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The W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington Debate:
Effects upon African American Roles in Engineering
and Engineering Technology
Keith V. Johnson and Elwood Watson
The messages of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois could not have been more diverse. The philosophical rivalry between Washington and DuBois has deep historical roots. To be on the same side fighting for the same purpose, progress, and uplifting of the Black race, these two Black intellectuals har- bored radically divergent views on how to assist African Americans to free themselves from their often subhuman conditions. Both men were aware that technological advancement was of foremost importance to the advancement of African Americans. Washington’s (1901) Up From Slavery and DuBois’ (1903) The Souls of Black Folks were immediately hailed as classic commentary due to their efforts to address the then “Negro” problem in America. There were a number of Black Americans who made a valiant effort to mitigate poverty, illiteracy, racial dis- crimination, high mortality rates, and other des-
olate conditions that plagued many African Americans, particularly at the turn of the centu- ry. However, due to their influential appeal among certain constituencies, both Washington and DuBois garnered ample attention from many segments of the American intelligence, many of which were European in ethnic origin. Thus, acknowledgment from the White power structure (this was particularly true in the case of Washington) provided both men a platform to promote their message.
Washington was a student at Hampton Institute and became convinced that vocational education was the only means by which Blacks would become successful in America. In 1881 Washington went to Alabama and founded Tuskegee Institute, where he put into practice his belief that the ultimate solution to the race problem was for Blacks to prove themselves
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worthy by becoming reliable and superior labor- ers, eventually making themselves indispensable to the economic well-being of the country. In order to accomplish this, Blacks needed the right form of education: an education that would be beneficial in an economic sense. Given his experience at Hampton, Washington felt that industrial education was superior to academic education for achieving his goal of Black social improvement (Spivey, 1978). As quoted in Franklin (1973), Washington believed that Black education “should be so directed that the great- est proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be brought to bear upon the every- day practical things of life, upon something that is needed to be done, and something which they will be permitted to do (emphasis added) in the community in which they reside” (p. 285). The basic philosophy of industrial education as prac- ticed at Hampton and Tuskegee was quite sim- ple. The training in various domestic and trade skills within an authoritarian and religiously based environment would produce a Black who would fit into the lower end of the occupational structure and, more important, know his or her place among Whites and come to accept that place as proper.
Such a form of education was just what White society sought. For Southerners, it would keep Blacks subservient and exploitable. For Northerners, it would serve as a way of calming racial tensions and providing a well-trained laboring underclass that could be used in the effort to industrialize the South. For these rea- sons, wealthy philanthropists in both the North and the South were willing to give large grants to institutions that adopted this vocational model while ignoring those institutions that remained academically oriented (Franklin, 1973; Quarles, 1969; Winston, 1971).
The results were as dramatic as they were devastating. The ideology of vocational educa- tion became the panacea for the race problem in America. Except for a few institutions of higher learning (Fisk, Atlanta, and Howard), Black col- leges took the financial windfalls and adopted the vocational curriculum. Educationally, voca- tional training was a failure: It not only failed to prepare Blacks to move up in society, but it also guaranteed that they would move down. The emphasis on manual training and the trades served to destroy the educational aspirations that had been aroused during Reconstruction and wiped out the hope that education could
provide a way out of poverty. By 1930 industrial education was seen as a “cynical political strate- gy, not a sound educational policy” and proved to be the “great detour” for Blacks from which they are just beginning to return (Winston, 1971, p. 683).
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on the plantation of James Burroughs near Hale’s Ford, Virginia (Harlan, 1970). During the period of Washington’s prominence, from the 1890s until his death in 1915, probably the leading ideological orientation of American Negroes centered on the development of Negro business enterprise through a combination of thrift, industry, and racial solidarity, or Negro support of Negro business (Kusmer, 1991). Although the philosophy of “self-help” has largely been cred- ited to Washington, this was a message that was very much in vogue as far back as the 1850s. It experienced a renaissance during Recons- truction, particularly among educated African Americans. The advocates of this progressive form of African American empowerment argued that African Americans, despite facing rampant discrimination, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of oppression, must turn from being defensive toward the capitalist sys- tem and adopt proactive methods of combating such a system. Once African Americans had proven their ability to help themselves and to acquire wealth and respectability, it was believed that prejudice and discrimination would disappear. During the mid 20th^ century, there were Black academics such as the late E. Franklin Frazier who argued that there were African American businessmen who were not above exploiting the masses of Blacks to aug- ment their own economic welfare (Fraizer, 1957).
At the close of the 19 th^ century, the entre- preneurial class in the Black community depended in considerable part upon the support of White customers. Though the range of occu- pations varied from city to city, this group was composed primarily of blacksmiths, tailors, bar- bers, and other skilled artisans, hackmen and draymen, grocers, and less frequently meat deal- ers, hotel owners, caterers, real estate dealers, and contractors (Kusmer, 1991). Along with civil servants, teachers, pullman porters of upper class status, domestic servants in the most elite White families, the more eminent and bet- ter educated ministers, a few doctors, and an occasional lawyer, the more successful among
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Northern donors to his school increased his influence with other African American schools in the South.
It was his legendary Atlanta Compromise speech that firmly defined Washington as a man who was deeply immersed with economic and technological advancement. It was during this speech that Washington urged African Ameri- cans to refrain from adamantly attempting to integrate with White America. Rather, he advo- cated a gradual emancipation of African Americans through hard work, economic improvement, and self-help (Washington, 1901). Technological advancement was an integral part of his message. His rhetoric gained universal acceptance among many Whites and a large number of Blacks.
