydoğan Director
ABSTRACT
The United States in the twentieth century experienced a series of changes in terms of culture, economics, population and social movements. The black civil rights movement was one of the most important social movements in the country during the century. The struggle of African-Americans for equal rights was the main agenda of the 1960s. But, what happened before the 1960s? Why did blacks have to wait until the 1960s to achieve gains in equal rights with whites? This thesis aims at answering this question. The thesis analyzes this delay from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the 1960s from one point of view: The discussions and disagreements between the African-American intellectuals. The thesis shows those discussions and disagreements as one of the reasons for the delay. In doing this, the thesis details the ideas of prominent black intellectuals Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael. The disagreements of these people in different periods contributed to the delay concerning the gains of equal rights in the black civil rights movement.
ÖZET
Yirminci yüzyıl Amerikan tarihi birçok değişikliğe tanıklık etmiştir. Ülkede ekenomik, kültürel ve sosyal hareketler alanında birçok değişiklik meydana gelmiştir. Afrika kökenli Amerikalı’ların 1960’lardaki insan hakları hareketi bu sosyal hareketler arasında en önemlilerinden birisidir. Fakat neden bu Afrika kökenli Amerikalı’lar 1960’lara kadar beklemek zorundaydılar? Bu tez bu soruya cevap olarak belirtilen süre içerisinde yer alan siyah entelektüellerin görüş ayrılıklarını ve tartışmalarını gösterir. Bunun için de adı geçen periyodun önemli entelektüelleri olan Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr. ve Stokely Carmichael’ın düşüncelerini ayrıntılayıp analiz eder.
TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION………....………....2 II. CHAPTER 1 (1900-1915)………...11 III. CHAPTER 2 (1915-1950)………..36 IV. CHAPTER 3 (1950-1972)………..57 V. CONCLUSION………..………74 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY……….80
INTRODUCTION
The fate of black people in the United States since their first arrival on the continent until the 1960s witnessed tumultuous periods, none bearing particularly positive consequences considering the circumstances in which their white counterparts were living. However, with the beginning of the 1950s and later in the 1960s there were signs of improvement in the circumstances to which blacks were subject. The civil rights movement that increased its effectiveness during the decade was the reason for the improvement. What made the movement become more effective? Why did blacks have to wait nearly a century after the Emancipation Proclamation to gain de jure equal rights with whites? The answer to such questions is concealed in the fact that blacks during the sixties started to assert their rights through dynamic actions. Why then could blacks before the 1950s and 1960s not organize in a way similar to that of the 1950s and 1960s to assert their right to live in the same conditions as their white counterparts? In answer to this question, this thesis argues that prior to the 1950s and 1960s the civil rights movement suffered from disagreements between the leaders and/or organizations included in civil rights. In its early history, the movement was too divided to gain immediate equal rights with whites, and later, similar divisions caused the collapse of the movement after its success in the 1960s. Indeed, during the early twentieth century, there were few organizations other than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) -- and it was a white-majority organization. There were leaders, or as August Meier and Elliott Rudwick put, there
were ‘charismatic spokesmen’, and their disagreements.1 This is an important reason why it took nearly a century for blacks to gain equal rights with whites. However, it should be noted that the 1950s and 1960s was not the only period that progress was made in civil rights. Blacks also achieved something before that period, and the thesis will give those achievements in parallel with the debates of the given period. The primary focus throughout, though, will be the intellectual debates.
The arguments and debates of the leaders and organizations as well as the progress achieved in civil rights will be pursued through three chapters. Specifically the thesis will begin with the late-nineteenth century differences between Booker T. Washington and William Edward Burghardt (W.E. B.) Du Bois and end with the violent stand of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. The first chapter of the thesis reflects the events that took place during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The main body of the chapter is the debate between the two prominent African-American figures of these decades, Washington and Du Bois. This analysis enhances understanding of how the Niagara Movement first formed, and how its founders formed the N.A.A.C.P. We will also learn about the industrial education of blacks, racial pride, the so-called Tuskegee Machine, the importance of interracial action and the difference between Du Bois’ emphasis on acting to assert rights and Washington’s emphasis on patience and slow, steady gains.2 The debate between Washington and Du Bois is of crucial importance because the disagreements between
1 August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Along the Color Line, Explorations in the Black Experience,
(Illinois: 1976), p. 2.
the leaders/organizations among black activists were among the causes that delayed the acquisition of equal rights with whites. In fact there were a few improvements in terms of black rights during the Washington – Du Bois years. And the debate between those two prominent figures is a sort of model for the debates among the next generation black leaders and organizations.
The second chapter presents the ideas of one of the most controversial figures of the twentieth century blacks, Marcus Garvey. He created a spiritual movement, which was supported by his rivals in the beginning, but both his actions and the change in the ideas of his rivals made him an abominable person for the other black activists. Under pressure from his rivals and guilty of various crimes, Garvey was deported from the United States in 1927. The split between W.E.B. Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P. is also among the ingredients in this chapter. A. Philip Randolph, a prominent black labor leader of the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, a socialist and editor of the socialist monthly Messenger, and later a member of the Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC) in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, is also a part of this chapter.3 He was among the black activists who first supported Garvey, but later withdrew his support and waged a war against him. His socialist outlook also brought him against Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P. The course of events leading to the
Brown vs. Board of Education decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 is
also important, because it foreshadows the gains to be made in the following decade, which is the main focus of the final chapter of the thesis.
The scope of the final chapter consists of many achievements that blacks made during the 1950s and 1960s. However, as in previous chapters, ideologies and the main splits among the prominent leaders and organizations will be the focus. Perhaps, the most important split was that between the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) of Martin Luther King, Jr. This split originated in the tactical question of the use of violence as a weapon as favored by Carmichael and SNCC, and the nonviolent practice of King and the SCLC.
It is important to emphasize this final split because it reflects a crucial similarity in the course of affairs over time in the pursuit of black civil rights. Just like SNCC and the SCLC, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois shared the same goal; in 1899, Washington even invited Du Bois “to teach at least one class in our institution [Tuskegee], this would result in keeping students in close touch with the line of work which you would be pursuing.”4 The Tuskegee Institution, which was founded to supply industrial education for blacks, later became the center of Washington’s political operations, his “Tuskegee Machine.”5 Despite Washington’s overture, Du Bois later joined the chorus criticizing the Machine and parted ways with Washington. A similar rift appeared in the 1960s. The SCLC, under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolent direct action as a policy and a motto in its activism. Initially 3 Benjamin Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph: Labor Leader at Large”, in John Hope Franklin and August
Meier (eds),., Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, (Illinois: 1982), pp. 139-156.
