This comparative study of the works of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois is in keeping with my chosen research topic of southern American black business ownership and focuses on what appears to be a rather “apples and oranges” approach to labor and hiring practices that Blacks were subjected to after the Civil War. However, upon further inspection both scholars met in the middle when trying to extend the concept of equality to former slaves in the newly constructed hierarchy of the American south and industrialized north.
After the Civil War newly freed Blacks faced the all-important goal of trying to establish a new identity in the labor force of post-Civil War society. Many white southerners opposed the hiring of Black people in a wage-based capacity rather that slavery. This was based on industrial labor as a means of financial increase for Blacks thereby fostering a compromise between Southerners and Northerners. Two figures lead the way in this endeavor. Booker T. Washington, an educator from Virginia; and W. E. B. DuBois, a historian and social activist from Massachusetts. They both had different viewpoints on how to uplift the former enslaved community. More is known about their roles in education than in their fight for equality in the labor force of the twentieth century.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia in the 1850’s and studied industrial education at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. In his 1901 book Up From Slavery, the focus was on industrial education used to train economically successful Blacks in practical, everyday working skills. William Edward Burghardt DuBois and his approach toward the education of African-Americans during and after Reconstruction, has often been considered the opposite end of the spectrum. He attended Fisk University and later received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (the first African - American to do so). He believed that Blacks would rise through their intellectual accomplishments and achieve leadership roles. He also believed that Blacks having the right to vote, and access to the political arena, was the answer.
Booker T. Washington (left) and W. E. B. DuBois (right)
This approach would automatically put an end to various social, economic, and racist issues. He felt that Blacks should receive a liberal arts education, just like their white counterparts. His involvement in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and his serving as editor of the Black political magazine The Crisis speak to his belief that educational and economic progress would not happen unless there was a political agenda in place as well. DuBois, whose well-known works include The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction (1935), held a uniquely Marxist interpretation of events, both socially and politically.
Washington, and DuBois were both central figures in advancing the cause of Black people across, social, economic, political, and business lines. They were born twelve years apart and shared many underlying beliefs and feelings regarding nineteenth century ideals concerning the improvement of Black people during reconstruction. The one idea common to both was the that Black enterprise was the best means to advance the race. The National Negro Business League was conceived by DuBois, but Washington actually was the one who put it on the map as part of Tuskegee Institute. His curriculum was primarily farming techniques, blacksmithing, bricklaying, and printing. The main component of his philosophy was that society should include the needs of individual students and of society. It should be functional and aid in preparing students for the labor market of the day. He felt a liberal arts curriculum was beneficial, but he attempted to educate Blacks against the backdrop of a racially segregated South, which was what most Black southerners were dealing with. He wanted them to go from sharecropping and debt to landownership and small business success.
In 1899 DuBois sponsored a conference in Atlanta entitled “The Negro in Business” as part of The Negro Business Men’s Leagues. Booker T. led the organizational meeting in 1900. The league quickly grew into 3,000 members by 1915. It promoted the idea of a segregated economy for Blacks and the establishing of Black businessmen on the same level as whites. This viewpoint was championed by successful northern business leaders who Washington
met with during his fundraising campaigns. They included Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Wanamaker. With respect to northern donors, he promised to maintain the Protestant work ethic in helping Blacks become established.
In the early Twentieth century 8.5 million Black people made up the 12 percent of the working population according to DuBois. He prepared the Atlanta Studies, The Department of Labor Studies, and the manuscript The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study which talked about the condition of Blacks in the south. He found that entrepreneurs made up 2 percent of the workforce, 60 percent were industrial and domestic workers, and 25 percent were unemployed. Prior to this in 1865, the emancipation of four million slaves, effected free labor market conditions and placed a unique value on African -American labor and compensation. Labor regulations in Gulf states focused on premiums of 5 dollars monthly for foremen, engineers, and mechanics. In Georgia, however, wage payment went by classification and worker, whether domestic or agricultural; with monthly compensation specified by class. The Freedmen’s Bureau further weakened Black demographic labor rankings with emphasis on equality and individualism. DuBois chronicled this with his findings that Negroes who worked sugar plantations had some of the lowest earning potential. This is what Washington worked so hard to change. Although Washington and DuBois appear to be on opposing teams, they are really just different sides of the same coin. Both were central in advancing African-Americans across economic, social, business, and political lines.
Source List:
Foner, Eric. "The Remarkable Life of W.E.B. Du Bois; W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 30 00, 2001): 130, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login? qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fremarkable-life-w-e-b-du-bois-fight-equality%2Fdocview%2F195558101%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.
Gardner, Booker T. "The Educational Contributions of Booker T. Washington." The Journal of
Negro Education 44, no. 4 (1975): 502-18. Accessed April 29, 2021. doi:10.2307/2966635.
Grossman, Jonathan. “Black Studies in the Department of Labor 1897 – 1907” U. S.
Department of Labor, Accessed March23, 2022
Ruef, Martin. “Constructing Labor Markets: The Valuation of Black Labor in the U.S. South,
1831 to 1867.” American Sociological Review 77, no. 6 (2012): 970–98.
Smock, Raymond W., ed. “Booker T. Washington and the National Negro Business League” In
Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan, 98–109. University Press of Mississippi, 1988. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2tvj64.10.
Examples for Further Reading:
Norrell, Robert J. "Have Historians Given Booker T. Washington a Bad Rap?" The Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education, no. 62 (2008): 62-69. Accessed March 23, 2022. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40407375.
Siemerling, Winfried. "W.E.B. Du Bois, Hegel, and the Staging of Alterity." Callaloo 24, no. 1
(2001): 325-33. Accessed March 23, 2022.
Young, Alfred. "The Educational Philosophy of Booker T. Washington A Perspective for Black
Liberation." Phylon (1960-) 37, no. 3 (1976): 224-35. Accessed March23, 2022.
doi:10.2307/274451.
Images:
W.E.B. DuBois by James E. Purdy, 1907, gelatin silver print, from the National Portrait
Gallery which has explicitly released this digital image under the CC0 license.
Booker T. Washington by Harris and Ewing, January 1905, Digitally retouched from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
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