African Americans Fights for Change

How did Garvey, Washington, and Du Bois differ in their approaches to the problems faced by African-Americans after Reconstruction?

“The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the

color-line.”

Do now:

– W.E.B. Du Bois

1.What do you think this quotation means? What is Du Bois indicating?

2.What is the ‘problem’ that Du Bois refers to?

3.Is this questions still relevant today?

Task

Vocab: Disenfranchisement: to deprive a person of a privilege or right

(specially the right to vote) Suffrage: the right to vote.

In groups of 3, read the speeches, answer the question, and complete the triple Venn diagram.

Compare & Contrast

Wanted African

Americans to gain civil

rights (right to be treated equal)

Booker T. Washington W.E.B. Du Bois

Marcus Garvey

Booker T. WashingtonProblem• African Americans lack access to economic

opportunities because whites have denied them opportunities and are trying to use immigrants to fill jobs instead of African Americans.

Solution• African Americans and whites must work together in

the South • African Americans need vocational training and whites

need to be willing to provide them with education and jobs.

Washington argues that once African Americans achieve economic prosperity as a race, social

equality will follow…

W.E.B. Du BoisProblem • African Americans have been consistently denied their

civil and social rights

Solution • consistent advocacy (fight for) rights by African

Americans

Without rights, nothing else is possible (African Americans cannot achieve economic success and

ensure the safety of that success without suffrage, equal opportunities).

Marcus GarveyProblem • African Americans have no jobs because white men are

taking over all economic opportunities and will soon ask African Americans to leave or die.

Solution • the creation of black nations in Africa.

According to Garvey, there will be no place for Blacks unless they create one for themselves (Garvey gives the example of how overcrowding of

Europe made America into a land of Europeans; overcrowding in Europe and America threaten to do the

same thing to Africa).

Which one you think would be the most effective solution to the

problem of inequity?

Garvey’s solution

Washington’s solution

Or

Du Bois’ solution

WHY???

Are reparations due to African Americans?

Reparations for slavery is the idea that some form of compensatory payment should be made to the descendants of Africans who had been enslaved by the Atlantic Slave Trade.

What do our politicians say about reparations for African Americans?

“Success is to be measured not so much

by the position that one has reached in life

as by the obstacles which he has overcome.”

Booker T. Washington

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

W.E.B. Du Bois

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without

roots.”

Marcus Garvey