Accommodation and Agitation
•1. Race pride, racial solidarity, self-help,
separate economic development
•2. Civil Rights, political activism,
assimilation, economic integration
•
1. Agitators
John L. Lynch, Frederick Douglass
2. Accomodationists
I. T. Montgomery, Booker T. Washington
•
3. Rising Expectations
W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett
• Born a slave in Virginia
• Educated at Hampton U.
• Founder of Tuskegee U.
Tuskegee, circa 1900
Mattress making, early 1900s
Beekeeping
Tuskegee’s Blacksmith shop
• Washington asked to give an address at the the
“Negro Pavilion” at the 1895 Cotton States
expedition in Atlanta
• Urged both southern blacks and whites to "cast
down your bucket where you are.“
• "In all things that are purely social," he said, "we
can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the
hand in all things essential to mutual progress."
• Blacks should not blame whites for their situation
• Blacks should start from the bottom, work their way up
– Build an economic base through farming and industry
• Accept Jim Crow—work for economic opportunity
– Civil/political rights not as important as economic opportunity
• Opposed agitating for black rights
– A diversion of energy
– Aroused white hostility
• Washington’s accomodationist
approach endeared him to
influential whites
– Money, patronage, jobs
• Up from Slavery (1901)
– American tale of hard work
Dined with Roosevelt, 1901
• Born in Mass. to a free
black family
• Educated at Fisk, Harvard
& the Univ. of Berlin
• Sociology Professor at
Atlanta Univ. in 1897
• Initially a supporter of
Booker T. Washington
The Souls of Black Folk
• “The problem of the 20th century will be the color line”
• Attacked Washington’s Accomodationist approach
– "[When] Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, he does not
rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the
emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher
training and ambition of our brighter minds ... we must
unceasingly and firmly oppose [him]."
• Advocated the development of the “Talented Tenth”
– Doctors, lawyers, intellectuals
• Race leaders for the 20th century
• Founded by northern black leaders to agitate for:
– Economic justice
– Equal access to education
– Fully protected suffrage
– An end to racial discrimination
• Founded by 60 people, 7 of whom were African
American (including DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and
Mary Church Terrell)
• NAACP's stated goal was to secure for all people the
rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
to the Constitution
• Established national office in New York City and named
Moorfield Storey, a white constitutional lawyer, as its
first president.
• DuBois was the only African American among the
organization's executives—Director of Publications and
Research
The Crisis
In 1910 DuBois established the official journal of the
NAACP, The Crisis.