The Souls of Black Folk - Essay Example

Stories of the Black Men Two prominent of the early 1900s are primarily responsible for bringing the study of the African American to the educational institutions of America. These are Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Both men had to struggle fiercely to achieve the educations they eventually gained, in a world in which it was believed that a black man was not capable of the same depth and breadth of intellectual thought expected of a white man. While Du Bois was the first black man to achieve a Harvard degree, Washington trained to be a teacher at what is now Hampton University, eventually receiving an honorary Masters degree from Harvard and an honorary Doctorate from Dartmouth College. Both men wrote extensively, and often from very different viewpoints, regarding the position of the black man in the post-Civil War American society, having a profound impact upon how these individuals were perceived by the greater American public and playing large roles in both establishing educational facilities for black children and in organizing advocacy groups for the black people. As can be seen in his autobiography, Up From Slavery, Washington felt that the best way to help the black man was to train him in ‘industrial’ type jobs while Du Bois, as can be seen in “Of the Training of Black Men” in The Souls of Black Folk, felt that the black man could best benefit from the same type of classical education deemed important for white men. Writing his autobiography in 1901, Washington details his rise from the ranks of slavery to the position of a degreed professor even as he highlights the various reasons why he feels an industrial education is the correct course of action for the majority of black men and women. Writing in an easy, flowing style, Washington works to present himself as clearly as possible, making it easy to understand the major events of his life as well as to see where the founding principles of his ideas came from. The concept of including technical education in with ‘book learning’ as he founded Tuskegee was one borrowed from Washington’s early educational experiences at the Hampton school, where students were encouraged to increase their academic knowledge while retaining a connection to their rural heritage. It was believed that by doing so, the students would be encouraged to re-invest their education into the communities from which they came, thereby helping to elevate the situation of the entire race. “We wanted to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with the spirit of industry, thrift and economy, that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. We wanted to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone” (Washington, 1996, p. 60). When reading through his experiences in trying to obtain an education and then in trying to help his fellow black men out of the poverty and hopeless conditions of the South during the Reconstruction period, it is easy to see why the teaching of technical and home-making skills were important to him. Few, if any, families had access to facilities that encouraged adequate living, such as daily bathing, brushing teeth and the use of tableware for family meals and, in a time when it was difficult for any black man to find gainful employment, technical knowledge of a high degree of mastery could mean the difference between a black man valued and wanted in the community versus one who was barely tolerated and reduced to accepting the most menial jobs as a means of providing his family with the most meager of meals. This is illustrated perhaps best in his description of the results of his school’s adventures in brickmaking. “Many white people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks. They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community. The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighborhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community” (p. 71). While he appreciates the value of an academic education as a means of providing his community with the expertise and educated voices necessary to gain the support of the white community, Washington makes it clear throughout his narrative that the best way of advancing the cause of the black man is by providing him with a technical education that provides a worthwhile service to the white community. Du Bois, on the other hand, argues persuasively that the position of the black man can only be improved upon through the continuation and encouragement of higher, more classical educational goals such as those pursued by white men. He acknowledges Washington’s plan regarding an industrial education was sound reasoning for its time: “The industrial school springing to notice in this decade, but coming to full recognition in the decade beginning with 1895, was the proffered answer to this combined educational and economic crisis, and an answer of singular wisdom and timeliness” (Du Bois, 1999, p. 65). The crisis he refers to in this statement is the crisis of the South as it moved into the industrial age and the ever-more stringent legal system put in place by prejudiced white men to severely restrict the movements and opportunities available to freed black men. Despite this, Du Bois points out that this direction in education was merely a means to an end, “the Gates of Toil” that swing before the “Temple of Knowledge” (p. 65). Once the livelihood had been obtained, he insists that the natural condition of man is to pursue the higher education he calls for. Indeed, in order to provide the black man with the basic education necessary to prepare him even for the industrial jobs, it is necessary for institutions of higher education to be open to the black man as a means of providing the necessary teachers for these lower schools. “They must first have the common schools to teach them to read, write and cipher; and they must have higher schools to teach teachers for the common schools … Southern whites would not teach them; Northern whites in sufficient numbers could not be had. If the Negro was to learn, he must teach himself, and the most effective help that could be given him was the establishment of schools to train Negro teachers” (p. 66-67). To complete his argument, Du Bois discusses the results of a study into the 2500 graduates of classical universities conducted in 1900. While he acknowledges that approximately one third of these graduates could not be found, the remainder were all gainfully employed as teachers, principals, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, artisans, merchants and farmers. “Comparing them as a class with my fellow students in New England and in Europe, I cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere have I met men and women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their life-work, or with more consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties than among Negro college-bred men” (p. 70). The structure of this argument, progressing from the acknowledgement of the early effectiveness of the industrial approach through the necessity of higher training in order to provide the basic instruction necessary prior to reaching industrial training through to the conclusion of the case studies in which higher education has done much to bring about even more sweeping and positive change for the black race effectively proves for Du Bois that a classical education could benefit a single black man as well as the black race much more than a simple industrial education could have done. Although both Washington and Du Bois felt it was vital that a black man have a decent education and worked diligently to advance the cause, they disagreed rather strongly on the type of education that would be most beneficial to the black community. While Washington recognized that traditional ‘book’ learning such as was taught in the white colleges turned out students that were at once more likely to want the finer things in life and less able to obtain these things for themselves, Du Bois indicated that the classical education was necessary to turn out students capable of serving in the more professional services such as doctors and lawyers that the black community needed. While each man acknowledged the importance of the ideas of the other (Du Bois recognized the need to educate black men in industries that would enable them to obtain gainful employment in the greater community and Washington recognized the need for black men with higher educations), they differed on the degree to which this education should be offered and the best means of offering these options to the black student. Works Cited Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. Read More