The slave community in the South region of the United States started a revolution for their freedom. This slavery isue and racial segregation in residential places, railway lines, schools and buses agitated the African Americans under slavery in the United States. They fought against this oppression, thus coming up with the three personality characters that were most evident in the fighting for the blacks’ freedom from slavery. This led to the development of the “Nat” personality, which derives its name from Nat Turner, a nonconformist and a protest leader. He took up armed struggle in 1831 in the county of South Hampton, Virginia, after receiving God’s vision emphasizing on the freedom of black slaves.
Turner went on a rampage of killing and massacring the families of and their slave masters. This was among the bloodiest rebellions from the slaves in the American history. There was a second slave personality name Jack. This was a conscious character of his identity among other slaves and cooperated in the resistance of the oppression of the white man. Jack was either differential in the presence of the white man, or avoided contact owing to his overwhelming physical power. This personality was stubborn, proud, and conscience of all the wrongs suffered. The third personality was the Sambo. This was long lasting and most pervasive of the three personalities. This was indolent, humorous, loyal, faithful, superstitious, musical, and improvident.
Booker T. Washington was a black educator well known all over the states of America for standing up for his Black natives facing segregation in the United States. Born a slave in 1856 in Virginia, he developed at an early stage of his life a thirst for learning and reading. He walked to Hampton Institute to enroll for high school after completing his elementary school for the African American children. This was one of the few high schools for the blacks located 500 miles away in the South. He was a renowned black educator who urged African Americans to pursue industrial education. This led him to founding the Tuskegee Institute. This institute provided African Americans with industrial training. Washington believed that the white community would treat the African Americans with respect if they had these trade skills. His other belief was that these trade skills provided them with a key to their economic security.
Washington worked as a principal for the Tuskegee Institute where he guided, developed, and designed it to become a powerhouse of political influence and African American education in the U.S. He used the model of Hampton Institute to emphasize on industrial and agricultural training. He argued that it was necessary for African American to concentrate on learning useful trades, educating themselves, and investing in personal businesses. This, he though, would prove the value that blacks add to the economy of Americans to the whites, through merit, economic progress, and hardwork. Eventual achievement of equal civil and political rights would be through his vision for the blacks, so he believed. Thus, he advised the blacks to put aside their immediate demands for ending racial segregation and voting. Through one of his addresses, he accepted the fact that racial segregation was a reality. This was during his famous keynote addresses in Atlanta, Georgia on the International Exposition and Cotton States in 1895 (Washington, 1900). He however insisted on the inclusion of African Americans in the South’s economic progress.
Washington once declared to an audience that was all white that people can be separate like fingers in social things, but to progress mutually in all things people must work in oneness like the hand. These white Americans saw his vision as a key to the racial peace for the nation. This enabled him to work with white philanthropists, like Andrew Carnegie, in making his Tuskegee Institute excel and develop its philosophies of first seeking economic rights, then later seeking equal rights. This made him become one of the most powerful leaders of the blacks in the United States through his recognition as a spokesperson for the blacks by the whites. He rose to the status of overseeing political appointments, and determining the charities and African American colleges that would receive the white philanthropists’ funding. He also had control over a number of newspapers, which attacked all those who had the audacity to question his vision, as he considered himself as the bridge between the whites and the blacks.
Nonetheless, other leaders from the blacks’ community criticized his toleration of racial segregation during a time when anti-black discrimination and violence was increasing. Despite this, he publicly spoke out against all the evils arising from lynching (Duster & Wells, 1970), segregation and voting discriminations, but also participated in lawsuits secretly involving tests of voter registration, blacks’ exclusion from the juries, and the unequaled facilities of the railroad. There was already firm establishment of racial discrimination and segregation laws by the time of Booker T. Washington’s death in 1915 in the South. The case was also similar in most of the United States’ parts. This persistence of racism in the United States is what blocked the advancement of the African Americans there.
W. E. B. Du Bois was born in 1868 in Massachusetts and attended high schools and elementary schools that racially integrated. He went on scholarship to Fiske College at age sixteen in Tennessee. He completed his education formally with a history Ph. D degree from Harvard. He was a tutor, though briefly, at the Ohio College before becoming a director in a major study about social conditions of the blacks residing in Philadelphia. The conclusions from his research were that the discrimination by the whites on the Blacks is what was keeping African Americans from getting good jobs. Du Bois wrote in 1897, after a period of two years of the Atlanta Address from Booker T. Washington, that the blacks wanted to become fully-fledged Americans, bearing all the rights that American citizens enjoyed. His vision was the creation of educated leaders from the black community in America who formed an elite group called ‘The Talented Tenth’. This elite group would lead the African Americans to secure higher standards of the economy, and to secure equal rights.
Dubois published a book in 1903 titled, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’. This was his best-known book, and was among the twentieth century’s most influential book. It was through this book that he criticized Booker T. Washington. He attacked the fact that Washington accepted racial segregation. He argued that this assisted only in encouraging the whites to continue denying African Americans their voting rights and thus undermine the black progress and pride. He further criticized Tuskegee Approach adapted by Washington as an attempt to enlighten and educate black girls and boys to be underlings and servants. He believed that trade education had less importance to academic education, and felt that the emphasis that Washington had on industrial education trapped African Americans in lower economic and social classes. This is because it suggested that a service occupation was the best option for the blacks. Du Bois dream for the African American was for them to succeed in sciences and arts.
Although Washington and Du Bois took opposite sides of the educational debate, they had closer educational practices. Tuskegee Institute started by Washington had basic academic courses such as literacy skills and mathematics. On the other hand, Du Bois believed firmly in excellence and motivated African Americans to be hard workers regardless of the careers they got. They also exhibited greater difference in their political views. They both advocated for same voting rights for the black Americans and the white Americans (Thorpe, 1909). However, Du Bois encouraged his black folks to demand equal rights while Washington usually ignored discrimination. His belief was that it was necessary for the blacks to cultivate a good rapport with the whites because their demand for equal rights would develop an ill will between the white Americans and themselves.
References
Duster, A. & Well, I. (1970). Excerpted From Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Fergusson. (1896).
Thorpe, T. (1909). The Federal and States Constitutions of the United States, Washington, D.D.: Government Printing House.
Washington, B. (1900). Up From Slavery: An Autobiography.
