African American Identity in the early 20th century Booker T Washington Versus W. E. B. DuBois

Booker T Washington (1856-1915) Born a slave, later an advisor to Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft Mother was a slave, father a white man As adult, associated with very wealthy, powerful people (white and black)donations Credited for creating many schools in the South

The Atlanta Compromise of 1895 The year of the death of Frederick Douglass Atlanta Compromise of 1895: African Americans would prosper “by the production of [their] hands.” AA would not fight for equality, integration, or justice [submission to whites] AA would therefore receive meek wages, basic education, and due process

W. E. B. DuBois Born free in a small colony in Great Barrington, MA PhD from Harvard University National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Double Consciousness and the Veil From The Souls of Black Folk (1903) Double Consciousness “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” In an afterword of TEWWG, Henry Louis Gates Jr. asserts that Hurston confronts her own version of W. E. B. DuBois’ “double conscious” in using a “divided voice, a double voice unreconciled…a verbal analogue of her double experiences as a woman in a male-dominated world and as a black person in a nonblack world” (203). Hurston complicates DuBois’ idea of an African-American person being simultaneously both African and American and portrays a black, female protagonist who is doubly discriminated in a white, male world.

DuBois versus Washington on Education Liberal Arts “Talented tenth” Gaining respect Washington Industrial Skill base from Slavery Taking baby steps

Zora Neale Hurston Mysterious beginning Eastonville, Florida Childhood “Maybe some of the details of my birth as told me might be a little inaccurate, but it is pretty well established that I really did get born.” Eastonville, Florida Childhood Adult life

ZNH continued Moral ambiguity and hypocrisy Letter to CVC: “I have hopes of breaking that old silly rule about Negroes not writing about white people” In an article in 1943, Hurston wrote that “the Jim Crow system works,” but 3 years later she wrote that she was “all for the repeal of every Jim Crow law in the nation here and now.” September 1948: “immoral act with a ten-year-old boy” She was out of the country when the act was committed Letter to CVC: “My race has seen fit to destroy me without reason, and with the vilest tools conceived of by man so far” Death and resurrection