Three Generations of Leading Black Leaders, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and WEB Du Bois

Today we will reflect on the leaders of the first three
generations of black leaders: Frederick Douglass, first
generation black leader, abolitionist writer and orator, who was
born a slave and escaped to freedom; Booker T Washington,
second generation black leader, educator, who was born a
slave, was freed when the Civil War ended; and WEB Du Bois,
third generation black leader, civil rights activist, author and
scholar, who was born free in Massachusetts after the Civil
War, attending college in the Deep South, and was co-founder
of the NAACP.

We will summarize our many videos on these three
black leaders, but first we will reflect on some
background history so we can place their life stories
in the context of their times.
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video. Please feel free to follow along
our PowerPoint script posted to SlideShare. Please,
we welcome interesting questions in the comments.
Let us learn and reflect together!

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All of the black leaders we discuss share one common
characteristic: they were all hungry to learn, they were all hungry
to learn how to read, and their literacy, oratory and
accomplishments demonstrated to the world that indeed, black
men, properly educated, could become leaders, achieve
greatness, and inspire their associates, if they were only given
half a chance. In the early days of the abolitionist and civil rights
movement, blacks could not act alone, all three of our black
leaders were assisted by fellow white liberals who were
dedicated to these causes as well.

To understand their history, we must discuss the history of
another black man in the generation prior to Frederick Douglass
who was also hungry to learn, also hungry to learn how to read,
who was also very intelligent, but who was more of a shaman
than a black leader. This black man terrified white slave owners
across the South, this black man led a slave rebellion where
dozens of white men, women and children were murdered, his
name was Nat Turner, his last name Turner was the name of his
master. His life story is sketchy, our primary source is someone
who interviewed him in his jail cell, Dr Wikipedia says many
scholars find his account unreliable.

Why was Nat Turner a shaman? What is a shaman?
Shamans were the intelligentsia of pre-literate tribal
societies, shamans had visions from the gods telling
them their destinies, shamans were often inspired
by solar eclipses and unusual weather events, seeing
them as messages from the gods. The medicine men
were the shamans of some American Indians tribes.
You can also say that Nat Turner was a cult leader
like the modern Charles Manson.

Medicine Man, both by Charles Marion Russell, before 1926

Nat Turner read the Bible intently, especially the Old
Testament stories of how Moses led his people out of
slavery, out of the house of bondage, into the Promised
Land, just as slaves yearned for a Promised Land where
they could live as free men. Nat Turner had visions, Nat
Turner found inspiration for the rebellion from solar
eclipses and unusual weather events. Perhaps Nat
Turner’s life suggests that sometimes a scanty education is
far worse than no education at all.

Crossing of the Red Sea, by Hans Jordaens III, 1600's

Nat Turner was a spell-binding preacher, Dr Wikipedia says even some whites were
impressed by his religiosity, Nat Turner had a small band of devoted followers, Nat
Turner planned his rebellion. Nat Turner, in early 1831, with seventy other slaves
and freed blacks, some on horseback, traveled from house to house, freeing the
slaves, killing the whites they encountered, men, women, and children alike. This
mayhem lasted for several days, until their small band was defeated by a hastily
assembled state militia with artillery.
Nat Turner was hung, his body dissected, souvenir purses were made from his skin.
Whites all over the South were terrified, hundreds of blacks in many communities
were murdered out of fear. This retribution was not widespread, not out of
compassion for the black victims, but because murdering slaves was recognized as
a type of theft from their white masters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner's_slave_rebellion

(REPEAT) What were the political consequences of Nat Turner’s
slave rebellion?
More state legislatures prohibited teaching slaves and freed
blacks how to read, black schools in the South and the North
were destroyed by mobs.
There was prejudice against blacks in both the South and the
North, and there were free blacks in both the South and the
North, but an overwhelming majority of the black slaves labored
in the plantations and homesteads of the Deep South, which
meant that prejudice was always more intense in the South.

• More state legislatures prohibited teaching slaves
and freed blacks how to read, black schools in the
North and South were destroyed by mobs.
• Black religious meetings had to be supervised by a
licensed white minister.
• Movements and public meetings of blacks were
restricted further.
• Many abolitionists saw Nat Turner as a black hero.
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion strengthened the resolve of
slave owners to defend slavery, black slaves
suffered harsher treatment, even demonized.
• Nat Turner’s rebellion strengthened the prejudices
of those who feared blacks.
What were the political consequences of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion?