4 Booker T., Washington, “Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois, October 26, 1899 “, in Cary D. Wintz (ed.),
African American Political Thought 1890-1930, (New York: 1996) p. 33.
SNCC agreed. In its founding statement, SNCC “[affirmed] the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our belief, and the manner of our action.”6 Later SNCC departed from the nonviolent path and chose the voter registration project as their main agenda. Carmichael later in the book Black Power recalled the meaningless of the philosophy of non-violence as follows:
Yet they often admonish black people to be non-violent. They should preach non-violence in the white community. Where possible, they might also educate other white people the need for Black Power. 7
Such a rift in the movement did not bring the same results as similar rifts had in previous decades. The controversy among Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph in the early twentieth century, for example, did not lead to a decline in the movement of black activists; it helped delay some possible gains that could have been made during their period but it never meant decline because their movement did not have the mass support of the black activists during the 1960s. Indeed, Carmichael’s departure from nonviolent practices and his insistence on the Black Power ideology, which strongly disagreed with the integrationist envisioning of King, meant something more dangerous as the riots that took place in the black neighborhoods from Watts in Los Angeles to Detroit in the late 1960s attest.
6 “Founding Statement of SNCC”, in Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Albert, (eds.), The Sixties Papers,
(New York: 1984), p. 113.
7 Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America,
It should be noted that the writer of this thesis most appreciates the direct action side of the civil rights movement. However, direct action could only be effective in the 1960s during which the Democratic Party presidents used their initiatives. President John F. Kennedy’s contribution to the Freedom Rides of 1961 in securing the passage of the buses from Alabama, and his Executive Order to end discrimination in federally assisted housing are proofs of Kennedy’s use of initiative in favor of black civil rights activists. Politically, things were not as bright during the Washington - Du Bois years. Despite Washington’s influence in the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the contribution of Roosevelt was limited to securing some positions for Washington’s black acquaintances in governmental departments. Du Bois’ and the N.A.A.C.P.’s efforts in directing black votes for Woodrow Wilson were repaid with the removal of twelve blacks from office and resulted in the encouragement of “every enemy of the Negro race”.8 Even in the Franklin Roosevelt administrations during which hundreds of blacks were appointed to administrative positions, blacks could not get rid of discrimination at any level. Only with Executive Order 8802 in 1941, which enabled for the first time prohibited discriminatory employments by unions could blacks see a president using his initiative in their favor.9
One can cite numerous reasons for the delay in blacks gaining de jure rights with whites and for the decline of the civil rights movements. It is the objective of this thesis to show the contradictions between prominent African-Americans was one of the
8 W.E.B. Du Bois, “An Open Letter to Woodrow Wilson”, in W.E.B. Du Bois, An ABC of Color, (New
York: 1989), p. 60.
reasons for the delay. This will be the main contribution of this thesis for American history. Whatever the level of support from the legal and political systems, black leaders could not agree on a strategy that would bring equality with Whites. Beginning with the Washington – Du Bois years, they spent their time and efforts in criticizing each other, and in Washington’s case in finding ways to inhibit the powers of his rivals. In the following period, the disagreements among Du Bois, Randolph and Garvey blocked any favorable achievements at least for the 1920s. The inconsistencies in their ideas also affected their disagreements. Initially Du Bois was a radical with his activist vision contrasting the calm and patient Washington; later he was a conservative against the young and ardent socialist Randolph. However, by the 1930s Randolph was in the mainstream as a New Deal Liberal and an anti-socialist, while Du Bois appeared as a socialist. These contradictions created a vacuum in the leadership of the black civil rights movement, which could only be filled in the 1950s and 1960s. This vacuum was an important cause of the delay for blacks to gain their de jure rights with whites.
For sources, this thesis relies as much as possible on primary documents, including many published primary source collections. A collection of Martin Luther King Jr., Papers, several book-length collections of W.E.B. Du Bois, including some of his correspondence, a microfiche of the Crisis magazine of the N.A.A.C.P., a hard cover collection of the Movement magazine of SNCC, many smaller books including documents about A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, and Bayard Rustin as well as
argument of the thesis. The primary sources were indispensable to writing an intellectual history of twentieth century civil rights.
Secondary literature also contributed ideas and enriched the analysis of the available primary sources. For the debate between Washington and Du Bois, August Meier’s Negro Thought in America 1880-1915 and Along the Color Line was of crucial importance. Meier helped shape the agreement about Washington’s ambiguous language and enabled an effective use of the primary documents about both Washington and Du Bois. Without Meier’s insights about Washington the contradictions in the speeches of Washington might have appeared as inconsistencies in his ideology as his ideological weakness. Further, Meier’s point about Washington’s secret activities on behalf of fighting discrimination helped this thesis avoid a mistaken interpretation of Washington. Louis R. Harlan’s Booker T. Washington was also helpful in analyzing the life and achievements of Washington. Harlan’s view about the controversy between Washington and Du Bois was not the same as Meier’s because his work was simply a biography about Washington and therefore emphasized him over his rivals. Meier on the other hand, analyzed the issue from Du Bois’ as well as Washington’s point of view and his analyses made a good orientation for the thesis finding its way through the controversy.
Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meier helped enrich the biographical data about the leaders in question. Without the biographical and analytical essays in the book by various authors, the thesis would lack useful information about the lives of Du Bois, Randolph and Marcus
Garvey. Elliott M. Rudwick’s W.E.B. Du Bois is also crucial in following the ideas of Du Bois. His coverage of Du Bois’ life from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the 1960s gives a rich account of the changes in the ideas of Du Bois, and it gives special emphasis to the first three decades of the twentieth century. For the last chapter of the thesis Edward P. Morgan’s The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about
Modern America, though dedicating only half of the book to the black civil rights
movement, is of crucial importance in the way that it shows the differences between organizations like SNCC and the SCLC. It also helped the writer understand the political circumstances in which the black leaders were acting. Harvard Sitkoff’s The
Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992 also provides a detailed look at the
developments which took place in the forty years of modern black civil rights movement. Enrichment of his presentation with personal accounts gives the book an advantage in analyzing the events of the 1950s and 1960s better. They also helped shape the argument in the third chapter of the thesis.
Manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing. W. E. B. Du Bois from The Souls of Black Folk.10
CHAPTER 1 (1900-1915)
The discussions of the prominent black leaders who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century outlined the agenda for the years of struggle. Booker Taliaferro Washington and William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois were the most prominent leaders in the first two decades of the century. Between these two men, Booker T. Washington “was the era’s most prominent black man”.11 Basically, the argument between the two leaders was about the way to ameliorate the position of blacks in the United States. Washington chose an economic doctrine “in a commercial age in which the black businessman was the logical social arbiter.”12 Du Bois instead chose the political path and emphasized civil rights and equal educational facilities for blacks.
However, before Du Bois and Washington, there lies the whole history of African-Americans in North America. To understand the debate between Du Bois and Washington it is necessary to recall some of that history. In the early nineteenth century, most blacks were held as slaves; freedom rather than the right to share the
10 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk”, in Nathan Huggins Ed., Du Bois Writings, (New York:
1996), p. 392.
same public facilities with whites was their agenda. Freedom was the only motivation for them to live, and they tried to gain it either by running away from the plantations or by forming small armed resistance groups against their masters. Under bondage, it was impossible for the slaves to form large organizations, so their actions were mostly individual in character. This fact is apparent in the testimonies of fugitive slaves as well as in much of the historiography of slavery.13
Nevertheless, a few organized attempts to secure freedom occurred as some blacks decided to free their brothers through armed insurrections against the masters. Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner were among those blacks that tried to in organize slaves in to armed groups. The common feature of their resistance was that they all used religious rhetoric to motivate/agitate the slaves.14 The failure of the revolts caused the repression of the activities of black preachers, who were powerful forces within slave communities.15 This was vital because lack of education among the slaves was among the reasons for the lack of massive organization, and preachers had supplied much of the education that did exist. And the education problem of the blacks would be one of the most remarkable arguments of the early twentieth century between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
The rebel leaders took their place in history, but blacks did not gain anything from their deaths. It was apparent that blacks could get nothing from insurrection-type 12 Ibid., p. 34.
13 For a collection of slave testimonies Slave Testimony Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews,
and Autobiographies edited by John W. Blassingame is useful. Blassingame’s The Slave Community, Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll also have some helpful information about black under slavery.
14 John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community, (New York: 1972), p. 221. 15 Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll, (New York: 1972), p. 257.
activities. And for organized action, blacks needed educated people to defend their cause of freedom. Practically it was impossible for the slaves to take part in such an effort, and eventually the most important contribution came from a white man, William Lloyd Garrison. As a white antislavery activist, he started to issue a newspaper to promote immediate abolition. “Yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set free! Let Southern oppressors tremble -- let their Northern apologists tremble – let all the enemies of persecuted blacks tremble.”16 Garrison wrote these words in the editorial of the first issue of The Liberator in 1831. Except the freeborn blacks of northern states, it was impossible for blacks in the United States to issue newspapers like The Liberator to carry on an organized resistance against slavery.
Then, Frederick Douglass appeared on the scene as a fugitive slave. He was, however, absolutely more than a former slave: He was a “moral crusader for the abolition of slavery and racial distinction, and for the attainment of civil and political rights and equality before the law, and the assimilation of Negroes into American society”17 as August Meier puts it. After his escape from slavery, he went to Rochester,
New York where he eventually made his home. He began as a follower of William Lloyd Garrison; however, they later parted ways because Douglass wanted to establish a journal to rival The Liberator.18 He was the greatest black figure of the nineteenth century because his real life story represented “the potential and real achievements of
16 William Lloyd Garrison, editorial, The Liberator in 1831, in Sean Wilentz, Ed., Major Problems in the
Early Republic, (Lexington: 1992), p. 477.
17 August Meier; Elliott M. Rudwick, Along the Color Line Explorations in the Black Experience,
(Chicago: 1976), p. 4.
18 George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United
his struggling people.”19 He stated that his life “has been the experience of the colored people of America, both slave and free”.20
Douglass’ ideas and what he did for the amelioration of his race are worth analyzing. His ideas are important because Du Bois profited much from his “major emphasis on protest and citizenship rights, and secondary emphases on self-help, race pride and racial solidarity” while Washington also used his secondary emphasis on self help and economic development.21 Douglass also influenced Du Bois with his emphasis on racial equality: “It is plain that, if the right belongs to any, it belongs to all. The doctrine that some men have no rights that others are bound to respect, is a doctrine which we must banish as we have banished slavery, from which it emanated.”22 Du Bois used almost the same rhetoric in his struggle in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Du Bois was not alone in his struggle and he had to contend with the leadership of Booker T. Washington.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia in 1858 or 1859.23 He had his education in Hampton Institute in Virginia. For
his tuition and fees, he had to work as a janitor in the institute.24 However, his acquaintance with General Samuel C. Armstrong, the head of the Hampton Institute was equal in importance to his experience with manual labor as a janitor. Washington
19 Waldo E. Martin Jr., “Frederick Douglass: Humanist as Race Leader” in Leon Litwack and August
Meier Eds, Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, (Chicago: 1991), p. 59.
20 Ibid., p. 60.
21 August Meier, Negro Thought in America 1880-1915, (Michigan: 1988), p. 9. 22 Frederick Douglass, “An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage,”
<http://www.toptags.com/aama/voices/commentary/appeal.htm>
23 Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, (New York: 1986), p. 1. Washington was not sure about the
says, “I do not hesitate to say that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was equal of General Armstrong.”25 Under Armstrong’s influence Washington later built the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to be an equal to the Hampton Institute.26 Washington spent the years between 1867 and 1878 as a student at Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia.27 In the fall of 1878 after two years teaching, he decided to
pursue an education in Washington, D.C. where he spent eight months. Washington does not mention about the sort of education he received in Washington, but August Meier says that in this period as “he attended briefly the liberal arts Wayman Seminary in Washington, toyed with the idea of a political career, and started the study of law.”28
Whatever the details, for Washington these eight months meant something important. He found the chance to compare the industrial education that he had had in Hampton with the education he had in Washington. He later remarked:
At the institution I attended [in Washington] there was no industrial training given to the students, and I had an opportunity of comparing the influence of an institution with no industrial training with that of one like the Hampton Institute, that emphasized the industries … they did not appear to me to be beginning at the bottom, on a real, solid foundation, to the extent that they were at Hampton. They knew more about Latin and Greek when they left school, but they seemed to know less about life and its conditions, as they would meet at their homes.29
In May 1881, when he accepted an offer from General Armstrong to become the head of a colored school in Tuskegee, Alabama, he had the chance to form his own school, 24 Ibid., p. 53.