What distinguished Washington from DuBois and many other African American lead- ers of the early 20th^ century was his philosophy that Black Americans had to keep ever faithful to the virtues of sacrifice, discipline, delayed gratification, and most important, economic sal- vation for their own communities.
The wisest among my race understand that agitation of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of law be ours, but it is vastly more impor- tant that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infi- nitely more that the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house. (Franklin & Starr, 1967, pp. 85-87)
Washington argued that business and tech- nological acumen were paramount. This was the means by which the African American masses would prosper. He believed that cultured-based education was secondary and could be pursued at a later date.
DuBois concurred with Washington that progress among the Black race had to occur, but he believed that it would be more aptly served through a trickled down means. DuBois was born to a white French father, Alfred DuBois,
and Mary Burghart DuBois, a Black woman, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1869. He was what many people referred to in those days as “mulatto” or in contemporary terms, biracial. Unlike many Americans (Black or White) of the time period, his stellar educational opportunities afforded him a national platform for him to espouse his message. He earned his BA at Fisk University in 1888, another BA at Harvard in 1890, and later his doctorate in 1895. He was the first African American to earn a PhD at the institution (Aptheker, 1951). Ever determined to uplift Black Americans from poverty, he focused on how the skills of the Black profes- sional class could be utilized to achieve this goal.
It was during this time period that the North was experiencing a large number of immigrants from Europe as well as a large num- ber of African Americans migrating from the South. This fact provided for potentially volatile relationships between the newly arrived immi- grants and the native born Black population. White Northern businessmen, primarily due to more familiarity and comfort with Europeans who shared their ancestral lineage, mores, and customs, began to align themselves with Jews, Greeks, Italians, and other White ethnics which, in turn, either marginalized or prohibited Black Americans from being able to provide services to their communities (Butler, 1991).
With regard to this problem, DuBois engaged in a major study of the city of Phila- delphia. His work focused on four social classes within the city. The top 10% he called an upper class or aristocracy. These people included entrepreneurs and professional people. These people had decent jobs and their children attended the best schools. Group two was the respectable working class. These individuals were primarily made up of servants, waiters, porters, and laborers. This was a class that was eager to engage in upward mobility. The third group of African Americans was referred to as the poor. It was made up of recent immigrants who could not find work, unreliable persons, widows, and wives of broken families. The low- est class (about 6% of the Black population) was labeled as criminals (DuBois, 1899).
Because of the great discrepancies that existed between the two groups, upwardly mobile African Americans were able to success- fully distinguish themselves among other
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classes in the city. Class has often been used as a distinguishing feature of American society, especially among White Americans. However, it is also true that similar situations were com- monplace among Black Americans as well. Upon his conclusion of studying African Americans in Philadelphia, DuBois decided that the only way that African Americans could advance was through the leadership of the upper classes. Thus the term talented tenth was adopt- ed. DuBois was adamant in his belief that intel- lectual guidance from the best and brightest among the Black race was the means by which to advance African Americans. A number of years after Washington’s death, DuBois (1940) reiterated his belief:
Since the controversy between myself and Mr. Washington has become historic, it deserves more careful statement than it has had hitherto, both as to the matters and the motives involved. There was first of all the ideological controversy. I believed in the higher education of a Talented Tenth who through their knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro into a higher civilization. I knew that without this the Negro would have to accept white lead- ership, and such leadership could not always be trusted to guide this group into self-realization and to its highest cultural possibilities. Mr. Washington, on the other hand, believed that the Negro as an efficient worker could gain wealth and that eventual- ly through his ownership of capital he would be able to achieve a recognized place in American culture and could then educate his children as he might wish and develop his possibilities. For this reason he pro- posed to put the emphasis at present upon training in the skilled trades and encourage- ment in industry and common labor. (p. 70)
There was no doubt that by the early years of the 1900s that Washington’s influence among the White elite was considerably stronger than DuBois’. There was no gainsaying his influence in the highest places, his manifold services to his people, and, above all, the radiating influ-
ence of Tuskegee’s good works (Lewis, 1993).
Washington’s leadership ultimately gave way to new forces in the 20th^ century, which placed less emphasis on individual leadership and more on organizational power. The founding of the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 with W. E. B. DuBois as its first president and the National Urban League in 1911 challenged Washington’s power as a dispenser of political patronage as well as his technological and eco- nomic message. Nevertheless, he remained active as a speaker until his death in 1915 at Tuskegee.
DuBois had a phenomenally prolific career as a writer and scholar. Over time, he became more disillusioned with America, particularly the Black elite—the group that he dubbed as the Black upper class—believing that they had failed on their obligation to lead the masses of African Americans out of retrograde circum- stances. In October 1961 he moved to Ghana. In 1963 he renounced his American citizenship and officially became a citizen of Ghana. He died there on August 27, 1963, at the age of 95 and was buried there (Rampersad, 1976).
Both men were aware that the need for African Americans to become technologically literate was paramount. However, whereas Washington advocated a hands-on external approach, DuBois promoted a paternalistic form of advancement of the Black race. Both men’s philosophies are still being argued and applied in the technological arena today.
Dr. Keith V. Johnson is chair of the Department of Technology and Geomatics at East Tennessee State University. He is a member of Gamma Zeta Chapter of Epsilon Pi Tau.
Dr. Elwood D.Watson is an associate professor and interim director of the African/ African-American Studies Program at East Tennessee State University.
References
Aptheker, H. (1951). The Negro people in the United States. New York: The Citadel Press.
Butler, J. (1991). Entrepreneurship and self-help among Black Americans: A reconstruction of race and economics. Albany: State University of New York Press.
