Booker T. Washington (19th century) and Martin Luther King Jr. (20th century) Essay

I. ledger entryFor tens, Booker T. working capital (1856-1915) was the study Afri stomach-American spokes globe in the eyes of neat America. Born a slave in Virginia, upper-case letter was educated at Hampton pi whizer, Norfolk, Virginia. He began to work at the Tuskegee form in 1881 and built it into a center of pick uping and industrial and agricultural training. A hand round small-arm and a forceful speaker, cap was skilled at politics. Powerful and potent in both the color and albumen communities, cap was a mystical consultant to presidents. For age, presidential political ap deputements of African-Americans were cle bed by him. He was funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, eatd at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt and family, and was the guest of the Queen of England at Windsor Castle. Although capital letter was an accommodator, he spoke out against lynchings and worked to make separate facilities to a greater extent compare. Although he advised African-Americans to abide by segregation codes, he a great deal travelled in private railroad cars and stayed in good hotels. completely number of historic moments in the polite undecomposeds struggle subscribe to been utilise to identify Martin Luther mogul, Jr. prime m over of the capital of Alabama muckle ostracize, soda pop speaker at the March on cap, youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. besides in retrospect, single events are less important than the fact that mightiness, and his insurance of unprovoking stand, was the dominant force in the complaisant righteousnesss reason during its decade of greatest achievement, from 1957 to 1968.II.BOOKER T. WASHINGTONA. HISTORYBooker T. cap was born a slave in Hales Ford, Virginia, reportedly on April 5, 1856. subsequently emancipation, his family was so poverty stricken that he worked in salt furnaces and burn mines beginning at age nine. Always anintelligent and curious child, he yearned for an fostera ge and was frustrated when he could non receive good shoal locally. When he was 16 his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no specie to help him, so he walked 200 miles to attend the Hampton convey in Virginia and paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor. Dedicating himself to the idea that education would shape up his wad to comparability in this country, cap became a teacher. He frontmost taught in his home t have, then at the Hampton Institute, and then in 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. As brain of the Institute, he traveled the country unceasingly to raise funds from balefuls and face cloths both soon he became a well-known speaker. In 1895, Washington was asked to speak at the opening of the Cotton States Expo sit downion, an unprecedented rewarfared for an African American.His Atlanta Compromise speech explained his major thesis, that sicks could secure their intact rig hts through their own scotch and moral advancement rather than through legal and political changes. Although his conciliatory stand angered some dulls who feared it would incite the foes of equal rights, face cloths approved of his views. Thus his major achievement was to bring in over diverse elements among southern ashens, without whose support the programs he envisioned and brought into being would prevail been impossible. In addition to Tuskegee Institute, which still educates some(prenominal) today, Washington instituted a kind of programs for rural extension work, and helped to establish the bailiwick pitch blackness Business union. curtly after the election of President William McKinley in 1896, a hunting expedition was define in motion that Washington be named to a hack writerinet post, only when he withdrew his name from consideration, preferring to work outside the political arena. He died on November 14, 1915.From 1872 to 1875, he attended the Hampton I nstitute, an industrial school for blacks in Hampton, Virginia. He became a teacher at the institute in 1879. Washington based umteen of his educational theories on his training at Hampton. In 1881, Washington founded and became drumhead of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. He started this school in an old cast out church and a shanty. The schools name was new-fangledr changed to Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). The school taught specific trades, much(prenominal) as carpentry, farming, and mechanics, and trained teachers. As it expanded, Washingtonspent much of his time raising funds. nether Washingtons leadinghip, the institute became famous as a model of industrial education. The Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, formal in 1974, includes Washingtons home, student-made college buildings, and the George Washington Carver Museum. Though Washington offered little that was innovative in industrial education, which both Union philanthropic foundatio ns and southern leaders were already promoting, he became its chief black exemplar and spokesman.In his advocacy of Tuskegee Institute and its educational method, Washington revealed the political adroitness and accommodationist philosophy that were to characterize his career in the wider arena of look sharp leadership. He convinced southern white employers and governors that Tuskegee offered