25 Ibid., p. 54.
26 Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the Politics of Accommodation” in John Hope Franklin
and August Meier Eds. Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, (Washington: 1982), p. 3.
27 Washington, Up From Slavery, p. 80.
in which he could employ the idea of industrial education.30 His insistence on industrial education separated him from his rivals like Du Bois. Washington’s rivals always criticized him for emphasizing industrial education too much, while neglecting other issues which they considered more important for the future of blacks, like disenfranchisement, equal education facilities, and segregation.
Washington seems to deserve such criticism when one reads his Atlanta Exposition Address of 1895. However, according to August Meier one should read the lines of the speech from two points of view: “By carefully selected ambiguities in language, by mentioning political and civil rights but seldom and then only in tactful and vague terms, he effectively masked the ultimate implications of his philosophy.”31
In that address Washington draws parallels between the situations of blacks in the United States and people “in a vessel lost at the sea seeking for water”. By asserting that having a seat in a state legislature would mean nothing for blacks, he neglected the search for equal rights while putting the emphasis on industrial progress. This was something that would make southern whites happy. The answer Washington gave to blacks “seeking water” was to cast down their buckets “in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.”32
During the speech Washington did not only put his emphasis on industrial education and was not always sympathetic to whites:
29 Washington, Up From Slavery, p. 87.
30 Ibid., p. 106.
31 Meier, Negro Thought in America, p. 110.
We shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. 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.33[Emphasis added]
One can look at the final sentence and accuse Washington of selling out the blacks’ protest against segregation and their case for assimilation into white society. However, with the word “interlacing”, Washington specifies his final target as the assimilation of blacks into white society both in commercial and civil terms. This is what August Meier meant in referring to the fact masked his philosophy. One might question whether Washington’s secret assimilation goal could be seen by his fellow blacks. If so, why then were all the debates during the first and second decades of the twentieth century? The answer to this can be found by looking at the changes that took place in Washington’s political and civil rights career.
Analyzing Washington as “the Wizard of Tuskegee” may be a good starting point.34 In one of the most important biographical works about Washington, Louis R. Harlan explains why he was called the Wizard by many blacks of his day: “There was magic and seeming miracle in Washington’s secret maneuvers against his white and black enemies, both those who defended white supremacy and those who thought Washington too conservative.”35 Washington's conservative views made him popular with white politicians who were keen that he should become the new leader of the African American population. To help him, President William McKinley visited the
33 Ibid., pp. 223-224.
Tuskegee Institute and praised Washington's achievements. In 1900 Washington helped establish the National Negro Business League, of which he served as president and ensured that the organization concentrated on commercial issues and paid no attention to questions of African-American civil rights.36 In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington to visit him in the White House.
Under the Roosevelt government Washington became the arbiter of appointments of blacks to federal office.37 This development can be considered as an important milestone in Washington’s career. With power over federal appointments, he gained a strong position in the African-American community, and earned the “Tuskegee Machine” label applied to the Tuskegee Institute by Du Bois and his friends. Washington used his political influence and his acquaintance with white philanthropists to subsidize newspapers and magazines in order to silence criticism of himself and his policies.38 He did this by granting or denying financial aid through advertisements or payments in cash to editors of publications that pleased or displeased him39
Following these involvements of Washington in machine politics and media manipulation opposition grew among other prominent blacks. The opposition did not emerge from the reaction of the black intellectuals to Washington’s power, however. The opposition was ideological. To analyze the ideological opposition to Washington, 35 Ibid.
36 Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and Politics of Accommodation” in Franklin and Meier, pp. 2-5. 37 Meier, Negro Thought in America, p. 112.
38 August Meier, “Booker T. Washington and the Negro Press”, in Along the Color Line, p. 56. Meier
mentions about the correspondence of Booker T. Washington with the magazine and the newspaper editors, but the mentioned sources are among the Booker T. Washington Papers, which are not available for me to examine here in Bilkent.
it is first necessary to examine more closely Washington’s ideas. The main opposition stemmed from the emphasis given to different methods of raising black Americans to equality with whites. Washington emphasized industrial education and economic welfare as strong steps towards a strong place in the community. To him, to reach the ultimate goal of equal rights, propaganda and opposition to issues like disenfranchisement was not efficient. His overemphasis on industrial education and neglecting the role of suffrage caused the main split with Du Bois and others. He also neglected higher education, an element which would bring more educated blacks into the political arena and which would also help blacks in the long run to eliminate the evil of intelligence tests for voting.
An early expression of Washington’s ideology came in a letter to the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser in 1885.40 Interestingly Washington took on segregation, specifically that on railroads in his letter. After stating that the railroads in Alabama did not provide equal accommodations for black passengers, he detailed his complaint:
My reasons for the above assertions are (a) that in most cases the smoking car and that in which the colored people are put are the same; (b) when not put directly into the smoking car they are crammed into one end of a smoking car with a door between that is as much open as closed, making little difference between this and the smoking car; (c) on some of the roads the colored passengers are carried in one end of the baggage car, there being a partition between them and the baggage or express; (d) only a half coach is given to the colored people and this one is almost invariably an old
40 Due to the lack of primary sources, like The Papers of Booker T. Washington his original ideas will
appear here as small quotations from the speeches he gave in different periods of his life. These quotations will follow a chronological order, but it is not aimed here to give them in such order to show the development or change in Washington’s ideas. As stated above and as I agree with the ideas of August Meier about the ambiguous language of Washington, there will not be specific quotations targeting the proof of the split between Washington and the Talented Tenth. In this case, the reader will see some contradictions between the speeches or writings of Washington, but these won’t be used as a means to refute his ideological stand.
one … and it soon becomes crowded to suffocation and is misery to one knowing the effects of the impure air.41
He goes on in the letter to make an important statement regarding his views about railroad segregation: “If railroad officials do not want to let us enter the first-class car occupied by white passengers, let them give us a separate one just as good in every particular and just as exclusive, and there will be no complaint. We have no desire to mix.”42 Washington finishes his letter by citing the segregated churches, schools, and hotels in Northern cities. Washington did not want an immediate end to railroad segregation, but he demanded equal facilities that were supplied for the whites.
