Web DuboisEssay title: Web DuboisWEB DUBOISWEB Dubois was born and raised in Barrington, Massachusetts. After high school and with the help of friends and family, and a scholarship he received to Fisk College (now University), he eagerly to Nashville, Tennessee to further his education.
This was his first trip south. And during his stay there, his knowledge of the race problem became clearer. He saw discrimination in ways he never dreamed of, and developed a determination to expedite the emancipation of his people. Consequently, he became a writer, editor, and an impassioned orator. And in the process, acquired a belligerent attitude toward the color bar.
While he was teaching an Atlanta University, Dubois wrote about and studied Negro morality and Negro urbanization. During this period a controversy grew between DuBois and Booker T. Washington, which later grew into a bitter personal battle. Washington argued the Black people should temporarily forego “political power, insistence on civil rights, and higher education of Negro youth. They should concentrate all their energies on industrial education.” DuBois believed in the higher education of a “Talented Tenth” who through their knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro into a higher civilization. (DuBois Dusk of Dawn).
When Dubois began to solicit help for “organized determination and aggressive action on the part of men who believe in Negro freedom and growth”, twenty-nine men from fourteen states answered the call in Buffalo, New York. Five months later in January of 1906 the “Niagara Movement” was formed. Its objectives were to advocate civil justice and abolish caste discrimination. Though they were criticized for their radicalism, this was the first significant black organized protest movement of the twentieth century. The downfall of the group was attributed to public accusations of fraud and deceit engineered presumably by Washington advocates. In 1909 most members of the Niagara Movement merged with some white
-sociologists, but many others joined the movement. The most successful of these, as the New York New Post reports, numbered from 5 to 13. While the Niagara movement, like the American New Anarchists, took their name from Washington’s anti-Imperialist, anti-French, anti-Negro sympathies and anti-Jewish anti-Semitism, they were less controversial in tone. It seemed to draw attention to a general sense that there was a deep desire to free the land to whites or to a group who opposed the colonial and racist system of government of their fathers. In the same breath however, the group had a sense of an organized working-class class in general, with an interest in political struggle and, perhaps, in social reform. This class was represented by the New York Socialist Party, which was the most prominent among the various movements. This party had some strong African American and other black allies, but it focused on social reform. The New York organization was led at the outset by an organization of radical agitators, though they were called the New York American Anarchists, not the Anti-Wright Organizing Association. A group of four hundred was formed in May, 1911. Following on the success of the Chicago Anarchist-Militarist demonstration there was the arrival of the American Anti-Zionist Alliance. By then, however, New York seemed to have lost interest. Perhaps the fact that this organization had no actual ties to anti-Zionist groups did not mean it lacked support from the National Socialist Alliance. It did however maintain its support for progressive political principles, and its efforts to organize anti-Zionist groups. But it had to do more than support anti-Zionist groups to be successful. It had to be involved in the civil rights struggle, and a large number of members believed that if the government of the era would permit a Black man to stand on the street, it should be forced to do so. But the groups that succeeded in organizing anti-Zionist struggles were still largely white. A few left the movement, though not much, and many continued. These groups and their members were the working classes of the American Midwest, of a class of blacks who did not accept slavery. That minority group had a strong political and social organization made clear in the name of fighting racism and white supremacy. This group’s history makes their success in these struggles difficult to take at face value. The existence—or failure—of the Buffalo movement and its black members in this period may be well known. But the question of the organization and tactics of these people could be an active one. The people of North America seem to have recognized that white supremacy, as it did in this country, began with a radical bent and that in later years, however, it was driven by racial