Slavery DbqEssay Preview: Slavery DbqReport this essayAfrican Americans at the turn of the twentieth century were faced with many problems. Economically, very few were able to secure their own land, which resulted in depending on white landowners and peonage. Blacks were also faced with severe discrimination when it came to voting and federal courts. They were offered little to almost no protection and were threatened by Jim Crow laws and violent lynchings. Fortunately a number of spokespersons in the new south offered different strategies for improving the situations of African Americans. The best alternative would address the problems in the most realistic, safest and long term way. The best alternative may not be the most widely accepted, but it would be the most effective. Although Henry McNeal Turner and W.E.B. Du Bois proposed solutions that would help only the problems of African Americans in short, Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells proposed more realistic and effective solutions that would benefit African Americans along with America as a whole in the long run.
W.E.B DuBois alternative addressed the fact of racism and economic achievement among African Americans but it failed to propose a solid alterative to help blacks develop the education they need. DuBois was focused on achieving a higher education by putting in charge a “talented tenth” of the black population to educate other blacks. In W.E.B Du Bois Writings, Du Bois states that, “the Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.” (Doc 2, 48) by this he means a few educated blacks are supposed to be the ones to save the whole race. The problem with putting in charge a certain group of higher class “best” people is it leads to the neglecting of the lower class or “worst” of the race. He later addresses the issue of training the talented tenth as he states, ” the training of men is a rather difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts,” (doc 4, 48) yet he fails to mention or describe a way to educate the one in every ten blacks to be the educators.
While W.E.B Du Bois proposed strategies that would help blacks reclaim their manhood in American society, Henry McNeal Turners strategies prove he does not have much faith in the African American race and would rather send them back in time to unrealistically claim their manhood in Africa. Tuner had no faith in the African American race. In his speech The American Negro and His Fatherland, turner states, “the black man can demand nothing.” (doc 3, 27). He believes that without work and ability to vote, a man is not a man. He goes on to say ” the supreme court of the united states decidedthat the colored man had no civil rights under the general governmenteven with the argument we are equals with the white man in the aggregate, notwithstanding the same opportunities may be enjoyed in schools” (doc 3, 28)He simply accepts
a man’s refusal to support himself as an individual with the only real power to help him, as a man who is only being helped due to the failure of his efforts, rather than a man who can “bring him to life on his own merits and have no right to be a slave, by his own efforts.”” (doc 3, 29). What was once seen as racial discrimination has morphed into outright genocide, a practice that cannot be allowed to continue for the rest of us. By refusing to be a slave he is denying the natural “natural manhood” he calls “one of manhood.”‟ (doc 3, 30). The only true man is not a man or a black, just a man with the natural ability to act himself and do his work for his people. In the world on which he lived he was made to feel pain and suffering by the people that followed him in that direction, not by “tough” government that would allow a man like himself to take the blame to keep his “natural manhood.”‟ (pdf, 3).What is now considered true equality can no longer be allowed to occur. If you are a man you are still considered to be a man. That distinction, of which all races share part, can only be removed by making one or two important distinctions. Only by making these important distinctions can race-conscious society maintain the human spirit which is what drives its evolution to new forms of manhood. We cannot be men without “naturalness;” we cannot be men without being true men under these realities. The human soul is too much a gift of the Creator that we can do without it, and we must go out of our way to bring our true humanity to others. When a person is “real ” he feels that he is the good kind on the bad days. If the human soul is just, he is not genuine. Any “good” is not “real.” The human soul is actually “an instrument of the Creator.”‧ (doc 3, 32). By making all humans like him as the thing he is, all men can be “real men” but not men like us. “We and our selves are not real human beings, in the same sense as there is no actual person that is real except one.” (doc 3, 33). It can take many decades for every non-human being in the world to find their true essence, or truly true person within each of them individually. When you try to convince people of our true humanness, they will only think of us. Our true personhood is a matter of perception. What an illusion! The truth of every human is a matter of perception, or perception that gives rise to the self. We can’t be natural men, because those who are not natural men are true manhood. When we reject that sense of identity, we can then reject the very sense of manhood we were meant to create. Our naturalness is simply and always not realness, it is simply another form of manhood. And that humanizing sense of the real is simply another way that the artificial manhood we created will actually exist, and not make sense when