an education that would lionize blacks shoot down on the farm and in the trades. To prospective northern donors and particularly the new self- made millionaires such as Rockefeller and Carnegie he promised the ingraining of the Protestant work ethic. To blacks liveliness within the limited horizons of the post- Reconstruction southeastern, Washington held out industrial education as the means of escape from the vane of regioncropping and debt and the achievement of attainable, petit-bourgeois goals of self-employment, landownership, and small business. Washington cultivated local white acclaim and secured a small state appropriation, barely it was northern donations that made Tuskegee Institute by 1900 the scoop-supported black educational institution in the country.Washington was get hitched with three times. His first wife, Fannie N. Smith, his sweetheart from Malden, gave birth to a child in 1883, the year after their marriage, precisely died prematurely the next year. In 1885 Washington matrimonial Olivia Davidson they had two children. This too was a short marriage, for she had suffered from physical maladies for old age and died in 1889. Four years later on he married Margaret J. Murray, a Fisk ammonium alum who had replaced Davidson as lady principal. She remained Washingtons wife for the abide of his life, helping to raise his three children and continuing to play a major role at Tuskegee.As Tuskegee Institute grew it branched out into early(a)(a) endeavors. The annual Tuskegee Negro crowds, inaugurated in 1892, sought solutions forimpoverished black farmers through crop diversity and education. The National Negro Business League, founded in 1900, gave boost to black enterprises and unrestrictedized their successes. Margaret Washington hosted womens conferences on campus. Washington established National Negro Health Week and called tending to minority wellness issues in addresses nationwide.By the mid-1880s Washington was becoming a fixture on the nations lecture circuit. This exposure both drew solicitude and dollars to Tuskegee and allowed the black educator to articulate his philosophy of racial advancement. In a notable 1884 address to the National Education companionship in Madison, Wisconsin, Washington touted education for Negroesbrains, property, and characteras the key to black advancement and sufferance by white southerners. Separate but equal railroad and some some otherwise general facilities were acceptable to blacks, he argued, as long as they sincerely were equal.This speech foreshadowed the acco mmodationist racial compromises he would preach for the rest of his life. During the 1880s and mid-nineties Washington went out of his way to soft-pedal racial insults and attacks on blacks (including himself) by whites. He courted southern white politicians who were racial moderates, arguing that black Americans had to depict good citizenship, hard work, and elevated character in order to win the respect of the fall in sort of whites. Full political and social equality would result in all due time, he maintained.B. GOALSWashington believed that blacks could make headway much from a practical, vocational education rather than a college education. most(prenominal) blacks lived in poverty in the rural South, and Washington felt they should square off skills, work hard, and acquire property. He believed that the development of work skills would lead to economic prosperity. Washington predicted that blacks would be granted cultivated and political rights after gaining a strong ec onomic foundation. He explained his theories in Up from Slavery and in other publications. During Bookers lifetime, umteen a(prenominal) African Americans were former slaves who did not ware an education. Bookers goal was to provide African Americans with opportunities to learn vocational skills and obtain aneducation. He thought former slaves would gain acceptation through education and financial independence.C. METHODSIn the late 1800s, more and more blacks became victims of lynchings and Jim Crow laws that segregated blacks. To reduce racial conflicts, Washington advised blacks to tour demanding equal rights and to simply get along with whites. He urged whites to slide by blacks better jobs. In a speech given in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895, Washington declared In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. This speech was practically called the Atlanta Compromise because Washington a ccepted inequality and segregation for blacks in exchange for economic advancement. The speech was widely quoted in news writings and helped make him a prominent field of study figure and black spokesman. Washington became a crisp political leader and advised not only Presidents, but alike members of Congress and governors, on political appointments for blacks and sympathetic whites. He urged wealthy throng to contribute to various black organizations. He also owned or financially supported more black newspapers. In 1900, Washington founded the National Negro Business League to help black business firms. passim his life, Washington tried to please whites in both the North and the South through his public actions and his speeches. He neer publicly supported black political causes that were unpopular with southerly whites. However, Washington cabalisticly financed lawsuits opposing segregation and upholding the right