Birth of Abolitionist Anti-Slavery Movement
The abolitionist movement was born when William Lloyd Garrison
published the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON AND BIRTH OF ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT
What else happened in early 1831? The abolitionist movement was born
as a broad political movement when William Lloyd Garrison published
the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. William Lloyd Garrison
encouraged the runaway slave Frederick Douglass to become a orator
and author in his abolition movement.
As in all movements, there were disagreements, some favored gradual
emancipation, some favored immediate emancipation, some favored
colonizing Africa with freed blacks from America. Lincoln initially favored
gradual emancipation and colonization, but the polarizing circumstances
of the Civil War brought about immediate emancipation during and after
the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lloyd_Garrison

The birth of the abolitionist movement provided a path for Frederick Douglass to
follow both as an abolitionist orator, capable of spell-binding speeches, and as a
best-selling author. He was born a slave in 1818, was quite a rebellious slave, who
finally succeeded in escaping from slavery.
Booker T Washington was born a slave in 1856 and was freed as a teenager when
the Civil War ended. He attended a black college after the war, and founded the
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, raising money and support from leading white
businessmen and philanthropists for black colleges.
WEB Du Bois was born free in Massachusetts in 1868, shortly after the Civil War, but
chose to attend college in the Deep South. He was a sociology professor, studying
and writing about the status of blacks, and was co-founder of the NAACP, becoming
the first editor of the organization’s Crisis Magazine, gaining national recognition to
the civil rights movement.

First Generation Black Leader:
Frederick Douglass

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, FIRST GENERATION BLACK LEADER
As a young man, Frederick Douglass wrote a best-selling book of
his life as a slave, emphasizing that chattel slaves on plantations
were not quite seen as human, slaves were seen as simply talking
livestock. The prosperous cotton-growing plantations were in the
black belt in the heartland of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana. He was a slave in Maryland. Because the Upper South
plantations were less prosperous, they often bred and sold young
slaves to the Black Belt plantations, constantly breaking up slave
families.

Husbands, wives, and
families sold
indiscriminately to
different purchasers, are
violently separated ;
probably never to meet
again. 1853

Frederick Douglass was separated from his mother as an
infant, his mother’s owner lived a dozen miles away, he only
saw her four or five times, and only at night. His mother
was likely raped by a white slave owner, he did not know
who his father was. He remembers how slaves were often
savagely whipped and sexually abused; white masters could
do as they wished with their property. Slaves were given no
beds, they slept side by side on the cold, damp floor,
covered by miserable blankets.”

Last Time he saw his Mother Whipping Old Barney

For six months Frederick had been handed over to a slave
breaker Master Covey, who had no slaves of his own but broke
individual slaves through constant harassment and cruelty. But
Frederick Douglass instead broke the slave breaker.
Frederick Douglass was such a troublesome plantation slave that
he was sold to Mr Auld, a relative, living in Baltimore. City slaves
had a better life, he was able to learn how to read, which opened
up a greater world, he began to yearn for his freedom. He
escaped slavery, his first autobiography ends with his life as a
freedman in Massachusetts, and his early years as an abolitionist
orator.

A cotton plantation on the Mississippi, 1884

In his last autobiography, Frederick Douglass adds to his slave account, and
continued with his life as an abolitionist orator and best-selling author. After the
Civil War, his old master in Baltimore, Captain Auld, asked to meet with him. He
revealed that after he read how Frederick’s grandmother, who raised him and many
of the other slave children, was neglected, living in a cabin in the woods, he found a
better place for her to stay.
Partially to avoid capture by slave traders, Frederick Douglass spent two years
touring and speaking in England and Ireland. His friends raised funds. During his
journey his English friends raised funds to ransom him from slavery from his old
master, Captain Auld. With his letters of manumission, Frederick Douglass had some
protection from abduction by slave traders, and though his fame also provided
protection, he was never completely safe from kidnapping.

Which is what happened in the movie, 12 Years as a Slave.

Before the Civil War, Frederick Douglass was also
active in underground railroad assisting runaway
slaves to gain their freedom, risking fines and
imprisonment if he were caught.

The Underground Railroad, Charles Webber, painted 1893

In 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, Frederick
Douglass’ life would again change after he met John
Brown as he planned his raid on Harper’s Ferry.
Frederick Douglass refused him aid, saying it was a
fool’s quest, but after the raid failed spectacularly,
Frederick Douglass would once again be forced to
flee to England for refuge and another speaking tour.

