Historical Beefs #6: W.E.B. versus Booker T

[Professor Emeritus]

You going to do WEB vs. Marcus Garvey or Mao vs. Chiang Kai Shek?

Marcus Garvey might factor into one but I don't have it thought out yet. First there's an African freedom fighter that I want to do.

I know nothing about Mao vs. Chiang Kai Shek, but I'm always up for suggestions so i'll research that a little. Any particular fukkery you want to note?

 

[DrBanneker]

Marcus Garvey might factor into one but I don't have it thought out yet. First there's an African freedom fighter that I want to do.

I know nothing about Mao vs. Chiang Kai Shek, but I'm always up for suggestions so i'll research that a little. Any particular fukkery you want to note?

Cool, is the African freedom fighter beef going to be Nkrumah, Nyerere, or Mugabe?

Mao vs. CKS was pretty deep; they were both mentored by the father of modern China Sun Yat-Sen, CKS turned on the communists in the 20s basically nearly killing them off and then was about to deliver a death blow in the 30s when Japan invaded. CKS wanted to fight Mao more than the Japanese but was captured by his own generals and forced to ally with them in WWII (see Xi'An incident). Of course CKS lost and fled to Taiwan but spent his whole life plotting invasion to retake China.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Cool, is the African freedom fighter beef going to be Nkrumah, Nyerere, or Mugabe?

My impulse is to do Nkrumah and that's probably who the first one will be, though Lutuli, Kaunda, and Nyerere are all on the table. If I did Mugabe it would actually be the Nkomo vs. Mugabe beef.

Mao vs. CKS was pretty deep; they were both mentored by the father of modern China Sun Yat-Sen, CKS turned on the communists in the 20s basically nearly killing them off and then was about to deliver a death blow in the 30s when Japan invaded. CKS wanted to fight Mao more than the Japanese but was captured by his own generals and forced to ally with them in WWII (see Xi'An incident). Of course CKS lost and fled to Taiwan but spent his whole life plotting invasion to retake China.

I didn't realize it laid out for that long. I know nothing about that history. Probably will let it lay low for a while cause the level of background I'd have to educate myself in would take some, but Mao was a weird cat so there's definitely potential there.

Bringing up the Japanese invasion of the Asian mainland just put another one in my mind that I hadn't considered before....

 

[KeysT]

Yep - the reason I call them "legends" and rate them way above a lot of more recent intellectual leaders is cause they both clearly loved their people and spent their entire lives working for the Struggle. Booker T. Washington should be distinguished from a lot of Black "conservatives" that followed him, especially today, because he spent his entire damn life pouring all of himself into helping his people and got tens of thousands of Black people, maybe hundreds of thousands, an education and real life skills. W.E.B. DuBois can be distinguished from a lot of Black "liberals" that followed because he wasn't just talking about equal rights, he was creating and leading movements that fought real battles and won victories in the fight for rights. They weren't just unusually brilliant, they were both unusually devoted to giving their life to the cause.

TBH there wasn't even a need for them to be beefing with each other, they should have just been letting each other cook. The Black community coming out of slavery needed to have someone fighting to get the community educated and endow them with real work skills, and they needed someone leading the fight for equal rights. Both were essential. The beef was mostly born out of ego and myopia - if W.E.B. DuBois could have just realized that Booker T. needed to play both sides to work successfully in the South and didn't blame Washington for the sins of White people, and if Booker T. could have just realized that W.E.B. was capable of making headway in the fight for rights and didn't blame DuBois for antagonizing White people, they could have worked in parallel and never had beef at all.

A good modern equivalent would be charter school leaders and public school proponents. The best examples of both are each working to improve Black education, they need to realize that both of their efforts are essential and stop getting in each other's way.

In the end both were human and hindsight is 20/20. For them to be able to think so clearly in the climate they faced at the time represents greatness. Just makes me proud to have such great minds give us potential blueprints for how to move in America.

 

[Robbie3000]

This was such a dope read. You have real talent breh. You should collate all these and publish a book.

I read the Hamilton one back in the day, I’ll check out the rest.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

From then on there were two ways

Now there was a struggle for the heart of Black leadership, with Booker T at the head of one and W.E.B. at the head of the other.

Later that year Booker T was supposed to speak at a church in Boston in support of the National Negro Business League. The speech was rowdily interrupted by William Trotter, the de facto leader of the "Negro Radicals", a group of Northern Blacks who opposed Booker T's program. Trotter was, uh, less diplomatic.

Everyone started yelling, the meeting descended into chaos, someone threw pepper bombs and stink bombs , and Trotter was arrested by the police. W.E.B. wasn't there, but later he came out in support of Trotter's side, and (false) whispers started that W.E.B. had helped plan the whole thing.


The riot and its aftermath embittered Booker T to the Radical cause, and his statements afterwards were condescending and dismissive. Newspapers supporting Booker T and newspapers supporting the Radicals engaged in all-out war. W.E.B. and Booker T tried at first to keep the sides from destroying each other, then basically said, "fukk it" and went all-in with their factions.

