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As we have already seen in Episode 9, African Americans in the post-Civil War era were confronted
with a number of problems and they responded in various ways. Some responded by escaping
the South to the Western frontier, others responded with agitation and protest, and
still others responded with a more accommodationist approach. In this lesson, we will explore
in more depth the philosophical ideologies behind each of these approaches as well as
their limitations. Specifically, the ideological responses and approach to the problems that
black folks are confronting in this era will be framed in terms of Civil Rights, and Black
Nationalism. As we have seen WEB Du Bois and Booker T.
Washington had fundamental views of the world that were in deep opposition to one another.
On the one hand, Du Bois believed in social equality for African-Americans as citizens
of the United States. He believed in the 14th amendment and that African Americans ought
to focus their efforts on making real the promise of equal treatment under the law.
In short, he believed that African Americans should stress their status as full and equal
citizens in the United States -- or the notion of Civil Rights. To that end, he and 28 other
delegates met at Niagara Falls in 1905 to formulate a strategy for pursuing the notion
of civil rights. The movement included both blacks and whites. Their strategy was one
of public protest and agitation. Keep confronting the power structure with its hypocrisy and
make it as difficult as possible for businesses usual to function as long as a system of political
and social white supremacy was in place. They staged marches, petitioned lawmakers, and
wrote editorials in newspapers constantly reminding the white power structure of the
injustice of the racial subjugation of American citizens. They demanded full political rights,
equal treatment in public places, and an end to discrimination and segregation in the US
military. Booker T. Washington, of course, opposed the Niagara movement. He manipulated
the power structure to undermine it in every way possible. First, he sent spies to keep
him informed as to the movement’s participants and strategies. Then he paid the newspapers
to be rate the movement and to ostracize anyone who took part in it. Ultimately, he working
behind-the-scenes to ensure that anyone who supported the movement would not obtain any
federal appointment or job, or if they already had one to have them removed.
Ultimately, Washington was successful and the Niagara movement disintegrated before
it got off the ground. Du Bois continued his efforts though, when he and others founded
the National Organization for the Enhancement of Colored People, or NAACP in 1909. Its mission:
to ensure that African Americans be "physically free from peonage, mentally free from ignorance,
politically free from disfranchisement, and socially free from insult." Although the NAACP
had no direct connection with the Niagara movement, it was founded by many of the same
key players. Washington was largely successful in marginalizing the group and shepherding
away potential benefactors and financiers both black and white. But a 1908 race riot
in Springfield, Illinois made it finally possible to rally support for a national movement among
some influential white Progressives. Among many others, a white Kentucky-born socialist
William E. Walling was keenly distressed by the *** of eight African Americans and
the wounding of dozens more in the northern city -- the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln.
He called for a national organization of "fair-minded whites and intelligent blacks "to speak out
boldly against racial violence and injustice." Their new tactics included a reliance on judicial
and legislative measures to provide legal protections for African American citizenship.
It's a tactic the organization continually used -- first in its lawsuit, Guinn v. The
United States in 1915, which attacked the grandfather clause intended to keep former
slaves away from the voting booths -- later in a number of strategically formulated lawsuits
culminating in the famous Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954 that overturned
a "separate but equal" clause established in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896. In
fact, it became the primary weapon of the NAACP. So much so that it established a separate
branch of the organization, the NAACP legal Defense and education fund in 1940 with its
own legal staff. Another avenue of NAACP activities was its
national publication, The Crisis. WEB Du Bois served as the Director of Publicity and research
for The Crisis from its inaugural edition in 1910 until he ultimately left the organization
in 1934 for reasons that will be discussed in Part 2 of this lecture. The Crisis served
as a platform for the intellectual defense of the NAACP's mission. It posted articles
touting the merits of the integrationist approach as well as the accomplishments of people of
color in the United States. It's central underlying premise was that the United States was made
stronger when people of color are given full and equal opportunities to allow their gifts
and talents to flourish. The publication also challenged other ideological approaches such
as those of Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and the Communist Party which will be discussed
later in Part 2. It challenged Booker T. Washington's assertion that agitation was making life harder
for blacks in the South and that public protest only provoked a violent response on the part
of white supremacists. Sometimes the war of words got ugly. WEB Du Bois refered to Marcus
Garvey as "a little, fat black man, ugly but with intelligent eyes and big head." Upon
the death of Booker T. Washington, Du Bois eulogized him in the crisis, acknowledging
his significance as an African-American leader, but also reasserting his view that ultimately
Washington's agenda had not moved black America forward.
Certainly the NAACP can be credited with many successes in the civil rights struggle, but
it's important to be real about the meaning of those successes. Some of its most significant
accomplishments of the 20th century include a successful legal challenges against voter
disenfranchisement such as the grandfather clause and the all-white primary, which made
the right to vote essentially meaningless because black candidates were not allowed
to run in primary elections. Certainly its best-known accomplishment is the 1954 Brown
versus Board of Education Supreme Court, overturned legally sanctioned segregation. But those
successes have to be measured against ubiquitous fact that the political institutions the NAACP
worked with were enmeshed in white supremacy. In other words, once the grandfather clause
was considered unconstitutional the political establishment bent on maintaining white supremacy
simply came up with other measures to exclude or nullify the African American vote such
as the white primary. The result appears like a never ending series of hurdles wherein after
jumping one hurdle another series of hurdles are set up to replace it in what seems to
be an endless conveyor belt. The same can be said about school integration.
Recently, in 2004 America celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Brown versus Board of Education
decision, but 50 years after segregation was declared unconstitutional, The Harvard Civil
Rights Project observed that school integration was at the same level in 2004 as it was in
1969. According to their report, one in eight southern African-American students attend
a school that is 99 percent black. About a third attend schools that are at least 90
percent minority including more than half of African-Americans attending schools in
the Northeast. The report concluded, “We are celebrating a victory over segregation
at a time when schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated.” Herein
lies the central weakness of the integrationist approach -- that is, there is no guarantee
that the goal will ever be obtainable. It is on this logic that Booker T. Washington
rested his ideology which would later become the core of Black Nationalism that rather
than bother with jumping over hurdles to integrate into American society blacks ought to focus
their efforts on creating their own society.