Who had the better idea?

[Unkotare]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

 

[TheOldSchool]

It's very debatable. But Dubois' ideas were far more American. In the sense that all men are created equal and are born with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

[Pickle]

I don't know the philosophy of either men.

Would someone cater to my laziness and give us a brief summary of their thoughts and this duality therein?

 

[Publius1787]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

Washington by far. Washington may have worked within white society, but he garnered millions of dollars to black higher education from wealthy whites. Washington's methods were reasonable, progressive, and achievable given the majority culture of the day. Indeed, it is amazing how many blacks benefitted from the institutions he helped create; nothing short of untold millions by todays standard. Dubois was just a flamethrower who more than likely prolonged the struggle than actually helped it along. Dubois was a socialist and Stalin admirer who eventually converted to communism as the means to achieve black equality. When the NAACP turned against it's radical communist members, Dubois tendered his resignation and moved to Soviet backed Ghana, of which, he believed was on the path to a communist state. Washington had the ear of influential whites from Carnage to Rockefeller, he achieved millions of dollars for black advancement, and founded the institutions of higher learning that would become launching pads toward black equality. Dubois turned away from Washington and his network for the company of white socialists and communists. This is why liberals love Dubois and ignore Washington. Take a simple college African American history course, or, read a simple African American history textbook to see how much more Dubois is placed on a pedestal higher than that of Washington. Note how they ignore the communist Stalin loving radicalism of Dubois and shun Washington's use to capitalism to advance black society.

 

[Publius1787]

It's very debatable. But Dubois' ideas were far more American. In the sense that all men are created equal and are born with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Dubois was a Stalin admirer and a socialist that later converted to communism. There is nothing more un-American than that.

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois - Discover the Networks

Born in a small town in western Massachusetts in 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois became one of the 20th Century's' leading black scholars and a passionate advocate for civil rights.

The descendant of a well established Berkshire black family and a Bahamaian plantation owner, Bu Bois was raised as an only-child in Great Barrington, Massachusetts by his impoverished, crippled mother. In 1885 he received a scholarship to attend Fisk College in Nashville, Tennessee, where the Northern-born-and-bred young man was introduced to life in the segregated, post-Civil War South. After two years at Fisk, he went on to graduate cum laude from Harvard University in 1890. His application for a scholarship to attend the University of Berlin was denied, but ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes intervened and ensured that Du Bois had the funds necessary to study in Berlin. While in Europe, Du Bois showed an interest in socialism and occasionally attended rallies of the German Social Democratic Party. After two years in Germany, DuBois returned to Harvard and in 1896 completed his PhD dissertation, which was titled The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in America, 1638-1870; this became the first volume in Harvard's Historical Series.

After two years teaching at Wilberforce College in Ohio, Du Bois received a fellowship to study Negro slums in Philadelphia, which resulted in his writing another book, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), and earned him an invitation to join the faculty at Atlanta University. In 1903 he published the classic, The Souls of Black Folk, which included a chapter detailing his differences with Booker T. Washington, who was then considered the most influential black moderate in the United States. DuBois thought that Washington was inappropriately content with black social progress that was both too slow and too small.

Du Bois advocated the so-called "Talented Tenth" theory, which held that the intellectual elite of the black community embodied the best hope of making inroads into American social and political life, and thereby paving the way for other blacks to follow. It was the Talented Tenth, said DuBois, who could uplift the rest of the black race. "Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the bottom upward?" asked Du Bois rhetorically. "Never; it is, ever was, and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress . . . How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. . . . All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have, for the talented few, centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living."

In 1909 DuBois was one of the organizers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which, to his dismay, included mostly white leaders. DuBois stayed with the group for 25 years, influencing its policy by editing its magazine, Crisis.

In 1911 Du Bois joined the Socialist Party. He left the Party a year later, in part because of what he perceived as racism within its ranks, and in part because he wished to devote his full efforts to the endorsement of Woodrow Wilson's 1912 Presidential bid. But DuBois remained a committed socialist and continued his contributions to the socialist press. He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which prefigured his appointment as a consultant to the American delegation at the 1945 founding of the United Nations at San Francisco.