In July 1905 W.E.B. and Trotter held a meeting at Niagara Falls to create a group that would oppose segregation and disenfranchisement while rejecting Booker T's approaches, and the Niagara Movement was born. Booker T got his forces together and suppressed news about the Niagara Movement in the Black press, and what they did write was salty as hell.

clip from pbs docu covering that


1895: A Turning Point in Black History | PBS LearningMedia

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Booker T really was the worst

 

[Professor Emeritus]

clip from pbs docu covering that


1895: A Turning Point in Black History | PBS LearningMedia

Thanks for posting!

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

It’s weird, but I’ve always felt like these beefs was really just the failure of those leaders to realize that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Sure, you want your philosophy to hold sway but if the main goal is to lift up Black people then there should be as many viable options as possible.

If someone wants to get into vocation and be a part of a strong blue collar class? Cool. Or maybe a part of the intelligentsia? Fine. Or even repatriate to Africa and return to your roots? Go for it. On the one hand, the schisms and rigorous debate helped to further evolve Black political and economic thought but sometimes I really do wonder how different it might’ve been if those pillars in the early 20th century were more concerned with supporting one another in a more robust way instead of what actually ended up happening.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

It’s weird, but I’ve always felt like these beefs was really just the failure of those leaders to realize that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Sure, you want your philosophy to hold away but if the main goal is to lift up Black people then there should be as many viable options as possible.

If someone wants to get into vocation and be a part of a strong blue collar class? Cool. Or maybe a part of the intelligentsia? Fine. Or even repatriate to Africa and return to your roots? Go for it. On the one hand, the schisms and rigorous debate helped to further evolve Black political and economic thought but sometimes I really do wonder if those pillars in the early 20th century were more concerned with supporting one another in a more robust way instead of what actually ended up happening.

Part of it is strategy but part of it is emotional too. When someone else insults your way of doing shyt that you've devoted your life to, it's easy to take it personal and double-down a little too hard. You look at how the beef developed, and it was really some very mild differences in focus that got exaggerated by their associations and associates, and in desiring to defend their own position they just went harder and harder against each other.

That being said, I don't think their beef had a large negative effect on the movement. There are really always two driving factors that loom over everything else - how strong is the push of the grassroots, and how effective is the oppression from the power holders. In their era I don't think their beef demoralized the grassroots, if anything it invigorated their own supporters even more. But the oppression from the power holders was very, very effective in that era.

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

Part of it is strategy but part of it is emotional too. When someone else insults your way of doing shyt that you've devoted your life to, it's easy to take it personal and double-down a little too hard. You look at how the beef developed, and it was really some very mild differences in focus that got exaggerated by their associations and associates, and in desiring to defend their own position they just went harder and harder against each other.

That being said, I don't think their beef had a large negative effect on the movement. There are really always two driving factors that loom over everything else - how strong is the push of the grassroots, and how effective is the oppression from the power holders. In their era I don't think their beef demoralized the grassroots, if anything it invigorated their own supporters even more. But the oppression from the power holders was very, very effective in that era.

Certainly so, I mean their issue was nowhere as toxic as Du Bois/Garvey was. They actually complimented one another well in terms of their opposite positions. Not everyone wants to be in the tenth and not everyone wants to work a blue collar job or a trade. So just economically they both had appeal to the early 20th century Black people on the new negro wave.

But while those and your post are good points to bring up. My thing is that while it didn’t exactly hurt the grassroots and the growth and development of Black political thought, I do think an opportunity was missed to make more progress through deeper cooperation also. Or at least that’s the question that I ponder on regarding this period of time. Kinda like what if reconstruction had worked out? It’s one of those questions left to speculative history.

 

[The axe murderer]

Good read

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Good read

Thanks breh.

 

[Joe Sixpack]

 

[CEO of Morgan Industries]

I wanted to give you some props for this thread, Rhakim. It inspired me to pick up my copy of Up From Slavery for the first time in a long time, and I've got my copy of The Souls of Black Folk ready next.

What strikes me about Up From Slavery is the range of goals that Washington has while writing it. It's all at once a slave narrative, a biography of Tuskegee, a political argument, and an attempt to reassure black and white folks about his economic-first strategies.

It's tough to read in 2023 because Washington over-praises pretty much every half-friendly white person in the book. The problem is too many modern readers don't take context into account and just call every black person who ever tried in some way to mollify a white person a c00n. In the context of Washington's time and life, he's got to argue that slavery is bad and that education and economic freedom for black folks is vital to the future of the nation, but he's also got to make sure that white people don't feel bad about slavery or its effects on black Americans even while he talks about how damaging slavery's effect was on black Americans.

I don't think he fully achieves every one of those goals, and a black reader from 2023 is going to take definite offense. Like you said, Dubois at the time took offense (and I get why he did, don't get me wrong).

Up From Slavery is a quick read, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't read it to read it. The Souls of Black Folk isn't long, but it's denser in its ideas, closer to Baldwin or Coates than Washington's book is. Washington's book is more a narrative re-telling with philosophical and political discussions mixed in.