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Review
| Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift, by Jacqueline M. Moore. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2003. 194 pages, $19.95, paper.
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| Jacqueline M. Moore offers readers a fresh analysis of the uplift activities of two of America's most written-about educators, Booker Talliaferro Washington and William Edward Burghart Du Bois. Both African American men emerged as outspoken "race men" at the dawn of the twentieth century and have garnered much public scrutiny, criticism, and praise for their efforts. Washington (c. 1856–1915) is frequently presented as the "Wizard of Tuskegee," willing to accommodate the more unpleasant aspects of American racism, if the nation and well-heeled philanthropists would endorse his program of industrial and normal school education for African Americans. Du Bois (1868–1963), the Fisk and Harvard-educated "radical" is too often described as the uncompromising champion of liberal arts education and full and immediate recognition of the citizenship rights of African Americans; the antithesis of Washington. |
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Moore rises to the challenge of moving beyond these flat characterizations of these men and presents their work within the larger context of American history and culture. In the process she considers autobiographical material by Du Bois and Washington, studies by their contemporaries, and more recent works. To her credit, however, Moore does not try to compete with the exhaustive studies offered by celebrated Washington biographer Louis Harlan or Du Bois scholar David Levering Lewis. She presents, instead, a text that can be of use both to those who have done extensive reading on the lives of these men and those for whom this text will be a gentle introduction to the complexities of being ambitious men steeped in the ideology of racial uplift in the early 1900s. Indeed, several features make this book especially appropriate for advanced high school and introductory level college courses. The chronology, for example, provides readers with a quick overview of major events in the lives of Washington and Du Bois—including Washington's 1856 birth in Virginia, the largest slaveholding state in the union, and Du Bois' New England boyhood—within the larger context of national history. |
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Beyond the mere statement of historical "facts," however, Moore encourages students to try their hand at the historian's craft. By devoting an entire section to primary documents, Moore encourages readers to draw their own conclusions about the subjects. One can glean from the letters and other documents, for example, not only information on the strained nature of their relationship after the 1903 publication of Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk. The book contained a scathing criticism of Washington, though it also noted the many matters upon which they agreed. It was written immediately after Washington's 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address, in which he outlined his plan for uplifting the race without challenging prevailing racist social, economic and political norms. |
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This book presents Du Bois and Washington as members of certain schools of thought, and not the sole spokespersons for any particular group. Moore illustrates their "connectedness" to others in the community by including images of Washington feeding chickens on the Alabama campus of his beloved Tuskegee Institute and strolling with Nannie Helen Burroughs, "fellow Baptist" and recognized leader in the African American women's club movement. In a similar fashion, evidence of Du Bois' work with white radical and cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Mary White Ovington, and the "Anti-Bookerite" and outspoken African American social activist, William Monroe Trotter, suggests that the so-called "Du Bois–Washington Controversy" was, in fact, just one part of an ongoing public debate among many different individuals over the most appropriate methods to be employed in the education and uplift of millions of African Americans. |
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Because the author ends the study shortly after the 1915 death of Washington, readers are left to ponder the accuracy and significance of Du Bois' eulogizing of his former adversary as "the greatest African American leader since Frederic Douglass" who, never the less, bore much of the responsibility for the sorry state of race relations at the time of his death. The balanced perspective engendered by this final analysis of Washington's contribution to the shaping of African American history and culture is, it seems, perhaps the most important point made by author Jacqueline Moore. Her work stands as a tribute to the humanity and shortcomings of both men, even as the study celebrates what they, in league with others, were able to accomplish in the name of racial uplift. |
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| Cleveland State University |
Reginnia N. Williams |
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