The most complete statement of Washington’s ideology came in his monumental Atlanta Exposition Address, ten years after his letter on railroad segregation. The main point of the speech was the rise of blacks through the gift of industrial education, which could help blacks to climb the ladder of opportunity. That speech also proves the point that Washington’s rivals made: that Washington was a conservative black leader who accepted the applause and admiration of white southern businessmen. This speech also placed Washington into a political arena in which accommodationist policies were the fashion. His career further proved this fact, and he later became a consultant for President Roosevelt.
41 Booker T. Washington, “Letter to the Editor, Montgomery Advertiser, April 30, 1885”, in Cary D.
Wintz Ed., African American Political Thought 1890-1930, (New York: 1996), p. 21.
However, Washington’s ideas were not limited to railroad segregation and industrial education, nor was he always following an accommodationist line in his speeches:
The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South that restriction be put on the ballot … I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a law that will provide an opportunity to temptation for an ignorant white man to vote and withhold the same opportunity from a colored man, without injuring both men. No State can make a law that can thus be executed, without dwarfing for all time the morals of the white man in the South. Any law controlling the ballot, that is not absolutely just and fair to both races, will work more permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.43
There is a big difference between the accommodationist sentences of Washington’s Atlanta address and this letter to a Constitutional Convention in Louisiana in 1898. Of course his style is not menacing, but the tone is absolutely not as soft as that of Atlanta. Nor did this letter include the ambiguous sentences the Atlanta speech did. He later repeated his ideas in an even clearer fashion in an interview he gave to the Atlanta
Constitution on November 10, 1899. After he had spoken about the unjust
implementation of laws enforced for the disenfranchisement of blacks, he said, “While I have spoken very plainly, I do not believe that any one will misinterpret my motives.”44 However, the further evidence of his stand on disfranchisement of blacks only reveals his secret civil rights campaign through financing test cases in the courts.45
43 Booker T. Washington, “Open Letter to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, February 19, 1898”,
African American Political Thought, p. 31.
44 Booker T. Washington, “Interview, Atlanta Constitution, November10, 1899”, Ibid., pp. 34-39. 45 Harlan, Booker T. Washington, p. 244.
One of the main criticisms about Washington was that he was always conciliatory in manner toward the white South, compared with his criticism of his fellow blacks.46 Actually, he criticized the education system that blacks accepted during the Reconstruction period and criticized blacks for considering it enough to have a limited education in order to avoid manual labor. He deemed years spent learning Greek and Latin as inappropriate for his race and emphasized industrial education.47 However, he adored his vision of property owning through the means of industrial education. In his article “The Negro and the Signs of Civilization”, he presented a Norwegian property owner in Minnesota as an example to his fellow blacks. He stated, “He [a black man] must actually possess them [a beautiful well-kept home, an increasing bank account, and a farm], and the only way to possess them is to possess them.”48 The only way he offered for possession of the things above was the gift of industrial education. The weak point about industrial education is that it was offered for the improvement of blacks in the southern states of the United States where, as Washington later complained, the majority of whites were unwilling to supply blacks with proper conditions to live their lives. In his article “The Negro and the Labor Problem of the South” he detailed the complaints of the blacks as:
Poor dwelling houses, loss of earnings each year, because of unscrupulous employers, high priced provisions, poor schoolhouses, short school terms, poor school teachers, bad treatment generally, lynchings and whitecapping,
46 Meier, Negro Thought in America, p. 103. 47 Washington, Up from Slavery, pp. 80-81.
48 Booker T. Washington, “The Negro and the Signs of the Civilization”, African American Political
fear of the practice of peonage, a general lack of police protection and want of encouragement.49
As he accepted in the article, the attitudes of whites in the South were not friendly to blacks, but some level of friendship was necessary for the success of Washington’s industrial education program. The program he envisioned was a far cry from being a solution to the problems of blacks in a period during which blacks were disfranchised and segregated.
A final paragraph or two will be devoted to Washington’s ideas on segregation laws. The aim of this is to see whether his critics were right to attack him for not dealing with the more serious problems of the race like segregation and disenfranchisement. Actually, Washington did deal with those issues, but he could not stress them because he was very busy with jobs like oppressing his rivals and placing his men in important positions through his political influence. In short, he was busy with the daily work of the Tuskegee Machine. The way he dealt with issues like segregation and disfranchisement was explained by August Meier: “Washington was secretly engaged in attacking the disfranchisement constitutions by court action. In 1900 and 1901 consecutively he spent money to fight the Louisiana test case”.50 The primary sources are not available referring to this spending, but Washington’s views about segregation laws are available. In his article “My View of Segregation Laws” he starts by pointing to the uselessness of segregation laws at least in residential terms, because “it is unusual to hear of a colored man attempting to live where he is
surrounded by white people or where he is not welcome”.51 However, in the remainder of the article he gives his reasons for his statement that segregation is ill-advised:
Summarizing the matter in the large, segregation is ill-advised because 1. It is unjust.
2. It invites other unjust measures.
3. It will not be productive of good, because practically every thoughtful Negro resents its injustice and doubts its sincerity. Any race adjustment based on injustice finally defeats itself. The Civil War is the best illustration of what results where it is attempted to make wrong right or seem to be right.
4. It is unnecessary.
5. It is inconsistent. The Negro is segregated from his white neighbor, but white business men are not prevented from doing business in Negro neighborhoods.
6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races.52
These words come from an article that was written in September 1915, two months before Washington died. Washington’s ideas were the same; only his style had changed. Moving away from his emphasis on industrial education, he started to speak about problems that his rivals had been addressing since the beginning of the twentieth century.
It was this delay that caused the opposition against Washington to emerge in the early years of twentieth century America. However, the split between Washington and his most prominent rival, W.E.B. Du Bois, did not occur until 1903, when Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk. Before that, Du Bois was a keen admirer of Washington, especially of his Atlanta address. He sent a letter to Washington in which 50 Meier, Negro Thought in America, p. 111.
51 Washington, “My View of Segregation Laws”, in African American Political Thought, p. 79. 52 Ibid., pp. 80-81.
he congratulated Washington heartily for his “phenomenal success in Atlanta”.53 In a letter written on October 26, 1899, Washington invited Du Bois to teach at Tuskegee.54 Later it was not possible for Du Bois to teach there, because he was thinking of other two offers: a professorship at Howard University, and “the position of Superintendant of the Washington colored schools”.55 Du Bois asked Washington for advice about
what to do and requested a recommendation from Washington for the Washington, D.C. position. Washington gave the advice, but “the cryptic nature of the advice in this letter convinced Du Bois that Washington was not honestly supporting him for the position.”56 According to Carl D. Wintz, the two men parted ways after this letter and Du Bois began moving towards the radical group that criticized Washington.
Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. He graduated from Fisk University and received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. He taught at Atlanta University and published sociological investigations about the living conditions of blacks.57 He did not experience the hardships that Washington had experienced during his education. And surely he received a better education than Washington had. Du Bois was not a leader like Washington, either. He had always been active in the black political and civil rights arena, and a prominent figure, but his only leading role was as editor of the Crisis, the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.). Taking a looking at
53 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Letter to Booker T. Washington, September, 24, 1895”, African American Political
Thought, p. 85.
54 Washington, “Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois, October 26, 1899 “, Ibid, p. 33.
55 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Letter to Booker T. Washington, February 17, 1900”, Ibid., p. 91. 56 Cary D. Wintz, Ibid., p. 38.
backgrounds of Washington and Du Bois helps understand the differences between these men. Du Bois had never been a slave, while Washington had been born into slavery. Du Bois never worked at manual labor while Washington had to serve as a janitor at the Hampton Institute for his tuition. Du Bois was a northerner; Washington was a southerner. Du Bois was a graduate of Harvard University compared with Washington’s industrial education in Hampton.
Their differences also fit larger changes in the American political and economic history. The country witnessed an industrial boom during the years 1865-1900 an era called the Gilded Age, and its politics began to change in the following years, the Progressive Era. Booker T. Washington was clearly a Gilded Age figure. He insisted on industrial education and property ownership for blacks in an era of industrial boom. The transformation of the American economy from agriculture to industry with mass production necessitating a skilled labor force influenced Washington’s ideas on education. He founded the Tuskegee Institute through which he aimed to teach blacks to be skilled laborers to help them compete with their white counterparts. Hard work brings its own reward, a theme prominent in Gilded Age literature, was Washington’s idea for the uplift of the black race and formed the basis for his practices at the Tuskegee Institute. His acquaintance with wealthy white tycoons also reflected a Gilded Age fashion in which the bosses like Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller were active in philanthropy and also in politics. Finally, bossism prevailed in Gilded Age politics, something that characterized Washington’s approach to politics, also.
Du Bois, in contrast, belonged to the Progressive Era. He had never had close ties to white philanthropists. He wanted to be active intellectually to assert the rights of blacks in different platforms. The formation of the Niagara Movement and his activism in urging blacks on equal rights issues made him more a Progressive Era figure. He was more like a muckraker in his vision of investigating ways to protest the system compared with the comfortable and accommodationist style of Washington. Their different backgrounds perhaps inevitably led to a split between their ideas.
Du Bois’ split from Washington became public with the publication of The
Souls of Black Folk in 1903. The importance of the book in this context stems from the
fact that a complete chapter, “Of Booker T. Washington and Others”, was dedicated to the criticism of Washington and his policies. In this chapter and in another chapter called “Of the Training of Black Men”, Du Bois both criticized Washington and laid out his own strategy for civil rights. In “Of Booker T. Washington and Others”, Du Bois asserted that:
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… and Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races… 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.58
The criticism of Du Bois, mainly struck at Washington’s industrial education program, and Du Bois continued his criticism by blaming Washington for overemphasizing
58 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, in Nathan Huggins Ed., Du Bois Writings, (New York:
Industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of South… As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
1. The disenfranchisement 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 for the Negro.59
Du Bois did not show Washington as the person responsible for what happened during the years of Washington ascendancy in black civil rights issue, but he did not deny the role Washington played in all that had happened. With these lines Du Bois moved from the camp of the Bookerites and involved himself in a different group to struggle for “the right to vote; civic equality; the education of the youth according to ability”.60
The different group was the Niagara Movement. Du Bois, after laying out his strategy in The Souls of Black Folk, continued his attack on Washington’s policies and philosophy in an essay “The Parting of the Ways” which was published in April 1904. In this essay, Du Bois also wrote about his ideas that would constitute the blueprint for the declaration of the Niagara Movement. He stated: “[Blacks] know it is impossible for free workingmen without a ballot to compete with free workingmen who have the ballot”. In a sentence emphasizing the importance of the right of vote he said: “Taxation without representation is tyranny”. He criticized the discrimination against blacks on account of race and color and promised to “keep wide educational opportunity, to keep the right to vote, to insist on equal civil rights and to gain every right and privilege open to a free American citizen.”61 The same ideas were also written in the “Declaration of Principles”, authored by Du Bois and adopted by the Niagara
59 Ibid., pp. 398-399.
Movement in 1905. In that declaration there were statements about progress, courts, education, economic opportunity, health, protest, the color-line, the Church, and oppression.62
Being the first civil rights organization to oppose the Washington camp, the Niagara Movement could not survive long and faded out with the establishment of the N.A.A.C.P. in 1909. The reason why the Niagara Movement could not survive was the activities of Booker T. Washington against it. According to Elliott Rudwick “since the day of its inception, Booker T. Washington scrutinized the movement and plotted its destruction.”63 He used his influence upon the black press and made sure that it was not advertised. According to Louis Harlan, Washington placed a spy (Emmett Scott) in the Movement. Washington also used his influence upon the editor of the Atlanta Age encouraging him to show ‘the true inwardness of Du Bois”.64 However, the Movement did not fade out only because of the pressures of Washington. Even in its heyday in 1906, it had only 400 members, and it could not achieve anything other than agitation. It faded out in 1909.65
The same year witnessed the foundation of another anti-Bookerite organization, the N.A.A.C.P. The N.A.A.C.P was not an exclusively black organization, and the whites behind the organization were the kind of people Washington would have liked in his corner. They were financially strong and one of them, Oswald Garrison Villard, 61 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Parting of the Ways”, African American Political Thought, pp. 96-99.
62 Du Bois, “Declaration of Principles”, Ibid., pp. 102-106. 63 Elliott M. Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 98.
64 Harlan, Booker T. Washington, pp. 87-88. 65 Meier, Negro Thought in America, p. 179.
was a one-time supporter of Washington.66 Villard wanted a central defense committee for African-Americans, and after a race riot at Springfield, Illinois in 1908 he called for a national conference for, as he put it, “the advancement of the colored people”.67 Washington refused to participate in such a conference feeling that “his presence might deter free discussion and might harm the cause of Negro education and interfere with the work which he alone could do in the South.”68 Du Bois was among the conferees with Ida Wells-Barnett, Jane Addams, and John Milholland.69 The N.A.A.C.P. was an interracial organization that included members of the disappearing Niagara Movement. It shared the same ideas as the Movement; moreover, its white membership enabled its success in gaining a wider range of supporters. Thus, for the first time there was a strong organized group against Booker T. Washington. Washington tried the same ways to denounce and discredit the new organization that he had used against the Niagara Movement.70 This time, however, the problem was harder.