Tragic Prelude,
John Brown, by
John Stuart Curry,
painted 1938

During the Civil War Frederick Douglass consulted with
President Lincoln on racial issues many times. Frederick
Douglass lobbied to permit black freedmen to join the
army, and there were several black regiments after the
Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and after that he
lobbied for equal pay for black soldiers. After the war, he
continued his efforts as a civil rights activist advocating for
black freedmen.

Frederick Douglass appealing to
President Lincoln and his cabinet to
enlist Negroes," mural by William
Edouard Scott, 1943

Emancipation
from Freedmen's
viewpoint,
illustration from
Harper's Weekly
1865

Second Generation Black Leader:
Booker T Washington

SECOND GENERATION OF BLACK LEADERS: BOOKER T WASHINGTON
Like Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington was born a
field slave, the family lived in a one-room cabin, everyone
sleeping on the floor. He was born in a plantation in
southwest Virginia, his family was not broken up, although
he never knew who his father was, either. Unending toil,
dawn to dusk, was their life, the life of a slave, until his
family was emancipated at the end of the Civil War.

After the war, his mother moved to the coal
country in West Virginia. Booker first worked in
the mines, attending night school, eager to learn
how to read. He escaped the mines to work as a
household servant for the owner of the mine.
After some years of studying hard, he showed up
at Hampton University, seeking admission,
working as a janitor to help pay his way.

Teaching the trades at
Hampton Institute

Booker T Washington impressed his headmaster. When the Alabama legislature had
appropriated two thousand dollars to start a new colored trade school in Tuskegee,
his former headmaster General Armstrong was asked if he could recommend any
qualified white men who could organize and take charge of this school. General
Armstrong replied that he did not know of any qualified white men, but that he
knew a highly qualified educated black man and recent graduate, Booker T
Washington.
When Booker traveled to Tuskegee, he discovered that there were no buildings for
the school, and the appropriation only covered teacher salaries. The first classes
were held in a renovated repurposed stable and henhouse. Booker T Washington
introduced himself to both black and white town leaders, seeking assistance in
building the new school. Over the years the school expanded, with students
learning how to construct the school buildings, gaining valuable trade experience.

Outdoor and Indoor
Classrooms in Tuskegee
Institute, Alabama

The financial needs of this growing college soon
outstripped the capacity of the local community to finance
the expansion. He asked for assistance, and General
Armstrong helped him hold his first fund raising lecture
tour and fund-raising trip up North. When Tuskegee really
started expanding, he would spend six months out of the
year crisscrossing Northern cities, giving lectures and
visiting philanthropists and leading white businessmen like
Andrew Carnegie, becoming the spokesman for the black
community nationally.

Andrew Carnegie
with faculty of
Tuskegee Institute

Booker T Washington is famous for his speech at the Atlanta Exposition in
1895, which he also helped to organize and promote during his many
fund-raising trips through the North. This was the very first time a black
man addressed such a large and influential body of white businessmen,
white national politicians, and reporters from all the major newspapers in
the country. In his speech known as the Atlanta Compromise, he
rhetorically addressed both the black workers and white businessmen,
but his real audience was the white businessmen. He wanted to reassure
them that the black workers were hard working and not too eager to rock
the boat with talk about civil rights and such, he also hoped they would
contribute to the black colleges and schools.

Booker T Washington: Atlanta Exposition

Booker T Washington also penned a collection of essays on
his experiences in later life in My Larger Education,
including observations on:
• Experiences with reporters and intellectuals.
• Experiences working with President Theodore Roosevelt.
• His fund-raising trips among Northern businessmen.
• Observations on Negro education.

We also told the fascinating story of Augustine Tolton. Although
Augustine was born an illiterate slave, after the Civil War he overcame
daunting obstacles to attend seminary in Rome and be ordained as the
first black Catholic priest in America, becoming literate in four languages,
English, German, Latin, and Koenine Greek, shepherding a parish first in
his adopted city, Quincy, Illinois, then in Chicago. Father Augustine Tolton
labored in relative obscurity, never achieving national fame as a civil
rights activist, he instead preferred to quietly minister to the spiritual
needs of his parishioners, mostly black, some white. Father Tolton faced
discrimination as a priest, his parish was never well funded, and as his
health was poor, he passed away during a heat wave when visiting
parishioners in Chicago.

The Catholic slaves in Kentucky had more dignity, their marriages were recognized
by the church and their births were recorded in the parish registry. However, they
were still slaves, and his biography records how some families were broken up when
the master’s estate was settled, though parents and their children were kept
together. His mother and her children escaped from slavery during the Civil War,
though their boat came under fire by slave catchers.
What is most remarkable about the biography of Father Augustine Tolton, “From
Slave to Priest,” is how many Catholic clergy, including priests, nuns, and bishops,
both American and Roman, both in those years after the Civil War and during
Reconstruction, were eager to help this barely literate former black slave gain a
clerical education and encourage and enable him to study for the priesthood. He is
being considered for sainthood.

https://tolton.archchicago.org/

Third Generation Black Leader:
WEB Du Bois

THIRD GENERATION OF BLACK LEADERS: WEB DU BOIS
WEB Du Bois was a third-generation black leader and
activist, born after the Civil War, who demanded
dignity, civil rights, and real economic opportunity for
blacks. He was born soon after the Civil War in
Massachusetts, he was one of the few blacks in his
neighborhood and in his school. He decided to attend
Fisk University in Tennessee to experience what it
was like to be black in the Deep South.

After spending three years at Fisk, WEB Du Bois was
selected for a scholarship to attend Harvard, as they were
seeking to expand their student body with bright students
with meager means. The colleges taught the classics in
that era, he could read and was conversant in Greek, Latin,
and German. After earning his degree, he then applied for
a scholarship at a top German University and was
accepted. But he decided to pursue his PhD at Harvard, as
the German University required further schooling for this.

Harvard Yard 2009, WEB Du Bois studied under these famous professors.

After he graduated, he landed a teaching position at
Wilberforce University, but after a few years, he accepted
a teaching position at Atlanta University. His research into
sociology and the status of blacks in American led to his
submitting articles to national magazines, gaining him
growing national prominence.
WEB Du Bois also remembers, “Lynchings were a
continuing horror at the start of my teaching career.
Lynchings climaxed in 1892, when 235 persons were
publicly murdered.”

Bust of W.E.B. DuBois by Ayokunle
Odeleye at Clark Atlanta University

One of his first books, Souls of Black Folk, was a collection of
essays originally printed in magazines such as The Atlantic, and
many were incorporated into his autobiography. This included a
touching essay on his summer teaching job in rural Tennessee,
the schoolhouse was a log hut, the students sat in rough plank
benches, the desk was three boards hastily nailed together, and
he had to return his chair to the landlady each night.
Also included were essays on black education and how his first
son passed away because the segregated Atlanta hospital refused
to admit black patients.

Souls of Black Folk also included essays on sharecropping, on how the Southern
plantations had decayed in the decades after the war, and on an older black
Episcopalian priest he had met, Alexander Crummell.
Alexander Crummell was born in 1819 in the same generation as Frederick
Douglass, and like Father Tolton, faced discrimination as a priest. He struggled in
parishes in Rhode Island and New York City, and was active in the abolitionist
movement, where he met WEB Du Bois. Crummel decided to serve as a missionary
to Liberia, which he promoted as a destination for American blacks. Although he
influenced Liberian intellectual and religious life, twenty years later he returned to
America when he felt his life was in danger due to an insurgency. He was called to
pastor a parish in Washington, DC, and he then founded the first independent black
Episcopal church in the city, St Luke’s Episcopal Church.

As WEB Du Bois, our contrarian activist leader, rose in prominence in the
black civil rights movement, he came into conflict with the
accommodationist Booker T Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute.
While WEB Dubois encouraged blacks to insist on their civil rights, dignity,
and equal opportunity; Booker T Washington encouraged blacks to get an
education so they would have marketable skills, to be submissive and
hardworking and to save their pennies.
Booker T Washington was expanding Tuskegee Institute and promoting
black education in the darkest days of Jim Crow when lynchings were
rampant and went unpunished. Most jobs open to blacks were in
agriculture and the trades, so black colleges were, in essence, trade
schools. Blacks could rarely pay their tuition, so black schools were
heavily dependent on philanthropy.

Booker T Washington was always persistent and patient in his fund-raising. Usually,
the really large donations came from businessmen he had been calling on for many
years. The businessman who donated five dollars this year might donate five
thousand a few years from now, and fifty thousand in his will. To raise funds, Booker
T Washington knew he had to dwell on the positive, praising the many whites who
supported black education, but not dwelling on the negative, including the many
lynchings and humiliations and discriminations that dogged him and every black
man of his era, so he could make a good impression of the moneyed white Northern
philanthropists and businessmen.
WEB Du Bois argued correctly that Booker T Washington was hostage to his
benefactors, fearful if he insisted too forcefully on civil rights and dignity for blacks
that his funding sources would dry up. We do know that after his death his personal
papers revealed that Booker did promote civil rights anonymously, often hiring legal
counsel for those fighting Jim Crow, lobbying out of the public eye, and some say he
even contributed to the NAACP.

