Throughout the struggle for equal rights, there have been courageous Black leaders at the forefront of each discrete movement. From early activists such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois, to 1960s civil rights leaders and radicals such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers, the progress that has been made toward full equality has resulted from the visionary leadership of these brave individuals.

This does not imply, however, that there has ever been widespread agreement within the Black community on strategy or that the actions of prominent Black leaders have met with strong support from those who would benefit from these actions. This report will examine the influence of two "early era" Black activists: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Through an analysis of the ideo

DuBois could not abide this type of appeasement. In his mind, this step was tantamount to the Black community telling the white community that, henceforth, Blacks would cease pretending to be equal to whites as human beings; rather, they would accept an overtly inferior social status as being worthy of maintaining the white majority's physical world, but unworthy of true equality, of conducting socio-cultural discourse with the mainstream society.

We can see, then, that neither Washington's strategy of appeasement nor DuBois's plan for an elite Black intelligentsia was to become wholly successful in elevating American Blacks to a position of equality. However, perhaps it was more than the leadership of any one Black man that encouraged African Americans to demand a full measure of social and economic equality. Perhaps the fact that there was a public dialogue in itself did more to encourage Black equality than the philosophy of any one prominent Black man. After all, concepts such as equality are exactly that: concepts. As such, it up to each of us to decide how we see ourselves in relation to others; superior or inferior, equal or not equal, the choice is ultimately our own.

DuBois also describes his opposition to Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" as follows: "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission..." According to DuBois, Washington broke the mold set by his predecessors: "Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells- Brown, and Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and self- development dawned.... But Booker T. Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of two--a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro."

William Edward Burghardt DuBois, on the other hand, was more of an idealist. DuBois was born in Massachusetts in 1868, just after the end of the Civil War and the official end of slavery. A gifted scholar, formal education played a much greater role in DuBois's life than it did in Washington's. After becoming a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk and Harvard, he was the first Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895.

DuBois wrote over 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles on the historical and sociological nature of the Black experience. He argued that an educated Black elite should lead Blacks to liberation by advancing a philosophical and intellectual offensive against racial discrimination. DuBois forwarded the argument that "The Negro problem was not and could not be kept distinct from other reform movements. . ."

Per

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