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According to B. Washington, blacks had to earn theirr place in American society. They had to earn their keep by working, and doing whatever jobs they could. Washington said that blacks could not be equal to whites until they proved their worth to America. This meant they had to work their way up through the ladder to get to the status that thei wanted.

There is a great debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E. B. Debois about this statement. Washington did get money to start an all black college though. He got this from a Southern majority right after the Civil War too. So one might say he had to advance the blacks by setting them back.

2007-01-02 11:32:02 · answer #1 · answered by Jay 4 · 0 0

In 1895, Washington gave his famous and controversial “Atlanta Address.”

Delivered at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition, and widely reported across the country, the speech espoused Washington’s conviction that the only way out of dependence, for black or white,was from the bottom up.

“Ignorant and inexperienced,” he declared, “it is not strange in the first years of our new life that we began at the top instead of the bottom — that a seat in Congress was more sought than industrial skills; that the political convention had more attraction than starting a truck garden.

“It is important and right that all the privileges of the law be ours but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.

“The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory is now worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.”

Looking back, writing in 1900, Washington concluded that the end of slavery hadn’t ended subservience. Ever since emancipation, he said, “our people have looked to the federal government for everything, very much as a child looks to its mother.” This dependence was indeed different from slavery. Yet, he said, it was servitude nonetheless.

And regardless of race or colour or creed, it so remains.

2007-01-02 11:26:45 · answer #2 · answered by The Answer Man 5 · 0 0

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