Conservative or Militant?

Booker T. Washington

I honestly believe he is conservative.  I was actually surprised when he was a former slave.  I would think because of his younger life and the things he experienced he would have been militant.  I would imagine with all the things he had been through and seen when he was younger he would speak with a more aggressive tone and use harsher words to express his thoughts.  Instead he chooses more powerful words that seem to find a way to have both races become equal. One of my favorite things he says expresses how they can be equal.  He says “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”. 

I know I can take that quote and apply it to my personal life and pass it on because I believe it has a lot of power and truth.  I think he is basically saying if the Negroes should be taking their skills and all the qualities they possess and show the white race how they are useful with their trade and skills.  Although they are not the same they have an ultimate goal they both want and if they are more like the hand that brings them together they can accomplish more instead of always being separate. 

W.E.B Du Bois

I had a harder time with him because you would think with his background he would be conservative.  I would say he is conservative but it could be the way that I’m reading the story.  DuBois says “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and pit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”  I thought this was conservative because he is fighting for equality.  I read this and thought about the passion and the strength behind his words.  However, during the story he is demanding that America give the same equality that they have and he wants all the doors of opportunity to be open to the Negros just as they are to Americans.  He wants it all stopped now.  My mind starts to change when I read on and I see how he is militant because he is being more aggressive with his words and the meaning behind them. 

He talks about Washington saying “it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all”. 

With all that said I have been feeling like a teeter totter since I read the words of BuBois.  Is he conservative or militant?  Did I go in reading this thinking that I wanted him to be a conservative because what does he know he was born free and Washington was the slave.  This one I’m stuck on however, I’m sticking firm to what I said about Washington.  I really liked what he had to say.