Du Bois' 1927 visit to the USSR inspired him to call the Soviet system "the most hopeful vehicle for the world." In 1935 he published the book Black Reconstruction, which offered a Marxist interpretation of the Reconstruction Era. In 1942 DuBois signed a statement of the Citizens Committee to Free Earl Browder, the general secretary of the Communist Party (and as the Venona transcripts later revealed the leader of a large Soviet espionage ring), who was then serving a four-year term for using false passports; President Franklin D. Roosevelt released Browder from most of his sentence as a gesture of goodwill to Stalin.

DuBois also signed a letter protesting the arrest of Chilean poet and sometime diplomat, the Communist and Soviet agent Pablo Neruda, who was briefly held on charges involving a conspiracy to assassinate Leon Trotsky. In April 1947 Du Bois signed a statement titled "We Negro Americans," which defended the Communist Party. In 1948 he protested the arrest of the twelve top Communist Party leaders. DuBois was also active in such fronts as the American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, the American Committee for a Democratic Greece, and the Civil Rights Congress. In addition, he supported Communist Party educational fronts like the Jefferson School of Social Science in New York and the California Labor School in San Francisco. In 1948 he signed an Appeal to the U.S. Government to End the Cold War and to confer with the Soviet Union; this was precisely at the time when the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was being contemplated as a means of defending against the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe which had led to a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.

DuBois was also involved, as a sponsor and panelist, in the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, a landmark Communist gathering for "peace" at the New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in March 1949. This was another Communist effort to blunt the West's response to Communist expansion. The forum was chiefly concerned with opposing the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, deriding the proposed NATO defense pact, and condemning the Truman Doctrine and American Cold War policy in general.

As Du Bois grew older, he dropped any independent cover he had maintained openly joined the Communist cause. In 1950, at the age 82, he made his first bid for public office, running for the New York State Senate on the American Labor Party ticket. He lost the election but remained committed to his cause. Eight years later, he joined Trotskyists, ex-Communists, and independent radicals in proposing the creation of a united leftwing coalition to challenge for seats in the New York State elections. In 1961 he joined the Communist Party USA and emigrated to Ghana to live in Kwame Nkrumah's socialist police state, which he preferred to his native land. He made Herbert Aptheker, the chief theoretician of the American Communist Party, the executor of his papers.

DuBois became a citizen of Ghana. He died there in 1963, at age 95. In 1963 the Communist Party named its new youth group (a successor to the Young Communist League) the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs.

W.E.B. Dubois' Obituary of Stalin

Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also—and this was the highest proof of his greatness—he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.

Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that: he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions nor induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.

His judgment of men was profound. He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bred and insulting attitude of Liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham Trotsky offered.

Three great decisions faced Stalin in power and he met them magnificently: first, the problem of the peasants, then the West European attack, and last the Second World War. The poor Russian peasant was the lowest victim of tsarism, capitalism and the Orthodox Church. He surrendered the Little White Father easily; he turned less readily but perceptibly from his ikons; but his kulaks clung tenaciously to capitalism and were near wrecking the revolution when Stalin risked a second revolution and drove out the rural bloodsuckers.

Then came intervention, the continuing threat of attack by all nations, halted by the Depression, only to be re-opened by Hitlerism. It was Stalin who steered the Soviet Union between Scylla and Charybdis: Western Europe and the U.S. were willing to betray her to fascism, and then had to beg her aid in the Second World War. A lesser man than Stalin would have demanded vengeance for Munich, but he had the wisdom to ask only justice for his fatherland. This Roosevelt granted but Churchill held back. The British Empire proposed first to save itself in Africa and southern Europe, while Hitler smashed the Soviets.

The Second Front dawdled, but Stalin pressed unfalteringly ahead. He risked the utter ruin of socialism in order to smash the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini. After Stalingrad the Western World did not know whether to weep or applaud. The cost of victory to the Soviet Union was frightful. To this day the outside world has no dream of the hurt, the loss and the sacrifices. For his calm, stern leadership here, if nowhere else, arises the deep worship of Stalin by the people of all the Russias.

