Chapter 3 of the
Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington
and Others
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!
* * * * * * * * *
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
BYRON.
Easily the most striking thing
in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr.
Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals
were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning;
a sense of doubt and hesitation over- took the freedmen's sons,--then it
was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite
programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed
of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating
its energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation
of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and political rights,
was not wholly original; the Free Negroes from 1830 up to war-time had
striven to build industrial schools, and the American Missionary Association
had from the first taught various trades; and Price and others had sought
a way of honorable alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington
first indissolubly linked these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy,
and perfect faith into his programme, and changed it from a by-path into
a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he did this
is a fascinating study of human life.
It startled the nation to
hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of bitter complaint;
it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the
admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced
if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.
To gain the sympathy and
cooperation of the various elements comprising the white South was Mr.
Washington's first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed,
for a black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done
in the word spoken at Atlanta: "In all things purely social we can be as
separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential
to mutual progress." This "Atlanta Compromise" is by all odds the most
notable thing in Mr. Washington's career. The South interpreted it in different
ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for
civil and political equality; the conserva- tives, as a generously conceived
working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and to-day
its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson
Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.
Next to this achievement
comes Mr. Washington's work in gaining place and consideration in the North.
Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two
stools and had fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart
of the South from birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively
grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the North. And so thoroughly
did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and the
ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring
over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon
seemed to him the acme of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St.
Francis of Assisi would say to this.
And yet this very singleness
of vision and thorough one- ness with his age is a mark of the successful
man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give
them force. So Mr. Washington's cult has gained unquestion- ing followers,
his work has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies
are confounded. To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his
ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of
seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which,
beginning with so little, has done so much. And yet the time is come when
one may speak in all sincerity and utter cour- tesy of the mistakes and
shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without
being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier
to do ill than well in the world.
The criticism that has hitherto
met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad character. In the
South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments,
--and naturally so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness
to that section. Twice--once when at the Chicago celebration of the Spanish-American
War he alluded to the color-prejudice that is "eating away the vitals of
the South," and once when he dined with President Roosevelt--has the resulting
Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten seriously his popularity.
In the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words, that
Mr. Washington's counsels of submission overlooked certain ele- ments of
true manhood, and that his educational programme was unnecessarily narrow.
Usually, however, such criticism has not found open expression, although,
too, the spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been prepared to
acknowl- edge that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad
ideals and self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or worthy of ridicule.
While, then, criticism has not failed to follow Mr. Washington, yet the
prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too willing to deliver
the solution of a wearisome problem into his hands, and say, "If that is
all you and your race ask, take it."
Among his own people, however,
Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most lasting opposition,
amount- ing at times to bitterness, and even today continuing strong and
insistent even though largely silenced in outward expres- sion by the public
opinion of the nation. Some of this opposi- tion is, of course, mere envy;
the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds.
But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful colored men
in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension
at the wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington's theories
have gained. These same men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing
to forgive much to honest endeavor which is doing something worth the doing.
They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can;
and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power that,
steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he
so largely retains the respect of all.
But the hushing of the criticism
of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of
the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others
to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose lis-
teners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose inter- ests are most
nearly touched,--criticism of writers by readers, --this is the soul of
democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the American
Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized
before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is
also irreparable loss,--a loss of that peculiarly valuable educa- tion
which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions
its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary
and the nicest problem of social growth. History is but the record of such
group- leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character!
And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership
of a group within a group?-- that curious double movement where real progress
may be negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this
is the social student's inspiration and despair.
Now in the past the American
Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing of group leaders,
founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions
is worth while studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole
environment of a people, their attitude is largely one of determined opposition
to and conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and brute is added
an environment of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group
may take three main forms,--a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt
to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater group; or,
finally, a determined effort at self-realization and self-development despite
environing opinion. The influence of all of these attitudes at various
times can be traced in the history of the American Negro, and in the evolution
of his successive leaders.
