African Americans During the Gilded Age: Struggles & Strategies for Equality

1. Can you think of any group of people that might have been worse off than new immigrants during the gilded age?

2. Life at the turn of the century for African Americans • Violence • KKK: threats, intimidation, actual violence • Lynchings: death • “Separate but equal” (Plessy v. Fergusson, 1896) • Jim Crowe Laws: segregation by law • Voting rights decreased: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clause (1867’) • Disrespect – not making eye contact, tipping hat, et cetera • Not much better in the North (dejure v. defacto segregation) or West (debt peonage)

3. What do you do???

4. Booker T. Washington • 1856-1915 – born a slave • Economic prosperity through hard-work & education • Founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Alabama) • Industrial education • Focused on education/vocation & due process (legal) • Appease white people – Atlanta Compromise (1895) • Did not push social & political (voting) • Accommodation/acceptance • Later worked with Roosevelt & Taft

5. Booker T. Washington • 1856-1915 (born a slave) • economic prosperity through hard-work & education • Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute • Due Process/Legal Rights • Did not push social & political (voting) • Accommodation/acceptance W.E.B. DuBois • 1868-1963 (MA) • Political, social, economic & educational equality • Talented Tenth – small group, college educated African Americans • The Crisis – expose injustice

6. STOP HERE ___ j

7. W.E.B. Dubois • 1868-1963 (MA) • How will this time frame impact DuBois??? • “All men are created equal” and should be treated COMPLETELY equal • Political, social, economic & educational equality • Achieve these goals through: • Talented Tenth – small group, college education • Fight for it! Now! (not advocating physical violence) • The Crisis (EXPOSE INJUSTICE) • Sam Hose’s knuckles (1899) • "The point is he was black. Blackness must be punished. Blackness is the crime of crimes ... It is therefore necessary, as every white scoundrel in the nation knows, to let slip no opportunity of punishing this crime of crimes • Niagara Movement (1905) leads to NAACP (1909)

8. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF DUBOIS

9. Who is who? • "The wisest of 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 artificial forcing. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a dollar in an opera house." • "Henceforth, the destiny of the race could be conceived as leading neither to assimilation nor separatism but to proud, enduring hyphenation.“ • "Once we were told: Be worthy and fit and the ways are open. Today the avenues of advancement in the army, navy, and civil service, and even in business and professional life, are continually closed to black applicants of proven fitness, simply on the bald excuse of race and color."

10. What did the two men have in common? • The importance of education • Need to do something

11. How did the two men differ? • Washington’s only focus education and fair legal proceedings • When: Gradual • Dubois wanted complete equality (social portion weighed heavily on him) • When: Now

12. Whose approach to you agree with?

13. This change your decision ????

14. US HISTORY II COMPARING CIVIL RIGHTS STRATEGIES Booker T. Washington W.E.B. DUBOIS