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

W.E.B. Du Bois

By 1915, change was in the air. The conservative world Booker T. Washington dominated had turned liberal with the evolution of Progressivism. Presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson reinterpreted the role of government in America while muckrakers were exposing the evils of capitalism and amassed wealth. With World War I, millions of African Americans abandoned farming in the south to work the factories in the north. The plague of boll weevils decimated southern agriculture in the late teens and early 20s. The new generation of Negroes had never experienced slavery and felt no inherent shame for their race. They turned to a more outspoken, demanding leader. As William Edward Burghardt Du Bois expressed his hope for racial equality for African Americans in a far more militant manner than Booker T. Washington, young Negroes rejected gradualism and turned to W.E.B. Du Bois for a brighter future.
 

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