A Summary of Their Differences

DuBois versus Booker T.

Washington gained notoriety and was soon a celebrity among blacks and whites as
the proponent of black advancement through vocational training and racial
conciliation.

Booker T. Washington, a freed slave from Virginia, attended the Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute. There he was exposed to one of the best examples of
elementary and secondary black vocational education in the nation. Hampton,
founded by the AMA and the Freedmen's Bureau, focused its efforts on preparing young
blacks throughout the South to fill jobs in the skilled trades. Washington became an
apprentice of Hampton's president and decided to lead his own school after
graduating. In 1881, he took the helm at the fledgling Tuskegee Institute. Tuskegee
quickly became famous for its practical curriculum and focus on preparing blacks for
many agricultural and mechanical trades. Washington gained notoriety and was soon a
celebrity among blacks and whites as the proponent of black advancement through
vocational training and racial conciliation. He believed firmly that the best way for
freed slaves and other blacks to attain equality in the United States was through the
accumulation of power, wealth, and respect by means of hard work in practical
trades. The inscription on the Tuskegee University monument to Booker T. Washington
reads, "He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress
through education and industry."

DuBois felt quite strongly that Washington's universal vocational training only
perpetuated the servitude of slavery. He believed equality and a sense of purpose
would only come if talented blacks were allowed to study the arts and sciences.

W.E.B. DuBois took a very different view of how blacks ought to function in society.
Raised in Massachusetts and first exposed to real segregation during his undergraduate
work at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, DuBois believed that it was essential
that blacks be allowed training not only in vocational fields, but also in the liberal
arts. A fierce advocate for civil rights, DuBois feuded very openly with Washington
over the proper strategy for educating black university students. DuBois felt quite
strongly that Washington's universal vocational training only perpetuated the servitude
of slavery. He believed equality and a sense of purpose would only come if talented
blacks were allowed to study the arts and sciences. Then they could become leaders
and teachers for the next generation.

It is impossible to say which of these views triumphed. Each, in its own way, lives on
today in modern HBCUs [historically black colleges]. Many colleges and universities
seem to be embracing both-students receive practical, technical training grounded in
the liberal arts.

Throughout the period of this debate, attendance at HBCUs increased substantially, as

did financial support from the government and individual philanthropists such as John
D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. HBCUs also gained credibility and respect when
the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools began formally surveying and
accrediting them in 1928.
The Talented Tenth
W.E.B. DuBois
September 1903

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved

by its exceptional men. The problem of education,
then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the
Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the
Best of this race that they may guide the Mass
away from the contamination and death of the
Worst, in their own and other races. Now the
training of men is a difficult and intricate task. Its
technique is a matter for educational experts, but its
object is for the vision of seers. If we make money
the object of man-training, we shall develop
money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of
education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we
make manhood the object of the work of the schools; intelligence, broad sympathy,
knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it; this is the
curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we
may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the
child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.

Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by
the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation
on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? 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; and the two historic mistakes which have hindered that progress were the
thinking first that no more could ever rise save the few already risen; or second, that it
would better the uprisen to pull the risen down.

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. We will not quarrel as to
just what the university of the Negro should teach or how it should teach it; I willingly
admit that each soul and each race-soul needs its own peculiar curriculum. But this is
true: A university is a human invention for the transmission of knowledge and culture
from generation to generation, through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and
for this work no other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools.

All men cannot go to college but some men must…

[A member of the Talented Tenth] is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who
sets the ideals of the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social
movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social leadership more
than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall back upon, no long established
customs, no strong family ties, no well defined social classes. All these things must be
slowly and painfully evolved. The preacher was, even before the war, the group leader of
the Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally this preacher was
ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the older type by better
educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct work and by direct influence on
other preachers, and on congregations, the college-bred preacher has an opportunity for
reformatory work and moral inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated.

What under the present circumstance, must a system of education do in order to raise the
Negro as quickly as possible in the scale of civilization? The answer to this question
seems to me clear: It must strengthen the Negro’s character, increase his knowledge and
teach him to earn a living…I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men
carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.

Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless
inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach
work; it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of
thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and
Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be
saved by its exceptional men.
 Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895
Atlanta Compromise Speech

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of

Directors and Citizens:

One-third of the population of the South is of the

Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil,
or moral welfare of this section can disregard this
element of our population and reach the highest
success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and
Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race
when I say that in no way have the value and
manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly
and generously recognized than by the managers of
this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its
progress. It is a recognition that will do more to
cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our
freedom.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the

professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the
South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the
South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is
this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is
that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of
us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall
prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains
and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to
draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life
and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a
field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange
tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I
say to my own race,“Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the
eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have
tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast
down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled
your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth
treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent
representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people,
helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of
head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom
the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure
in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most
patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have
proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed
of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their
graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no
foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours,
interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that
shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as
separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is
the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come
to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.
No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree
ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly
more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity
to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to
spend a dollar in an opera-house.
 Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois: How Should African-
Americans Deal with Education and Civil Rights?

Booker T. Washington on Education W.E.B. Du Bois on Education

Booker T. Washington on Civil Rights W.E.B. Du Bois on Civil Rights

 Debate: What is the Role of Education in Freeing African-Americans ?
3 Key Arguments
Opening Statement
Point 1: Argument 1:

Point 2:

Point 3:

Argument 2:

Questions to Ask the Opposing Group

Question 1:

Question 2:

Argument 3:

Concluding Statement
Most Important Point: