History of the United States II / Unit 6 USH2 0778 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Washington and Du Bois
The idea
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois are often presented as a simple quarrel, but they held two coherent strategies for the same people. Washington urged economic self-improvement through industrial education first, with civil rights to follow, and won the support of wealthy White philanthropists. Du Bois demanded equal rights at once, universal suffrage and higher education for a talented tenth, and built the Niagara Movement and the NAACP to press for them.
In practice
A Tuskegee workshop training carpenters, beside a Niagara declaration demanding the vote.
Where people slip
The course presents both strategies in their own terms and makes neither its voice. Ask what each thought should come first, economic security or political rights, and what each was willing to accept in the meantime. Unit nine adds a third voice, Marcus Garvey's.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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