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Compare And Contrast Booker T. Washington And To Joy My Freedom

Decent Essays

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, blacks were in a constant fight for advancement and progress. However, class divisions gave rise to two contrasting platforms led by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. By examining the conditions and actions of African American working-class women in Atlanta from Tera W. Hunter’s To ‘Joy My Freedom, the platform that would most resonate with the African Americans’ quest for progress would be found in W.E.B. Du Bois. The platforms raised by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois represent the two most widely proclaimed and debated issues of their time, which all stemmed from the ideology of racial uplift. Washington believed in the value of submitting to white authority while putting our skills to a very basic vocational education—through industrial schools as a measure of complacent labor—in exchange for the eventual freedom and due process of the law (Washington 1-2). W.E.B. Du Bois, on the other hand, advocated a different position. He rejected submission towards white authority, calling for advancement, …show more content…

African-American used strategies of quitting, stealing breaks, feigning illness, and sloughing off at work over grievances and discontentment. Quitting may not have led to a higher living standard or better work environment, but it prevented employers of having complete control over their labor (Hunter 28, 61). Working-class women were able to conduct their own affairs by mitigating white supremacy and the market economy, while making it known that they would not assent passively to oppression (Hunter 28, 76). In the 1860s, African Americans began openly criticizing police brutality and calling for the employment of black officers. In the justice system, blacks suffered disproportionately to the point of self-defense (Hunter 67, 135). This ties into the platform laid out by W.E.B. Du Bois, because it addresses some of the civil liberties denied and conducted by

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