Robert Ogden, Senator Taft, Booker T Washington and
Andrew Carnegie, Tuskegee Institute's 25th anniversary

But as De Bois pointed out, this bargain between the white employers
and the black workers was frustrated, “between 1895 and 1909 the
whole South disenfranchised its Negro voters by unfair and illegal
restrictions and passed a series of Jim Crow laws which demoted the
Negro citizen to a subordinate caste.” WEB Du Bois rebelled against this
subservient attitude, he crusaded more vigorously for civil rights for
blacks.
WEB Du Bois became a co-founder of the NAACP, a new organization
founded in 1909 by a group of white liberals and black leaders, becoming
the editor of the movement’s magazine, The Crisis. His editorials and his
continued contributions to other national magazines greatly elevated the
visibility of the NAACP, and near the end of Booker T Washington’s life,
the NAACP became the leading black civil rights organization.

W. E. B. Dubois in the office of The Crisis

WEB Dubois and staff in Crisis Magazine Office

Another co-founder of the NAACP was Ida B Wells, a
brave journalist who dedicated her life to publicize
the all-too-common lynchings of blacks. The NAACP
magazine, the Crisis included a monthly tally of
lynchings so it would be continually in the public eye.

The old Tuskegee Machine was primarily focused on
funding black colleges. After the death of Booker T
Washington, this role was assumed by the colleges
themselves. In contrast, the NAACP focused on
litigating civil rights issues to slowly roll-back
discriminatory laws. 1915 was a banner year for
Supreme court victories advancing civil rights.

But 1915 was also a landmark in the history of cinema, the first
full-length movie was a marvel of technological innovation, The
Birth of a Nation, which unfortunately was a disaster for civil
rights. This movie depicted the KKK night riders as modern-day
knights, rescuing southern damsels in distress from darkies with
bulging eyes, leading to the second incarnation of the KKK and a
dramatic increase in lynchings of blacks. But when the NAACP
agitated to have the movie banned wherever possible, these
publicized campaigns greatly increased the national profile of the
NAACP.

Publicizing lynchings did have some effect, but blacks lost influence in the
Republican Party as it became the party of big business. Fight for civil
rights was like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket. There was little
progress until the Presidency of FDR when, with help from his wife
Eleanor, civil rights started gaining traction.
One highly publicized event that gave blacks hope that one day civil rights
would be granted blacks was the Marion Anderson concert. Marion
Anderson was a famous contralto opera singer who toured Europe, but
she was refused use of the DAR auditorium in Washington, DC because
she was black. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and publicized
the injustice in her newspaper column and arranged for her to stage a
free public concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which was broadcast over
the radio to a national audience.

Marion Anderson concert gave many blacks hope that one day their civil rights would be retored.

Although civil rights were not a major focus of the FDR administration,
due to the Southern congressmen dominating Congress, there were
major improvements made that helped blacks economically, with a real
promise of future civil rights gains. These small improvements convinced
many blacks to switch their allegiance to the Democratic Party.
There were real civil rights gains under President Harry Truman, when he
issued an Executive Order desegregating the Armed Forces. In 1947 Harry
Truman was the first President to address a national NAACP Convention,
speaking to an audience of ten thousand from the Lincoln Memorial.
Eleanor Roosevelt had preceded him to the podium.

President Truman addresses 38th annual conference of the NAACP, 1947

During the years of the Depression, the NAACP budget was strained, as was the
relationship between the contrarian WEB Du Bois and the new NAACP President,
Walter White. WEB Du Bois had some research projects he wanted to devote more
time to, so he accepted a position as the head of the sociology department once
again at Atlanta University, though he continued to contribute many articles to the
Crisis Magazine.
The main research project he had in mind was his groundbreaking history, Black
Reconstruction, 1860 through 1880, reviewing the years of slavery, the Civil War,
Reconstruction, and the beginning of the Jim Crow Redemption Era, through the
eyes of its black citizens. Although the South lost the Civil War, they won the peace,
they won the cultural wars of the Lost Cause and white supremacy. To counter this,
WEB Dubois describes in Black Reconstruction both how the black soldiers were
instrumental in winning the Civil War for the Union, and the many contributions of
blacks during Reconstruction, when democracy flowered in the Deep South.

