Throughout the impactful years of 1877 to 1915 African Americans faced awful degrees of poverty and discrimination. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois offered effective strategies in order to deal with these prominent problems, but their strategies for handling these issues were significantly different. Washington strongly believed that African Americans had been handed their rights but had done nothing to deserve them. He believed equality had to be achieved by living in the status quo and learning how to use rights properly. Du Bois on the other hand believed that black people deserved the rights they were given and he demanded equality now instead of later. Clearly, these two men had very clashing ideas and approaches to the problems faced by African Americans at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
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Washington believed that equality should not be demanded by Black Americans but rather be earned. In 1895, Washington delivered the “Atlanta Compromise Address,” in which he urged African Americans to gain economic stability before seeking equality with whites. In this speech he said, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be yours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges,” which meant he thought it was important to have rights but it was far more important to know how use these rights. Industrial education was important and advocated by Washington and he had many supporter of this ideology. One of those being Ida Barnett, who said in Document H, “Industrial education for the Negro is Booker T. Washington’s hobby.” T. Thomas Fortune also saw much success and value in the education system developed by Washington, saying in Document G, that Tuskegee Normal was an important and significant school that didn’t waste time on things such as “dead languages or superfluous studies of any
Washington believed that equality should not be demanded by Black Americans but rather be earned. In 1895, Washington delivered the “Atlanta Compromise Address,” in which he urged African Americans to gain economic stability before seeking equality with whites. In this speech he said, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be yours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges,” which meant he thought it was important to have rights but it was far more important to know how use these rights. Industrial education was important and advocated by Washington and he had many supporter of this ideology. One of those being Ida Barnett, who said in Document H, “Industrial education for the Negro is Booker T. Washington’s hobby.” T. Thomas Fortune also saw much success and value in the education system developed by Washington, saying in Document G, that Tuskegee Normal was an important and significant school that didn’t waste time on things such as “dead languages or superfluous studies of any