“Cambridge, Mass., April 24, 1905. My Dear Du Bois…Of course in the heat of discussion I hear of you everywhere. I am rather troubled to find that a great many people suppose that you head a kind of opposition to Booker T. Washington’s ideas; so far as I understand, there is no innate lack of harmony between your purpose in life and his. You take a certain thing which must be done, viz. the higher education of those who can profit by it; he takes another end of the same problem; naturally each of you thinks that his interest is the more important; if you did not, you would exchange activities. But I do not see how either excludes the other. Our bumptious friend has made a great deal of u necessary trouble by his assaults on Mr. Washington, in season and out of season, and I have actually found people who seemed to suppose that you and Trotter were working together. Sincerely yours, Albert Busnell Hart”
Many commentators—including the present one—have tried to look retroactively to help reconcile the ideas of one Booker T. Washington and one William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. And perhaps Harvard historian, Albert Bushnell Hart, one of Du Bois’s former teachers has already done so in this April 24, 1905 letter to Du Bois in the midst of the heightening tensions between the work of Du Bois and the work of Washington. In this letter to Du Bois, he seeks to gently advise Du Bois concerning his affiliation with William Monroe Trotter and any perceived involvement with this strong-voiced anti-Washington contingent and leader of the “The Boston Riot,” occuring two years earlier with agitators targeting none other than Booker T. Washington.
(In a July 30, 1903 gathering in Boston, Massachusetts at the Zion A.M.E. Church, very strong opposition assembled in the audience to question Booker T. Washington and disrupt his speech that notwithstanding he was able to give. The “riot” included spraying the dias with cayenne pepper, displaying loud “hissing’ towards Washington and provided audience members a list of antagonistic questions to Washington. The full account including Trotter’s arrest and explanation appears in the Boston Globe’s, July 31, 1903, “An Account of the Boston Riot.” To be fantastically clear, it actually should not have actually been termed a riot and Mr. Du Bois was not in attendance.)
All the same, in addition to his concern that Du Bois was being associated with Trotter, he plainly describes the key differences between he and Washington that Du Bois and all future observers can hardly deny: “You [Du Bois] take a certain thing which must be done, viz. the higher education of those who can profit by it; he [Washington] takes another end of the same problem.” Whether in the early 20th century or now in the first quarter of the 21st century, one can hardly disagree with the sentiment that the vocational callings of some men and women require advanced higher education and other callings—no less valuable and perhaps in the long run far more profitable—requires specialized training (outside of higher education) for entrepreneurial and economic success.
Mr. Hart’s intervention perhaps came far too late for his former student. It had been 10 years since Washington’s famous Atlanta Exposition Address and 4 years since his _Up From Slavery_ had solidified his standing in the nation as the undisputed leader of the African American community while serving as the founding principal of the Tuskegee Institute. And with Du Bois’s publication 2 years prior, _The Souls of Black Folk_ (which also included a rather vociferous treatment of Washington in a chapter titled, “Of Booker T. Washington and others”) Du Bois had also become a national leader in scope and in voice. (In fact, Du Bois replied directly and sharply: “I have no personal opposition to him—I honor much of his work. But his platform has done the race infinite harm & I’m working against it with all my might…” ,
To the expressed delight of some and to the deep chagrin of others, this tension led persons and supporters of both men then—like Professor Hart—and still now to make their very best attempts for history to record the ideologies of both Du Bois’s and Washington as ‘not one or the other but both.’
Discover more from Brian Johnson, Ph.D.
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