The Plight of Blacks

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., all served as role models for the survival and independence of Africans living in the United States, as well as around the world. It looks at how, through the auspices of migration, mobilization, and segregation, black history has become inherently associated with economic class and social standing; the problem inherent within legislating against discrimination is a product of social forces. It explores how the ex-slave was denied social freedom in the denial of a place in white society and how the segregation of the slaves from the minds of the whites was based on an underlying assumption that the slaves were not people. It shows how the rights of equality continue to be an issue, even as they were during Reconstruction.

From the Paper:

"Du Bois felt that Washington was asking the Negro people to give up political power, their insistence on civil rights and the right to higher education (Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 285). He contended that, instead, it should be asked of the nation three things, "the right to vote", "civil equality" and "the education of youth according to ability" (Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 286). In the United States, the role of the government is often defined by the ruling of the courts. Beginning with the Dred Scott versus Sanford case of 1857, the law seemed to side with the principles of discrimination. It decreed, in essence, that blacks of the pre-Civil War era did not have the rights of an American citizen. In 1866, just after the end of the Civil War, the first Civil Rights Act was instituted to help define the intent of the 14th amendment."

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