Civil_Rights

Erick Mitcham History 224 Thomas Aiello 2/11/10 Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois both had the same goal in mind. They both wanted equal citizenship for African Americans. They just had two different views about how to achieve it. They both agreed on somethings but they disagreed on most of their believes. Booker T. Washington thought that African Americans should give up the political fight and try to advance in the economic world. He believed that if he could show all the white people in America that all black people are not “liars and chicken thieves” ,as Robert Gibson put it, that they would eventually earn a equal citizenship. He got support from both southern and northern white people because he was willing for the time being to accept black people being inferior to white people. On the other hand W.E.B. DuBois was not. He believed they should be fighting for that equality now. He believed that young African Americans should get a higher education, especially in Liberal Arts. While he did agree with Booker T Washington on a few things. One of them was that it was up to black people themselves to make a difference. A higher education is very important but it was up to the individual person to get it. They both believed that one day civil equality would happen. They just believed in two different ways of making it happen. Today the United States has come a long way from the late 1800's. The country is a lot more tolerant of African Americans. We even voted a man into the Oval Office who is half African American. I'm not going to say the job Booker T Washington and W.E.D. DuBois set out to do is completely done. There are still people out there who cannot get past someone's race. But we have come a very long way.