James Lee Dickey: An Analysis of One African-American's Leadership in Jim Crow Texas

Racial Equality

By 1895, many Northern blacks, along with several Southern blacks, grew impatient with the plodding, kowtowing nature of accommodationism. In 1895, Booker T. Washington gained national fame when he delivered his “Atlanta Compromise" speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. Addressing a predominantly white audience, Washington reassured his them that Negroes had been wrong to strive seek political office immediately after emancipation. They had to begin at the bottom and not the top and Negroes should earn white people's respect by gaining economic equity. Negroes, he explained, didn't want to mix with whites socially; they only wanted to work together to improve the Southern economy. At first, Washington was cheered by black America, but very soon educated Negroes like W.E.B DuBois were horrified that he essentially agreed segregation was perfectly acceptable. Washington's opponents accusing him of selling out to the whites and intentionally keeping his people subjugated just so he could continue as his people’s spokesman. DuBois argued that Negroes should not be relegated to trade, instead they should be studying the Classics such as Latin and Greek in white colleges. He encouraged Negroes to become doctors, lawyers, and professors. According to DuBois, industrial education was an insult to his race.
In 1909, he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that would challenge discrimination, segregation, and disfranchisement through the court system and is still in effect togday. It strategically selected cases that would promote African American equality.
 

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