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Discuss the role and significance of Booker T. Washington, William E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey as African American leaders in the period from the 1890's through to the 1920s...
The American national identity changed significantly following the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865. Then President Abraham Lincoln’s passage of the Emancipation Proclamation effectively ended black enslavement, marking the end of an American agricultural age, simultaneously hailing the arrival of a modern, urban era.
Where blacks used to be little more than a part of the American economy, the Emancipation Proclamation had forced them on the American public, and they became a part of a new American identity almost overnight. The dilemma of what to do about the glaring spectre of slavery manifested itself through the emergence of several influential black leaders, all of who affected American society differently. Among these leaders were Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
Among the first leaders to emerge was the scholar Booker T. Washington, a man whose words shook black society to its core with his controversial articles and ideals. The emergence of a freed black race, though a welcome change, was still regarded by many as a more subtle social inequity, a proxy institution installed in place of slavery. America was one of the last countries in the New World to adopt an emancipated black society into its mainstream; as a result, blacks in America constantly compared themselves to fully integrated nations such as Jamaica and Haiti. Washington believed that “in the matter of political and civil rights, including protection of life and property and even-handed justice in the courts, negroes in the West Indies [had] the advantage of negroes in the United States” (Washington 47). The segregation of black and white Americans naturally created a social rift, and as a result, Washington was all too cognizant of the significant racism that left whites supposedly superior to blacks. However, Washington came to realize that “all things considered, the negro in the United States [had] a better chance than [in] Africa” (Washington 47). Washington went so far as to assert that “in certain directions the negro has had greater opportunities in the States in which he served as a slave than he has had in the States in which he has been for a century or more a free man” due to the fact that “in the South the negro has business opportunities that he does not have elsewhere” (Washington 48). Slavery, Washington concluded, benefited the black man in the long run as it created a society where white industries were socially and economically dependent on black labour to function. This dependency, Washington claimed, led to a need for blacks, while blacks in other societies were in a far worse position, left without a society base unique to themselves.
W.E.B. DU BOIS
For Du Bois, “the history of the American Negro” is based on strife, a “longing to attain self-conscious manhood”; his American identity does not prompt him to “Africanize America,” nor is he encouraged to “bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes—foolishly perhaps, but fervently—that Negro blood has yet a message for the world” (Du Bois 2005). Unlike Washington, Du Bois did not support the full assimilation of blacks into an idealist, race-less American society. On the contrary, he believed that “negro assimilation” was a “waste of double aims, a “seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals”; freedom hence was a “false means of salvation” (Du Bois 2005).
Du Bois understood emancipation to be a false means of pacification, another means for blacks to be sated with their inferior position in the American national identity. The so-called freedom was false, a means to keep blacks satisfied with what meagre reparations they were given after the Civil War. Slavery then became a scapegoat for the failure of blacks both formerly enslaved and newly freed to realise their potential. The institution of slavery was, “indeed, the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice” (Du Bois 2005). Du Bois would later become instrumental in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a group born from the combined efforts of a multi-racial league of scholars and activists. Where Washington sought the elevation of blacks and acceptance of what he thought to be a favourable position, Du Bois instead sought to make change through the government, to force society to see the inequities blacks faced with the help of like-minded individuals.
MARCUS GARVEY
Perhaps the most controversial of the three leaders, Marcus Garvey believed in black “allegiance to self”; that is, Garvey posited that blacks had to be true to their own identity, something that could not be achieved unless they return to “Africa, the Cradle of Civilization” (Hill 5). Born and raised in the Caribbean, Garvey was disenchanted with the emergence of black society in North America, believing that blacks could only rise above their station through repatriation to Africa. A staunch supporter of Liberia, Garvey’s belief in repatriation was bolstered by the failure of several black entrepreneurial ventures. Provoked by the rejection of blacks as equals in society, Marcus Garvey endorsed the empowerment of the black man but ultimately did not believe that blacks could exist as Americans, who he perceived to be a white society with a white identity. Emancipation marked the time “for the Negro to forget and cast behind him his hero worship and adoration of other races, and to start out immediately, to create and emulate heroes of his own” (Hill 3). Unlike Washington and Du Bois, who despite their differences sought to improve blacks in America, Garvey believed that blacks were introduced to America as natural subordinates, that they could not overcome the social injustices levied them in a country that only knew them to be slaves. Garvey did not believe blacks were incapable of empowerment; on the contrary, Garvey asserted that “the world [was] indebted to [blacks] for the benefits of civilization,” that blacks ought to have known “no clime, boundary, or nationality” (Hill 5). Founding the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Garvey understood black unity to mean the recreation of a black society where blacks were favoured.
While all three leaders were influential on the black national identity, the three were starkly contrasting among each other. Each leader pioneered ideologies still held by American intellectuals today. Whether repatriation to Africa, social reparations, or the deeply held belief of self-preservation and improvement, the three leaders above paved the way for the modern dialogue on race relations and black society’s place in American national identity.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Denton, Virginia Lantz. (1993) Booker T. Washington and the Adult Education Movement. Gainesville: U P of Florida.
Du Bois, W.E.B. (2005) “Strivings of the Negro People.” Available at http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/bldubois_strivings.htm.
Hill, Robert A. and Barbara Bair. (1987) Marcus Garvey, Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Berkeley: U of California P.
Hynes, Gerald C. (2005) “A Biographical Sketch of W.E.B. DuBois.” Online Resource, Available at: http://www.duboislc.org/man.html. The W.E.B. DuBois Learning Center Website.
Washington, Booker T. (1912) “Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?” from The Century Magazine, November 1912. New York: U of Virginia P.
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