Dubois and Washington Essay

Booker Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois

The equality concerns Americans face in the workplace today can be traced back to the end of slavery and the way in which legislators in the South handled the integration of the black population into society as employees rather than slaves. It is therefore interesting to examine documents from the era after the civil war in order to gain insight into the thinking of the general population and of leaders at the time. Hence, when considering W.E.B. Du Bois' "Talented Truth" and Washington T. Booker's speech known as the "Atlanta Compromise," it becomes clear that these intellectuals had different approaches and ideals when it came to the improvement of the world for African-Americans at the time, with Du Bois' idealist viewpoint calling for appropriate leadership education while the more realistic Booker focused on how the black and white population could live under a compromise that would be acceptable for both.

Is idealist W.E.B. Du Bois called for the intellectual development of the most academically able youth among the black population, or what the title of his essay refers to as the "Talented Tenth." The work suggests that more or less a tenth of the black population is among the top intellectuals of the nation. In order to develop the black population and its ability to become truly equal to the white population, De Bois suggests that education needs to be set up in such a way that leadership capacity is developed, along with the already existing focus on skills and training. The author notes that the latter are important, but not to the exclusion of the former, and that both menial and leadership training should be available to both black and white children (Du Bois, par. 12).

The reason for Du Bois' focus on leadership is his concern, like that of many other black intellectuals at the time, that the lack of good leadership training for black people in the United States would starve the ability of the black nation to elevate itself above perpetual servitude. Indeed, the lack of appropriate education for the….....