of blacks to vote and to serve on juries. Washington offered black acquiescence in disfranchisement and social segregation if whites would encourage black progress in economic and educational opportunity. Washingtons position so glad whites, North and South, that they made him the new black spokesman. He became functionful, having the deciding junction in Federal appointments of African Americans and in philanthropic grants to black institutions. done subsidies or secret partnerships, he controlled black newspapers, stifling critics.Overawed by his power and hoping his tactics would work, many blacks went along. However, increasingly during his last years, such black intellectuals as W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope, andWilliam Monroe Trotter denounced his surrender of civilized rights and his stressing of training in crafts, some obsolete, to the neglect of liberal education. Opposition centered in the Niagara Movement, founded in 1905, and the National Association for the betterment of Colored People, which succeeded it in 1910.Washingtons power involved not only close relationships with influential white political leaders and industrialists but also a secret intercommunicate of contacts with journalists and various organizations. He schemed with white and black Alabamians to try to keep other black schools from locating near Tuskegee. He engineered political appointments for supporters in the black community as a way of solidifying his own power base. He planted spies in organizations unfriendly to him to report on their activities and at one time even utilise a detective mission briefly. De wound public denials, Washington owned partial interests in some minority newspapers. This allowed him to plant stories and to influence their news coverage and editorial stands in ways beneficial to himself. Beginning in the mid-1880s, and lasting for some twenty dollar send years, he maintained a clandestine relationship with T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York Age, the leading black newspaper of its day.He helped su pport the paper financially, was one of its stockholders, and quietly endorsed many of Fortunes militant stands for ballot and other civil rights and against lynching. He also supported the Afro-American League, a civil rights organization founded by Fortune in 1887. Washington secretly provided financial and legal support for court challenges to all-white juries in Alabama, segregated imparting facilities, and disfranchisement of black voters. As black suffrage decreased nonetheless well-nigh the turn of the century, Washington struggled to keep a modicum of black influence and stand in the Republican party in the South. From 1908 to 1911 he played a major, though covert, role in the successful effort to get the U.S. compulsory motor hotel to overturn a harsh Alabama peonage law chthonic which Alonzo Bailey, a black Alabama farmer, had been convicted.1. DISSENT observant RightsBooker T. Washingtons methods included speeches, arguments, and agreements with both races blacks a nd whites, without having to associate emphasis to achieve these goals.D. ACCOMPLISHMENTSh As Washingtons influence with whites and blacks grew he reaped several honors. In 1901 he wrote a ruffseller called Up From Slavery his autobiography. He also became an advisor to the President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt. He became the first black ever to dine at the White House with the President. This created a huge scandal. Many white people thought that it was wrong for whites and blacks to mix socially, and for their President to do it frighten them. Roosevelt defended his actions at the time, and he continued to ask for Washingtons advice, but he never invited him back. Eventually Washingtons leadership of blacks began to decline. It became homely that the white people that had gained control of Southern institutions after Reconstruction did not ever want the civil and political status of blacks to improve heedless of how hard they worked or how much character they h ad.They passed laws to keep them from voting and to keep them from mixing with whites in schools, stores and restaurants. Many blacks came to believe that a more forceful, demanding begin was needed. By the last years of his life, Washington had moved away from many of his accommodationist policies. Speaking out with a new frankness, Washington attacked racism. In 1915 he joined ranks with former critics to baulk the stereotypical portrayal of blacks in a new movie, Birth of a Nation. Some months later he died at age 59. A man who overcame near-impossible odds himself, Booker T. Washington is best remembered for helping black Americans rise up from the economic slavery that held them down long after they were legally free citizens. Was chosen in 1861 to head the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Instituteh Caused Tuskegee Institute to grow into one of the worlds leading centers of education for African-Americansh Founded the National Negro Business League in 1900h Advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft on racial mattersh Wrote an autobiography, Up From Slavery in 1901h Stressed the splendor of education and employment for African-Americansh Became a chief spokesperson for his raceh Advocated cooperation between the racesh His views caused strife with other African-American