08: Dubois & Washington

Tennessee State Standards

US.11 Using textual evidence, compare and contrast the ideas and philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. (C, P)

W.E.B. Dubois

William Edward Burghart DuBois was decidedly not what most white Americans thought of when they thought about black Americans. He was born to a poor but respected family in a Massachusetts town with a population that was less than one percent black. He had degrees from Harvard and the University of Berlin. He became one of the country's leading sociologists, and was an eloquent orator and stylish writer.

DuBois was best known for his forceful disagreements with another African American leader, Booker T. Washington, most famously expressed in DuBois's 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk. While Washington stressed self-help and material gain over seeking equal legal and social rights with whites, DuBois believed Washington's approach would only continue black oppression.

In 1905, DuBois took a leading role in the Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he helped found in 1909. Disillusioned with the direction of the NAACP, he resigned in 1934. From 1932 to 1944 he was head of the Department of Sociology at Atlanta University and has been called the Father of American Sociology. He died in Ghana in 1963, at the age of 95.