Before 1750, while the fire
of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves, there was in
all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and
revenge, --typified in the terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato
of Stono, and veiling all the Americas in fear of insurrection. The liberalizing
tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought, along
with kindlier relations between black and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment
and assimilation. Such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest
songs of Phyllis, in the martyrdom of Attucks, the fighting of Salem and
Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of Banneker and Derham, and the
political demands of the Cuffes.
Stern financial and social
stress after the war cooled much of the previous humanitarian ardor. The
disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the persistence of slavery
and serfdom voiced itself in two movements. The slaves in the South, aroused
undoubtedly by vague rumors of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce attempts
at insurrection,--in 1800 under Gabriel in Virginia, in 1822 under Vesey
in Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible Nat Turner.
In the Free States, on the other hand, a new and curious attempt at self-development
was made. In Philadelphia and New York color-prescription led to a withdrawal
of Negro communicants from white churches and the formation of a peculiar
socio-religious institution among the Negroes known as the African Church,--an
organization still living and con- trolling in its various branches over
a million of men.
Walker's wild appeal against
the trend of the times showed how the world was changing after the coming
of the cotton- gin. By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South,
and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission. The free Negroes of the
North, inspired by the mulatto immigrants from the West Indies, began to
change the basis of their demands; they recognized the slavery of slaves,
but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation
and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. Thus,
Forten and Purvis of Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven,
Barbadoes of Boston, and others, strove singly and together as men, they
said, not as slaves; as "people of color," not as "Negroes." The trend
of the times, however, refused them recognition save in individual and
exceptional cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks,
and they soon found themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly
had of voting and working and moving as freemen. Schemes of migration and
colonization arose among them; but these they refused to entertain, and
they eventually turned to the Abolition movement as a final refuge.
Here, led by Remond, Nell,
Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and self-development
dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before
the leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself
was the main reliance, and John Brown's raid was the extreme of its logic.
After the war and emancipation, the great form of Frederick Douglass, the
greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host. Self-assertion,
especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass
came Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and,
less conspicuous but of greater social significance, Alexander Crummell
and Bishop Daniel Payne.
Then came the Revolution
of 1876, the suppression of the Negro votes, the changing and shifting
of ideals, and the seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass,
in his old age, still bravely stood for the ideals of his early manhood,
--ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on no other terms.
For a time Price arose as a new leader, destined, it seemed, not to give
up, but to re-state the old ideals in a form less repugnant to the white
South. But he passed away in his prime. Then came the new leader. Nearly
all the former ones had become leaders by the silent suffrage of their
fellows, had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually, save
Douglass, little known outside their race. But Booker T. Washington arose
as essentially the leader not of one race but of two,--a compromiser between
the South, the North, and the Negro. Naturally the Negroes resented, at
first bitterly, signs of compromise which surrendered their civil and political
rights, even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic
development. The rich and dominating North, however, was not only weary
of the race problem, but was investing largely in Southern enterprises,
and welcomed any method of peaceful cooperation. Thus, by national opinion,
the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington's leadership; and the voice
of criticism was hushed.
Mr. Washington represents
in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment
at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age
of unusual economic development, and 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. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming
in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is
therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts
the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the
reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice
against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands
of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified
prejudice all the Negro's tendency to self-assertion has been called forth;
at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly
all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been
that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a
people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it,
are not worth civilizing.
In answer to this, it has
been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. 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,-- and concentrate all their energies on industrial education,
and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy
has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years,
and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender
of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have
occurred:
1. The disfranchisement 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 of the Negro.
These movements are not,
to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings; but his propaganda
has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The
question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of
men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived
of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre
chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give
any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic NO. And Mr. Washington
thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to
make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly
impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-
owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift
and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to
civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the
long run.
3. He advocates common-school
and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning;
but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain
open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained
by their graduates.
This triple paradox in Mr.
Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of colored
Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior,
through Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of
revolt and revenge; they hate the white South blindly and distrust the
white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite action, think
that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the
United States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually
made this programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the United
States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii, and
the Philippines,--for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying
and brute force?