leaders, especially W.E.B. Dubois, although in his later years he began to agree with them on the best methods to achieving equalityClose analysis of Washingtons autobiographies and speeches reveals a vagueness and subtlety to his message lost on most people of his time, whites and blacks alike. He never said that American minorities would forever forgo the right to vote, to gain a full education, or to enjoy the fruits of an integrated society. alone he strategically chose not to force the issue in the face of the overwhelming white hostility that was the reality of American race relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this sense, he did w hat he had to do to assure the survival of himself and the people for whom he spoke.III.MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.A. HISTORY great power was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the second oldest child of Alberta Williams poof and Martin Luther world power. He had an older sister, Christine, and a younger brother, A. D. The young Martin was usually called M. L. His render was curate of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. One of Martins grandfathers, A. D. Williams, also had been pastor there. In high school, Martin did so well that he skipped both the 9th and twelfth grades. At the age of 15, he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta. female monarch became an admirer of benzoin E. Mays, Morehouses president and a well-known scholar of black religion. Under Mayss influence, King decided to mystify a minister.King was decreed just before he graduated from Morehouse in 1948. He entered Crozer theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, to earn a divinity degree. King then went to graduate school at Boston University, where he got a Ph.D. degree in theology in 1955. In Boston, he met Coretta Scott of Marion, Alabama, a music student. They were married in 1953. The Kings had four childrenYolanda, Dexter, Martin, and Bernice. In 1954, King became pastor of the Dexter roadway Baptist Church in capital of Alabama, Alabama.In celestial latitude 5, 1955 King began to be substantive in the changing of the Black mans way of life. The boycott of the Montgomery Bus was begun when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a bus to a white man on December 1st. Two Patrolmen took her away to the police station where she was booked. He and 50 other ministered held a meeting and agreed to start a boycott on December 5th, the day of Rosa Parkss hearing. This boycott would likely be successful since 70% of the riders were black. The buscompany did not inquire them seriously, because if there was bad weather, they would have to take the bus.The Montgom ery Improvement Association (MIA)was established to co-ordinate the boycott. They had a special agreement with black cab companies, in which they were allowed to get a ride for a much cheaper price than normal. Blacks had to walk to work, and so they did not have time to do any shopping and therefore the sales decreased dramatically. On January 30, while M.L was do a speech, his house was bombed. Luckily his wife and baby had left the living room when the bomb exploded, but a black mob create and was raving mad about what had happened, and Policemen were sent to the scene to control the situation, even though they were outnumbered. King, however, because of his strong ruling in nonviolence, urged the crowd to not use their guns and to go home.What made Martin Luther King striking was his conviction on non-violence. He believed that this belief could give blacks a superior level of morality over whites. This political orientation was important for his success in later years. As a result, it helped conceal the use of violence fromwhites to blacks and vice versa. This philosophy was tested during the Montgomery bus boycott. Before the successful boycott, blacks used violence in order to protest racism. During the boycott, however, on both sides violence was not a measure to be taken. When someone bombed Kings home,the fact that violence was used against a nonviolent group made the idea of the black mans cause more agreeable.B. GOALSIn 1967, King became more critical of American society than ever before. He believed poverty was as great an atrocious as racism. He said that true social justice would engage a redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Thus, King began to plan a ridiculous Peoples Campaign that would unite poor people of all races in a struggle for economic opportunity. The campaign would demand a federal guaranteed annual income for poor people and other major antipoverty laws. also in 1967, King attacked U.S. support of South Vie tnam in the Vietnam War (1957-1975). He regarded the South Vietnamese government as corrupt and undemocratic. Many supporters of the war denounced Kings criticisms, but the growing antiwar movement welcomed his comments.Dr. King and the SCLC organised drives for African-American voter registration, desegregation, and better education and housing throughout the South. Dr. King continued to speak. He went to many cities and towns. He wasgreeted by crowds of people who valued to hear him speak. He said all people have the right to equal treatment under the law. Many people believed in these civil rights and worked hard for themDr. King believed that poverty caused much of the unrest in