Then came the problem of Peace. Hard as this was to Europe and America, it was far harder to Stalin and the Soviets. The conventional rulers of the world hated and feared them and would have been only too willing to see the utter failure of this attempt at socialism. At the same time the fear of Japan and Asia was also real. Diplomacy therefore took hold and Stalin was picked as the victim. He was called in conference with British imperialism represented by its trained and well-fed aristocracy; and with the vast wealth and potential power of America represented by its most liberal leader in half a century.

Here Stalin showed his real greatness. He neither cringed nor strutted. He never presumed, he never surrendered. He gained the friendship of Roosevelt and the respect of Churchill. He asked neither adulation nor vengeance. He was reasonable and conciliatory. But on what he deemed essential, he was inflexible. He was willing to resurrect the League of Nations, which had insulted the Soviets. He was willing to fight Japan, even though Japan was then no menace to the Soviet Union, and might be death to the British Empire and to American trade. But on two points Stalin was adamant: Clemenceau’s “Cordon Sanitaire” must be returned to the Soviets, whence it had been stolen as a threat. The Balkans were not to be left helpless before Western exploitation for the benefit of land monopoly. The workers and peasants there must have their say.

Such was the man who lies dead, still the butt of noisy jackals and of the ill-bred men of some parts of the distempered West. In life he suffered under continuous and studied insult; he was forced to make bitter decisions on his own lone responsibility. His reward comes as the common man stands in solemn acclaim.

Dubois and Margaret Sanger on "The Negro Project."

 

[katsteve2012]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

Good question that likely could be best debated and understood by those from that era who were most affected by the belief systems of both men. But the question did remind me of the following poem that my Grandmother read to me as a boy.

"Booker T. and W.E.B."

"Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois"

By Dudley Randall

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook,
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail?
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.--

"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.

Dudley Randall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Publius1787]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

Good question that likely could be best debated and understood by those from that era who were most affected by the belief systems of both men. But the question did remind me of the following poem that my Grandmother read to me as a boy.

"Booker T. and W.E.B."

"Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois"

By Dudley Randall

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook,
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail?
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.--

"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.

Dudley Randall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Washington knew that without a skilled black middle class, studying the arts were a waste of time. In other words, they had to burrow out a share of the skilled labor force. Washington therefore understood that the liberal arts were fine for the pursuits of black elites, however, that the majority of blacks were unskilled, uneducated, and without reasonable employment. Thus, the largest share of black education should be directed at improving the skills of black workers to compete against white labor so that their children may enjoy the liberal/finer arts. It was a natural step in the process to equality and no people in world history have ever skipped the essential step into skilled labor and made their way directly into liberal arts to any great deal of success. I would look to this quote by John Adams as somewhat of the same idea.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5S0DIXk2M]John Adams On The Finer Arts - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Publius1787]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

What are you using this forum for? To get others to do your research for you? Who sets up a thread and doesn't follow up?

 

[Unkotare]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

What are you using this forum for? To get others to do your research for you? Who sets up a thread and doesn't follow up?

What "follow up" are you looking for?

 

[Publius1787]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

What are you using this forum for? To get others to do your research for you? Who sets up a thread and doesn't follow up?

What "follow up" are you looking for?

what's your input on the issue? This has always been a fascinating one for me.

 

[katsteve2012]

Washington vs. Du Bois, who had the right track?

Good question that likely could be best debated and understood by those from that era who were most affected by the belief systems of both men. But the question did remind me of the following poem that my Grandmother read to me as a boy.

"Booker T. and W.E.B."

"Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois"

By Dudley Randall

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook,
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail?
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.--

"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.

Dudley Randall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Washington knew that without a skilled black middle class, studying the arts were a waste of time. In other words, they had to burrow out a share of the skilled labor force. Washington therefore understood that the liberal arts were fine for the pursuits of black elites, however, that the majority of blacks were unskilled, uneducated, and without reasonable employment. Thus, the largest share of black education should be directed at improving the skills of black workers to compete against white labor so that their children may enjoy the liberal/finer arts. It was a natural step in the process to equality and no people in world history have ever skipped the essential step into skilled labor and made their way directly into liberal arts to any great deal of success. I would look to this quote by John Adams as somewhat of the same idea.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5S0DIXk2M]John Adams On The Finer Arts - YouTube[/ame]

I would agree with that assessment given that period of time. Washington was obviously more focused on what would best work for the masses of that era.


