Topic > Booker T. Dubois Analysis - 1070

DuBois criticized the "here and now" approach, because his concern was for the future of the black and white world they lived in. In Souls of Black Folks, DuBois mentions a veil that must be uncovered so that blacks and whites can “enter tenderly and cheerfully into those sad little lives and sweep away the brooding hatred” (The Souls of Black Folks, 91). Removing such a veil would be difficult, but with proper education, DuBois believed that one day someone would lift it. What was an appropriate education? DuBois, unlike Washington, believed that a proper education was a higher education and not an industrial one. A clear example of his disagreement with Washington was when, in his address to the country, he stated: “when we ask for education we mean real education. We believe in work. We ourselves are workers, but work is not necessarily education” (www.digitalhistory.uh). He made this speech to help spark the Niagara Movement, because he wanted African Americans to fight and protest to achieve their equality. At least he tried to get blacks the right to vote. “With the right to vote everything goes: freedom, virility, the honor of our wives, the chastity of our daughters, the right to work and the possibility of rising, and let no man listen to those who deny it” (www . digitalhistory.uh). In his time period and also in the current period, that right to vote means the right to move the country to a