The other class of Negroes
who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said little aloud. They
deprecate the sight of scattered counsels, of internal disagreement; and
especially they dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest
man an excuse for a general discharge of venom from small-minded opponents.
Nevertheless, the questions involved are so fundamental and serious that
it is difficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E.
Bowen, and other representatives of this group, can much longer be silent.
Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth
according to ability.
They acknowledge Mr. Washington's
invaluable service in counselling patience and courtesy in such demands;
they do not ask that ignorant black men vote when ignorant whites are debarred,
or that any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage should not be applied;
they know that the low social level of the mass of the race is responsible
for much discrimination against it, but they also know, and the nation
knows, that relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result
of the Negro's degradation; they seek the abatement of this relic of barbarism,
and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all agencies of social
power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ. They advocate,
with Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro common schools supplemented
by thorough industrial training; but they are surprised that a man of Mr.
Washington's insight cannot see that no such educational system ever has
rested or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college
and university, and they insist that there is a demand for a few such institutions
throughout the South to train the best of the Negro youth as teachers,
professional men, and leaders.
This group of men honor Mr.
Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward the white South; they
accept the "Atlanta Compromise" in its broadest interpretation; they recognize,
with him, many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment,
in this section; they know that no easy task has been laid upon a region
already tottering under heavy burdens. But, nevertheless, they insist that
the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in indiscriminate
flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising uncompromisingly
those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and
urging their fellows to do the same, but at the same time in remembering
that only a firm adherence to their higher ideals and aspirations will
ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility. They do not expect
that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated,
will come in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices
of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely certain
that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily
throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way
for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing
themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in
season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that
color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as
well as white boys.
In failing thus to state
plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their people, even
at the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of American
Negroes would shirk a heavy responsibility,--a responsibility to themselves,
a responsibility to the struggling masses, a responsibility to the darker
races of men whose future depends so largely on this American experiment,
but especially a responsibility to this nation,--this common Fatherland.
It is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to
aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do
so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconcilia- tion between the North
and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be
a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment
caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial
slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation
into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really
men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to
oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition
involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to
sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster
to our children, black and white.
First, it is the duty of
black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of
Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly
hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate
endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating
than to the best thought of the South. The South is not "solid"; it is
a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are
fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating
is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded
criticism is what the South needs,--needs it for the sake of her own white
sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and
moral development.
Today even the attitude of
the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all
cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen
fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some
of the educated see a menace in his upward development, while others--usually
the sons of the masters--wish to help him to rise. National opinion has
enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to protect
the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of
the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery,
especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated
who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged
his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused
to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought
and prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against "the South"
is unjust; but to use the same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing
Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator
Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of thinking black
men.
It would be unjust to Mr.
Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has opposed
movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials
to the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken
against lynching, and in other ways has openly or silently set his influence
against sinister schemes and unfortunate happenings. Notwithstanding this,
it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression
left by Mr. Washington's propaganda is, first, that the South is justified
in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro's degradation;
secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro's failure to rise more quickly
is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise
depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous
half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first,
slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro's
position; second, industrial and common- school training were necessarily
slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by
higher institutions,--it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different
develop- ment was possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before
1880; and, third, while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must
strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless
his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged,
by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope
for great success.
In his failure to realize
and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised.
His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the
burden of the Negro problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as
critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs
to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our
energies to righting these great wrongs.
The South ought to be led,
by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full
duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North--her
co-partner in guilt--cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with
gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by "policy"
alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive
the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
The black men of America
have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,--a forward movement
to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington
preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must
hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying
in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless
host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South,
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,--so far as he, the South, or the Nation,
does this,--we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized
and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords
to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the
Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
Source: The Souls of Black
Folk, originally published in 1903, and available online
as part of the University of Virginia's
Hypertext Project.
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