African-Americans in the 18th and 19th century lived in a period of tension. African Americans faced greater challenges--legal, economic, social, and political--than any other group challenging their own oppressed status and seeking reform. No longer slaves, they were still not treated upon as equals by whites. However, movements as well as several African-American leaders rose to power during this period. They sought to bring the race to new heights. Two of these leaders were W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who shared different views and solution to the race problem. Their backgrounds strongly influenced the way they attacked the "Negro Problem."

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Bu Bois had grown up with more privileges and advantages than most blacks living in the United States at that time. Unlike most blacks living in the South, he had suffered neither severe economic hardship nor repeated encounters with racism. Du Bois, in comparison to Washington, had never known slavery. As violence against blacks increased in the South throughout the 1880s, Du Bo

is's scholarly education was matched by the hard lessons he learned about race relations. Through his experiences with poor blacks and encounters with racial hatred, Du Bois began to develop his racial consciousness and the desire to help improve the conditions of his race.

With The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois openly attacked Washington's philosophy of the Atlanta Compromise. He objected to Washington's strategy of accommodation and compromise with whites in both politics and education. He accused Washington of encouraging white efforts to impose segregation and of unnecessarily limiting the aspirations of the blacks. Du Bois also criticized Washington's emphasis on the importance of industrial education for blacks. Rather than settle for the trade and agriculture schools, Du Bois believed that talented blacks should accept nothing less than a full university education. By creating a trained elite, blacks would in effect be creating a leadership group capable of fighting for the rights of the race as a whole. He also believed that they should aspire to the professions, and above all, fight for the immediate restoration of their civil rights instead of waiting fo

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