Personally, I feel that Dubois was more of a forward thinking visionary, but the viability of putting to use what he believed in at that time would have been a challenge.

 

[Publius1787]

Good question that likely could be best debated and understood by those from that era who were most affected by the belief systems of both men. But the question did remind me of the following poem that my Grandmother read to me as a boy.

"Booker T. and W.E.B."

"Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois"

By Dudley Randall

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook,
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail?
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.--

"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.

Dudley Randall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Washington knew that without a skilled black middle class, studying the arts were a waste of time. In other words, they had to burrow out a share of the skilled labor force. Washington therefore understood that the liberal arts were fine for the pursuits of black elites, however, that the majority of blacks were unskilled, uneducated, and without reasonable employment. Thus, the largest share of black education should be directed at improving the skills of black workers to compete against white labor so that their children may enjoy the liberal/finer arts. It was a natural step in the process to equality and no people in world history have ever skipped the essential step into skilled labor and made their way directly into liberal arts to any great deal of success. I would look to this quote by John Adams as somewhat of the same idea.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5S0DIXk2M]John Adams On The Finer Arts - YouTube[/ame]

I would agree with that assessment given that period of time. Washington was obviously more focused on what would best work for the masses of that era.


Personally, I feel that Dubois was more of a forward thinking visionary, but the viability of putting to use what he believed in at that time would have been a challenge.

Indeed, a dangerous challenge at that. Though I believe Dubois pushed whites away while Washington brought them in. In the long run, however, Dubois proved to be a non-entity as compared to the academic institutions bred from Washington that made the educational maturity of blacks rise to that of whites and make the 50's & 60's possible. Funny how Dubois' talented tenth was granted by Washington's ideology, not that of Dubois.

 

[Unkotare]

What are you using this forum for? To get others to do your research for you? Who sets up a thread and doesn't follow up?

What "follow up" are you looking for?

what's your input on the issue?

What "input" are you looking for? Are you unfamiliar with the history?

 

[Publius1787]

What "follow up" are you looking for?

what's your input on the issue?

What "input" are you looking for? Are you unfamiliar with the history?

Obviously not. Read both Dubois and Washington. Found the Souls of Black Folk in which Dubois criticized Washington without merit.

Who do you believe had the better idea?

 

[Unkotare]

Dubois proved to be a non-entity as compared to the academic institutions bred from Washington that made the educational maturity of blacks rise to that of whites and make the 50's & 60's possible. .

He hardly "proved to be a non-entity."

 

[Unkotare]

What's interesting, given their respective positions and attitudes, is that Washington was born in the South to former slaves, whereas Du Bois was born in MA to free blacks.

 

[Unkotare]

what's your input on the issue?

What "input" are you looking for? Are you unfamiliar with the history?

Obviously not.

Not so obvious, but if you say so...

 

[Unkotare]

Who do you believe had the better idea?

Washington's approach strikes me - objectively - as more practical, but I suppose it would be unrealistic not to expect Du Bois' take to find many eager ears, especially in a country founded on the ideals and principles that ours was.

 

[Publius1787]

Who do you believe had the better idea?

Washington's approach strikes me - objectively - as more practical, but I suppose it would be unrealistic not to expect Du Bois' take to find many eager ears, especially in a country founded on the ideals and principles that ours was.

What ideals and principles might those be?

 

[Unkotare]

Who do you believe had the better idea?

Washington's approach strikes me - objectively - as more practical, but I suppose it would be unrealistic not to expect Du Bois' take to find many eager ears, especially in a country founded on the ideals and principles that ours was.

What ideals and principles might those be?

Freedom, liberty, equal protection under the law, self-determination. You should try to learn something about US History. It's quite interesting.