examine the work of 2 great african-american contributors to the american philosophy?

Answer 1

W.E.B. DuBois stressed the "Talented Tenth" of the African American population go to lengths to improve social and economic status of their people suffering inequalities. DuBois stressed college development and a class of educated people to bring African Americans up from the depths of life after slavery and during Jim Crow.

Booker T. Washington took a somewhat opposite stance. He founded the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) to teach African Americans job skills such as blacksmithing, farming, etc. He saw giving African Americans job skills as the means for them to earn a living and contribute to society. Washinton's theory was that as skilled laborers, African Americans would become a vital and intergral part of the larger American society and would then be able to assimilate into society. With jobs and a growing social status, later generations would be able to attend college and rise through social ranks.

On a personal note, although Washington strived to teach African Americans work skills and did not "buy into" DuBois' theory that college educations would save African Americans from the plight of discrimination, Washington's own children attended and graduated from college.

I believe the true answer lies somewhere between Washington and DuBois. A class of working people that are an intergral part of the American population, led by the "Talented Tenth" will take African Americans into the future as a respected group of people that have overcome many adversities.

Answer 2

Maya Angelous
Maya Angelou, another eloquent storyteller writer grew up in Arkansas and California during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Maya has written of how different her education was from that of her white classmates. She states that past participles were learned by all in the classroom, but in the street and at home, the blacks learned to drop s’s from plurals and suffixes from past tense verbs. At school during a given situation students might respond with “that’s not unusual,” but street language, meeting the same situation, “It be’s that way sometimes” was very easily said.
Maya’s Week End Glory is a very interesting account of a black woman who works all week in a factory, but on weekends she goes out on the town. People talk about her and speculate. The woman in question feels people who ridicule her should watch her on Saturday night if they want to learn to live life right. She said he life “ain’t heaven,” “but it sho ain’t hell.” She says she isn’t on top, but that’s fine with her because if she’s able to work and “get paid right” and have luck to be black on Saturday night—she’s sitting on top of the world.11





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James Baldwin
James Baldwin was a brilliant storyteller who excelled in spite of a cruel, overbearing father, bullying Harlem schoolmates, and a white society that had no appreciation for a wiryframed Black boy with distinctly African features.
Baldwin is famous for The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which is a poignant account of the Atlanta child murders. Blues for Mister Charlie and Another Country are also superb works of this talented storyteller.

Blues for Mister Charlie is a play based on the case of Emmett Till—the Black teenager who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The murderer was acquitted. His brother who helped him commit the crime, later became a deputy sheriff in Rulesville, Mississippi. After his acquittal, he recounted facts of the murder to William Bradford Huie, who wrote it all down in an article called “Wolf Whistle.”

Answer 3

george washington carver