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

The Other 90%

Over time, Du Bois grew increasingly distainful of his own people. He thought black churches needed to be reformed so “colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things.” He referred to The Crisis as the “Guardian of Liberties.” In 1913, he chastised three Negro publications for disagreeing with him because Negroes had enough conflicts without engaging in squabbling, all the while doing the same to Booker T. Washington. The next year he chastised other Negro publications for their poor grammar and spelling and lack of factual data. When editors expressed indignation, he sidestepped by saying he was expressing popular opinion, not his own. In 1912, Du Bois wrote in The Crisis, “to treat all Negroes alike is treating evil as good and good as evil,” and again in 1919, “many a colored man in our day called to conference with his own and rather dreading the contact with uncultivated people even though they were of his own blood.”
When Du Bois published Booker T. Washington’s obituary in The Crisis in 1915, he qualified each of Washington's successes by pointing out that in each accomplishment, Washington had failed to recognize the connection between economic equality and political equality. He blamed the current state of Negro affairs squarely on Booker T. Washington.
 

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