The N.A.A.C.P. appointed Du Bois as the editor of their monthly magazine, the
Crisis, which came into being in 1910. In the first editorial of the magazine Du Bois
outlined the policy of the magazine:
It will first and foremost be a newspaper: it will record important happenings, and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American. Secondly, it will be a review of opinion and literature, recording briefly books, articles, and important expressions of opinion in the white and colored press on the race problem. Thirdly, it will publish a few short
66 Ibid., p. 182.
67 Fredrickson, Black Liberation, pp. 111-112.
68 Meier, “Washington and the N.A.A.C.P.”, in Along the Color Line, pp. 84-85. 69 Meier, Negro Thought in America, pp. 182-183.
articles. Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of the American democracy, and for reasonable but persistent attempt to gain these rights and realize these ideals. The magazine will be the organ of no clique or party and will avoid personal rancor of all sorts.71
As the director of publicity and research of the N.A.A.C.P. and the editor of the Crisis magazine, Du Bois finally found a means --the editorial page of the magazine-- through which he could disseminate his ideology. “The Crisis was a separate department in the N.A.A.C.P. and came to be recognized as ‘Du Bois’ Domain.’”72 This fact has a double meaning: First the magazine’s claim that “they would not be the organ of any clique”, as stated in the first editorial of the magazine, is not true because it was the monthly of the N.A.A.C.P., and it was published by the organization’s funds. However, the fact that Du Bois was mainly free in his decisions about the ingredients of the magazine, makes us think that the magazine was not bound to any organization in terms of the ideology and ideas it promulgated.73 Du Bois was so careful about this that he was reluctant to publish the minutes of the annual conventions of the N.A.A.C.P. The Crisis meant a real problem for the ascendancy of Booker T. Washington. Despite his efforts to destroy the magazine, its circulation jumped from 1,000 for the first issue to 16,000 by the following year.74
71 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The editorial of Crisis, Crisis 1[November 1910]: 10) in African American Political
Thought, p. 107.
72 Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 151. 73 Ibid., pp. 151-152
Other than the circulation success of its magazine, the N.A.A.C.P.’s accomplishments from its first conference on May 31, 1909 to the first issue of the
Crisis in November 1910 were given as follows:
Four mass meetings and ten other meetings have been held to discuss the status of the colored people and efforts for betterment.
One volume of speeches and 6,000 separate pieces of literature are being distributed.
A bureau of information has been maintained which has corresponded with over 500 persons in all parts of the country.
Six articles have been furnished to magazines and eight to newspapers. Two investigations into educational conditions are in progress.
Effort has been made in three cases to secure legal redress of grievances. 75
The establishment of the N.A.A.C.P. was an important event because for the first time a strong organization stood against the ideology and machine politics of Booker T. Washington. The N.A.A.C.P.’s goals detailed in the first issue of the Crisis were also promising:
Co-operation with all agencies working for the uplift of colored people. The holding of mass meetings and conferences.
The issuing of pamphlets at the rate of one every other month or oftener. The publication of articles in magazines and in the daily press.
The discovering and redress of cases of injustice.
The systematic study of the present conditions among colored people.76
Of the goals, the most important one was the discovery and redress of cases of injustice. This goal actually became the major focus of the organization, and it took its place in civil rights history with its achievements in judicial matters concerning African-Americans. In its Second Annual Report, the organization issued an article
75 The Crisis, Vol. 1, November, 1910, in Herbert Aptheker Ed., A Documentary History of the Negro
about its work on legal redress. The article stated “The Association aims to furnish legal aid to Negroes in cases where the discrimination is obviously because of color”.77 They detailed their achievements in the report. But except the removal of the Grandfather Clause in 1915, all their achievements were small assistances to aid individual blacks against discriminative attitudes of the courts. However, one must not expect early monumental successes like the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954, which stated that separate schools were not equal and ruled that therefore were unconstitutional. The political agenda of the early twentieth century did not let the organization to achieve such monumental successes like Brown. That was the age of
Plessy vs. Ferguson and thus the age of segregation. In any case their activities were
not held secretly as Washington had done in the past, and they were supplying ordinary blacks with some legal backing.
The death of Booker T. Washington in 1915 marked the end of an era in the history of the black civil rights. With his death blacks lost a charismatic leader, but a strong organization was in place that would supply them with legal aid and systematic study on the present situation of black people, an interracial organization through which their voices would be heard. Upon the death of Washington, Du Bois wrote in the Crisis:
The death of Mr. Washington marks an epoch in the history of America. He was the greatest Negro leader since Frederick Douglass, and the most distinguished man, white or black, who has come out of the South since the Civil War… Of the good he accomplished there can be no doubt: he redirected the attention of the Negro race in America to the pressing 76 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
necessity of economic development; he emphasized technical education and he did much to pave the way for an understanding between the white and the darker races. On the other hand there can be no doubt of Mr. Washington’s mistakes and short comings: he never adequately grasped the growing bond of politics and industry; he did not understand the deeper foundations of human training and his basis of better understanding between white and black was founded on the caste system… we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement.78
Even after the death of Washington Du Bois did not change his rhetoric about him. This fact may also indicate why blacks gained so little during the ascendancy of Booker T. Washington. And what they gained was the formation of a strong organization which would later be useful in supplying some space for blacks on legal problems. Blacks did not get anything positive in terms of improvements in the attitudes governments towards their race nor could they create a popular support for their civil rights cause. Washington created the Tuskegee Institute to give industrial education to black students. Considering the existence of segregation, one may see this as a practical way create quality education facilities for black pupils in the South. For Washington’s program to succeed, however, there should have been a thousand more Tuskegees to enable the education of black pupils. To reach his ultimate goals, Washington chose a very long path to follow: the economic freedom of blacks. Considering the conditions of the Washington-Du Bois years -- segregation, white prejudice, labor union disapproval of blacks, and a lack of political backing for the absolute right to vote and desegregation -- the chance of success for such a program was almost non-existent.
