The Gospel of Work and Money
Washington had arrived, Du Bois grants, at a singular historical moment — an age of "triumphant commercialism" hungry for accommodation. His Atlanta Compromise of 1895 traded civil and political demands for industrial training and Southern goodwill. The bargain was politically brilliant; it made Washington the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis. But it accepted, Du Bois argues, the very premise the Negro could not afford to accept.
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life.
The Triple Paradox
Du Bois names the contradiction at the heart of the compromise as a triple paradox: Washington urges his people to become artisans and property-owners while surrendering the suffrage by which workingmen defend their property; he insists on thrift and self-respect while counselling civic submission that erodes the very manhood thrift presupposes; he advocates common-school training while disparaging the colleges that produce the very teachers any common school requires.
In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
A Duty to Criticise
Du Bois closes the chapter by drawing the bright line: where Washington apologises for prejudice, the rising voices among Black America "must hold up his hands" insofar as he is right, and "oppose them when he is wrong." Submission is not safety; the disfranchisement of the Negro, the legal codification of caste, and the withdrawal of aid from higher education have followed in the compromise's wake.
From "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" (Chapter III). The essay marked the public break that would lead to the founding of the Niagara Movement (1905) and, four years later, the NAACP.
Related Concepts