When it was first published, Black Reconstruction earned excellent reviews from the
New York Times, but it was rejected and ridiculed by the segregationist Southern
historians of the Dunning School. The thought that a black man could write a
scholarly work was seen as ludicrous by Southern historians, and this book was
ignored by many until the 1960’s Civil Rights movement.
The Dunning School was influenced by the segregationist culture of the Jim Crow
Redemption Era. Likewise, during the Depression historians like Charles Beard saw
history solely through the lens of economics, downplaying social issues like civil
rights.
The horrors of the Nazi regime and their concentration camps and death camps also
influenced many to support civil rights, as did the patient efforts of journalists and
magazines like WEB Du Bois and the Crisis magazine to publicize civil rights issues
such as lynchings and peonage.

One common theme in our videos on WEB Du Bois is that
he was a contrarian. To be effective, Civil Rights activists
have to be contrarians. But this strength can also be a
weakness.
Was WEB Du Bois a communist? The answer is YES: When
he turned 93, he joined and paid his dues to the CPUSA,
Communist Party of the United States. We would like to
emphasize that neither WEB Du Bois, nor anyone from the
NAACP, ever even hinted that the government should be
overthrown by a violent Bolshevik uprising.

If we but reflect on the life experiences of WEB Du Bois, we can
understand the appeal of communism, or at least the theoretical
communism of Karl Marx, not the terrors of Soviet or Chinese
Communism. In his day, during the Jim Crow era, the government
denied due process and equality to blacks, they were forced to
work for starvation wages, and if blacks called the police, often
they were the ones arrested! Tens of thousands of blacks were
lynched during the Jim Crow years, and often the police
condoned or even participated in the lynchings. Progress on
improving civil rights was just glacial before the civil rights era of
the 1960’s.

We also explore the strained relations between the
NAACP and the Communist Party, WEB Du Bois’ visits
to communist Russia and China, his second marriage
to a committed communist, his participation in the
Pan African movement, and his final years spent in
exile in Ghana.

Pan African
Congress in
Paris, 1919,
WEB Du Bois is
number 4 in
front row.

We plan reflections on another collection of essays from Booker T
Washington, plus we plan to reflect on the well-known autobiography of
Malcolm X, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a collection of James Baldwin’s
essays, plus a comparison between Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that wonderful
little best-selling book by Harriet Beecher Stowe that Lincoln told her
sparked the Civil War, and the happy slave Southern competing narrative,
Aunt Phillip’s Cabin, which sold far fewer copies.
We reflected on one of the essays in the 1619 Project, which simply tells
us what it was like to like as an ordinary black person in the Jim Crow
Deep South. We plan to do videos on several more essays from this
collection.

https://youtu.be/JRdnB0lqN5o
https://youtu.be/lAa_jqL3S7I

DISCUSSION OF SOURCES:
We highly recommend the autobiographies of all our three leading black
leaders. The autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Booker T
Washington are relatively complete, and the autobiography of WEB
Dubois is useful for his youth and school days, but to accurately reflect
on his history with the NAACP and his civil rights activism, and his later
life story, the biography by David Levering Lewis is essential.
Father Augustine Tolton’s biography was written by an admiring Catholic
nun, she must have used caches of letters as a primary source.
Many of the essays in WEB Du Bois’ Soul of Black Folk are
autobiographical.
WEB Du Bois’ history of Black Reconstruction is very readable, with high-
flying rhetorical flourishes that mostly work, and is likely the most
influential of these books.

There are several interesting YouTube videos where David Levering
Lewis delivers a presentation on black history. In this video, “Lewis talks
about divisions in the African-American community and compares them
to the split between Booker T Washington and WEB Du Bois.”
Lewis has written numerous books, we have picked up former library
copies of his biography of Martin Luther King and his history of the
Dreyfus Affair, the anti-Semitic event that rocked the interwar French
politics that we have discussed in our video on Vichy France.

YouTube Description: In this interview,
“Lewis talks about divisions in the
African-American community and
compares them to the split between
Booker T Washington and WEB Du Bois.
Class divisions, Lewis says, are much
greater than in DuBois's time.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aAlrLViif8
www.hocopolitso.org

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Three Generations of Leading Black Leaders, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and WEB Du Bois

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Three Generations of Leading Black Leaders, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and WEB Du Bois