78 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Booker T. Washington “, The Crisis 11 December 1915: 82 in Wintz, African American
On the other hand, Washington could have given more energy to his work of uplifting his fellow African-Americans if he had not wasted so much of his effort trying to hinder his rivals, both personally and organizationally. During his ascendancy he tried hard to delete his rivals. Washington and blacks suffered from his efforts that did not bring any good for blacks. With his efforts there was not a strong platform that would criticize him until the N.A.A.C.P. This was not good because without serious and sophisticated opposition Washington could not understand the weaknesses of his ideology and continued practicing what he had known the best for at least ten years.
When looked at from this perspective one may think that the first fifteen years of the twentieth century accomplished nothing for black civil rights. However, when you consider previous black history much of which were passed under the burden of slavery, the early twentieth century was meaningful for laying the foundation for future successes in civil rights. Blacks, however blocked by segregation and unequal higher educational facilities, had intellectuals who would develop new ideas, projects, and solutions for the betterment of the race. They also had the financial and psychological support of a limited portion of the white population. With the death of Washington, blacks lost a leader, and his opponents lost their greatest enemy. However, this did not mean an end to the clashes within the black community. They continued between a more powerful Du Bois and some young ideologues like A. Philip Randolph and Marcus Garvey.
CHAPTER 2 (1915-1950)
Following the death of Booker T. Washington the situation for the advancement of blacks took a different shape. The first important event after the death of the Wizard of Tuskegee was an open letter from W.E.B. Du Bois to Robert Russa Moton, who took the headship of the Tuskegee Institute after Washington’s death. Du Bois mentioned “the beginning of a new era of union and understanding among the various groups of American Negroes.” Du Bois then explained the goals of his group as:
1. The right to vote and hold office. 2. Equality before the law.
3. Equal civil rights in all public places, and in all public services. 4. A proportional share in the benefits of all public expenditures. 5. Education according to ability and aptitude.
Du Bois wanted Moton to make clear that Tuskegee believed in the right to vote and that it did not believe in segregated railroad facilities.79 His efforts continued for a reconciliation when he offered to postpone the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual meeting “in order to avoid ‘a counter attraction’” to the intended memorial service which would be held for Washington by the Tuskegeean’s friends on the same day.80 The offer was accepted by the organization immediately.
More importantly, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., Joel Spingarn convened a conference in Amenia, New York in 1916. The participants ranged from the conservative Emmett Scott, who was a strict follower of Washington, to the most radical advocates of civil rights such as William Monroe Trotter, an ardent foe of
79 W.E.B. DU Bois, “An Open Letter to Robert Russa Moton”, in African American Political Thought,
Washington. Du Bois was also among the participants as was Robert R. Moton. The purpose of the conference was stated in the invitation to participants as: “At last the time has come for a frank and free discussion on the part of the leaders of every school and thought, in an endeavor to ascertain the most advanced position that all can agree upon and hold as vantage ground from which to work for new conquests by colored Americans. In this belief the Amenia Conference is called”.81 According to August Meier the conference achieved unanimity of opinion about the “desirability of all types of education, the importance of the ballot, and the necessity of replacing ancient suspicions and factions with respect for the good faith and methods of leaders in all parts of the country”.82 Meier is among the scholars who believe that the conference
reached its aim of reconciliation, and he points as evidence to the transfer of James Weldon Johnson, a capable figure from the Tuskegee orbit, to the N.A.A.C.P. as its national organizer.83 However, historian Elliott Rudwick, scrutinizing the editorials that Du Bois wrote following the conference, draws a different conclusion. In his opinion, the conference was overrated. According to Rudwick, the fact that Du Bois continued his attack on industrial education and the policy of the Bookerites in his editorials proves that the conference changed little in the course of the black civil rights movement in terms of reconciliation. If there was reconciliation, according to Rudwick, it was not because of changes in ideas, “the change was due to more earthy reasons 80 Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 184.
81 “The Amenia Conference of 1916”, in Aptheker, The Documentary History of the Negro People, p.p.
130-135.
82 Meier, Negro Thought in America, p. 184. 83 Ibid.,
than a conference, i.e., World War I, the increase in urbanization and education within the race”.84
Would World War I, involving the United States towards its end, bring détente at home for black leaders? The answer, after a two-year period of stagnancy, was no. In fact, the situation emerged altered as new characters appeared on the scene. One of them, the most colorful, was Marcus Garvey. He was born on the island of Jamaica, British West Indies, on August 17, 1887. He grew up as a printer’s apprentice, so he could read and write through his apprenticeship.85 During this period, his interest in reading books grew, and when he moved to Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, he started to build his skills in oratory.86 He spent several years in South Africa trying to organize
black workers against their exploitation by whites. He started newspapers in every country where he had been, but all failed. Finally he went to London where he saw before him “a new world of black men, not peons, serfs, dogs and slaves, but a nation of sturdy men making their impress upon civilization and causing a new light to dawn upon the human race.”87
His political involvement began when he returned from London to Jamaica, and established Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League on July 20, 1914.88 The organization would later be called simply the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). His arrival in the United States
84 Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois, pp. 184-190.
85 Marcus Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy”, in African American political Thought, pp. 169-170. 86 Lawrence W. Levine, “Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Revitalization”, in Black Leaders of the
Twentieth Century, pp. 106-107.
87 Marcus Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy”, p. 171. 88 Ibid
took place after the death of Booker T. Washington. He initially wanted to visit Washington, but the latter’s sudden death delayed his arrival to March 1916.89 Garvey went to the States for an eight-month visit during which he would seek financial support to strengthen the position of UNIA in Jamaica. However, throughout the thirty-eight states that he visited he saw that blacks in the States were different “industrially, financially, educationally, and socially” from the blacks of the West Indies.90 In “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy” Garvey detailed the development of UNIA and its potential membership which he gave as 2,000,000 by June 1919, 4,000,000 by August 1920, and 6,000,000 by 1923.91 Though Garvey exaggerated, he did build the “largest and most influential Afro-American mass movement in American history” according to Lawrence Levine. While Garvey exaggerated the growth potential of UNIA, the philosophy of Garvey and the aims of his organization were made clear.
Why then did Garvey gain such popular support? Among the reasons was the accommodationist tendency of Du Bois during World War I. This tendency, emerging especially in the reconciliation period after the Amenia Conference, showed itself as black soldiers were recruited to fight against the Germans in World War I. In his “Close Ranks” editorial in July 1918, he endorsed the involvement of the United States in the war, and supported the recruitment of black soldiers even at the price of forgetting “our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our
89 Marcus Garvey, “Letter to Robert Russa Moton, February 29, 1916”, In African American Political
Thought, pp. 178-184.
90 Levine, p. 117.