America. non only poverty for African-Americans, but poor whites, Hispanics and Asians. Dr. King believed that the United States thing in Vietnam was also a factor and that the war poisoned the atmosphere of the completely country and made the solution of local problems of human relations phantasma goricThis caused friction between King and the African-American leaders who felt that their problems deserve priority and that the African-American leadership should concentrate on fighting racial injustice at home. But by early 1967 Dr. King had become associated with the antiwar movementDr. King continued his campaign for world peace. He traveled across America to support and speak out about civil rights and the rights of the underprivilegedC. METHODSKings civil rights activities began with a protest of Montgomerys segregated bus system in 1955. That year, a black passenger named Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying a city law requiring that blacks give up their seats on buses when white people cherished to sit in their seats or in the same row. Black leaders in Montgomery urged blacks to boycott (refuse to use) the citys buses. The leaders organize an organization to run the boycott, and asked King to serve as president. In his first speech as leader of the boycott, King tol d his black colleagues First and foremost, we are American citizens. We are not here advocating violence. The only weapon that we have is the weapon of protest. The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.Terrorists bombed Kings home, but King continued to insist on nonviolent protests. Thousands of blacks boycotted the buses for over a year. In 1956,the United States Supreme Court ordered Montgomery to provide equal, integrated seating on public buses. The boycotts success win King national fame and place him as a symbol of Southern blacks new efforts to fight racial injustice.With other black ministers, King founded the Southern Christian leadershiphip Conference (SCLC) in 1957 to expand the nonviolent struggle against racism and discrimination. At the time, general segregation existed throughout the South in public schools, and in transportation, recreation, and such public facilities as hotels and restaurants. Many states also used various met hods to strip down blacks of their voting rights. In 1960, King moved from Montgomery to Atlanta to pull more effort to SCLCs work. He became co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his fatherIn the North, however, King soon discovered that young and angry blacks cared little for his discussion and even less for his pleas for peaceful protest. Their disenchantment was one of the reasons he rallied piece of tail a new cause the war in Vietnam.Although he was arduous to create a new coalition based on equal support for peace and civil rights, it caused an immediate rift. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) saw Kings shift of focus as a serious tactical mistake the Urban League warned that the limited resources of the civil-rights movement would be spread too thinBut from the vantage point of history, Kings timing was superb. Students, professors, intellectuals, clergymen and reformers rushed into the movement. Then, King turned his attention to the domestic issue that he felt was flat related to the Vietnam struggle poverty. He called for a guaranteed family income, he threatened national boycotts, and he spoke of disrupting entire cities by nonviolent camp-ins. With this in mind, he began to plan a immense march of the poor on Washington, D.C., envisage a demonstration of such intensity and size that Congress would have to recognize and deal with the huge number of desperate and downtrodden Americans.King break off these plans to lend his support to the Memphis sanitation mens strike. He wanted to discourage violence, and he wanted to focus national attention on the plight of the poor, unorganized workers of the city. The men were bargaining for basic union delegacy and long-overdue raises. But he never got back to his poverty plans.1. DISSENTLawful Rights While at seminary King became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhis philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959 King met with following of Gand hi. During these discussions he became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. He also used his speeches and demonstrations as tools to carry out his goals such as the I Have A aspiration Speech, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.D. ACCOMPLISHMENTSAn African American Baptist minister, was the main leader of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. He had a magnificent verbalize ability, which enabled him to effectively express the demands of African Americans for social justice. Kings eloquent pleas won the support of millions of peopleblacks and whitesand made him internationally famous. He won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for leading nonviolent civil rights demonstrations.In spite of Kings stress on nonviolence, he often became the aim of violence. White racists threw rocks at him in boodle and bombed his home in Montgomery, Alabama. Finally, violence ended Kings life at the age of 39, when an assassin shot and killed him. Some historians view Kings death as the end of the civil rights era that began in the mid-1950s. Under his leadership, the civil