Black Leaders At The Crossroads:Revisiting Washington-Du Bois Controversy Over Racial Strategy,1895-1915

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed a heated debate between two established black leaders, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, over the best course for the advancement of their race. Chinese scholarship on black ideologies has been relatively scant, and much of it tends to focus on the intellectual evolution of individual black leaders rather than examining them in a comparative framework. By contrast, the controversy has aroused great interest among American scholars who, while agreeing upon the importance of their debate, differ from each other with regards to its causes, issues at stake, results and its nature. This thesis, therefore, attempts to examine the race relations in turn-of-century America and the influences such relations exerted on the mind of blacks by probing into and analyzing the controversy between these two contemporary black leaders.Towards this end, this thesis first examines the race relations of the era in which Washington and Du Bois lived so as to trace the social causes of the controversy. The author argues that the restoration of White Supremacy, the rise of the black middle class and the surge of the Progressive Movement all combined to explain the popularity of Washington and the rise of criticism of his program at the same time. Following this, the thesis looks into the development of their personal relationship and their specific racial strategies in order to locate the personal factors that contributed to the controversy and fundamental issues of the controversy. The thesis points out that the power struggle between them not only incurred personal estrangement, but also touched off the ideological controversy over effective racial strategies, and that their differences lied in priorities for black uplifting and attitudes toward whites rather than fundamental goal for blacks. Finally, the thesis turns to the role whites played in the controversy, and the ideological roots of their racial strategies, arguing that power relations between the two races determined the power struggle between the two leaders, and that in essence the controversy was one between nationalist Washington and integrationist Du Bois, though both were cultural pluralists in their own right.