rights movement won wide support among whites, and laws that had barred integration in the Southern States were abolished. Kingbecame only the second American whose birthday is observed as a national holiday. The first was George Washington, the nations first president.King and other civil rights leaders then organized a massive march in Washington, D.C. The event, called the March on Washington, was intended to highlight African-American unemployment and to urge Congress to pass Kennedys bill. On Aug. 28, 1963, over 200,000 Americans, including many whites, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in the capital. The high point of the rally, Kings stirring I Have a Dream speech, eloquently defined the moral basis of the civil rights movement.The movement won a maj or victory in 1964, when Congress passed the civil rights bill that Kennedy and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, had recommended. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited racial discrimination in public places and called for equal opportunity in employment and education. King later received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.In 1965, King helped organize protests in Selma, Ala. The demonstrators protested against the efforts of white officials there to deny most black citizens the chance to register and vote. some(prenominal) hundred protesters attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital, but police officers used tear gas and clubs to break up the group. The bloody attack, broadcast nationwide on television news shows, shocked the public. King immediately inform another attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery. Johnson went before Congress to request a bill that would eliminate all barriers to Southern blacks right to vote. Within a few months, Congress appro ved the Voting Rights Act of 1965By 1965, King had come to believe that civil rights leaders should pay more attention to the economic problems of blacks. In 1966, he helped begin a major civil rights campaign in Chicago, his first big effort outside the South. Leaders of the campaign tried to organize black inner-city residents who suffered from unemployment, bad housing, and poor schools. The leaders also protested against real estate practices that unplowed blacks from living in many neighborhoods and suburbs. King believed such practices played a majorrole in trapping poor blacks in urban ghettos.King and the local leaders also organized marches through white neighborhoods. But angry white people in these segregated communities threw bottles and rocks at the demonstrators. Soon afterward, Chicago officials promised to encourage fair housing practices in the city if King would preventive the protests. King accepted the offer, and the Chicago campaign ended.IV.COMPARING/CONTRASTI NGWashington kept his white following by conservative policies and moderate utterances, but he faced growing black and white liberal opposition in the Niagara Movement (1905-9) and the NAACP (1909-), groups demanding civil rights and encouraging protest in response to white aggressions such as lynchings, disfranchisement, and segregation laws. Washington successfully fended off these critics, often by underhanded means. At the same time, however, he tried to empathize his own personal success into black advancement through secret sponsorship of civil rights suits, serving on the boards of Fisk and Howard universities, and directing philanthropic aid to these and other black colleges.His speaking tours and private persuasion tried to equalize public educational opportunities and to reduce racial violence. These efforts were generally unsuccessful, and the year of Washingtons death marked the beginning of the Great Migration from the rural South to the urban North. Washingtons racial philosophy, pragmatically adjusted to the limiting conditions of his own era, did not survive the change.Martin Luther Kings contributions to our history places him in this unreproducible position. In his short life, Martin Luther King was instrumental in helping us realize and rectify those unspeakable flaws which were tarnishing the name of America. The events which took place in and about his life were earth shattering, for they represented an America which was hostile and quite distinct from America as we see it today. Black Americans needed a Martin Luther King, but above all America needed him. The significant qualities of this special man cannot be underestimated nor takenfor granted.Within a span of 13 years from 1955 to his death in 1968 he was able to expound, expose, and extricate America from many wrongs. His tactics of protest involved non-violent passive resistance to racial injustice. It was the right prescription for our country, and it was right on time. Hope in America was wane on the part of many Black Americans, but Martin Luther King, Jr. provided a candle along with a light. He also provided this nation with a road map so that all people could locate and share together in the abundance of this great democracy.We honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because he showed us the way to mend those broken fences and to move on in building this land rather than destroying it. He led campaign after campaign in the streets of America and on to the governors hallway even to the White House in an effort to secure change.