The concept of leadership and more specifically racial leadership is similar to the concept of race itself: it is widely spoken of and is debated in many varying arenas, but a precise definition is rarely given. Leaders, it should be remembered, very seldom emerge prior to the movement which they then speak on behalf of. In the overwhelming majority of historical examples, it is the case that ‘leaders’, whether they be social, political, economic or cultural leaders, emerge from movements which they later go on to represent in some capacity.
If we consider this in relation to the life of W.E.B. Du Bois between 1899 and 1934[1], then it is plain to see that an analysis of the general feeling of the time must be conducted, in order to successfully characterise Du Bois’s “leadership” of African Americans[2]. In Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois concerns himself in the third chapter entirely with the leadership epistemology of Booker T. Washington, who at the time was the foremost African American contributor on the race issue. There is an underlying sense early on in “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” that a new style of leadership is urgently required -- one which is more representative of the African American community than the Washingtonian epistemology, which is commonly referred to as accomodationist today. Du Bois identifies tensions within the African American community which cannot be expressed or communicated to the larger American world; the tension exists because, according to Du Bois, there was never any whole-hearted support among African Americans for Booker T. Washington. As Du Bois noted, “it startled to hear a Negro advocating such a programme … it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.[3]” The silence, Du Bois argued, was doing untold damage to the plight of the African in America. One can only speculate as to the personal reasons why Du Bois went on in the coming years to speak on behalf of these people (and in opposition to Washington), but the fact that he did suggests that the development of his leadership grew out of a feeling of contempt for the status quo of the time.
Kilson (2000) outlines the theoretical differences between Washington’s leadership and Du Bois’s leadership: he classifies Washington as favouring a social organisation type leadership model and refers to Du Bois’s leadership as guidance type or mobilisation type leadership[4]. Kilson interprets Booker T.’s address to the 1895 Atlanta Exposition as a clear rejection of the mobilisation type leadership which would later characterise Du Bois’s leadership, and he is certainly right to do so. By insisting that citizens of the South of both races should “cast down [their] buckets where they are[5]” and stating that “in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential[6]”, Washington devotes himself to the acceptance of the present conditions of the South and is happy to accept gradual progress.
Moore (2003) characterises Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech as being conclusive of Washington’s overall political ideology. Her observation that “Washington stress[ed] conservative themes about how blacks could use the [Atlanta] exposition to showcase their accomplishments rather than push for political rights[7]” underscores the lack of forethought in Washington’s stance. His concern was about showing what the black man had achieved in the past, in the belief that the white man would benevolently bestow full human and civil rights on both black men and women, without explicit political pressure from black America.
The power of the Tuskegee machine made it difficult if not wholly impossible for any other African American to challenge Washington’s accomodationist policy. As a result, without any contest Washington’s epistemology became the white status quo interpretation of the race problem from the African American point of view. In the period building up to the establishment of the Niagara Movement, which would lay the basis for the NAACP, Du Bois touches upon a frustration which marked the first decade of the new century: “usually … criticism has not found open expression.[8]”
What Washington failed to take into account was that by accepting the present social conditions of the South, he was asking the African American to remain a second class citizen for as long as the white race felt it necessary to ‘keep them in their place’, to use a popular phrase of the time. This fact did not escape the notice of Du Bois: “Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.[9]” When we therefore consider this explicit disfranchisement of the African American (especially in the South) in 1895, Washington’s speech to the Atlanta Exposition reads almost as a preface to the ruling in the U.S Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson of 1896, which of course made segregation constitutional as long as facilities for both races were ‘separate but equal’.
Kilson neglects to suggest a reason as to why Washington so explicitly abandoned a mobilisation type leadership model, and why he so eagerly embraced a leadership style built around social organisation. His well-publicised involvement with white philanthropists is, I think, only one of the reasons. Another contributing factor can be found in Washington’s upbringing[10].
Booker T. Washington was born a slave, who, once freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, spent his life searching for an education. Naturally, he became principle of a new school at Tuskegee when the opportunity arose, and from there he sought to help people of his own race. He spent his life teaching essentially manual labour skills, believing they were the best skills to help African Americans prove their worth to white America. In short, Washington rose up from the lowest class (what in today’s society would be the working class), and I would suggest that this left him unable to envision a society where pure equality equated to an absolute meritocracy. To offer guidance, it is necessary to be able to see the road ahead and to see where you are going; Washington probably felt himself unable to offer such guidance because the United States at that time was not a classless meritocracy.
In contrast to this, the growth of W.E.B. Du Bois as a leader begins with him being brought up in the heart of New England, and enjoying privileges Washington could have only dreamed of when he was a slave child. His experiences in Massachusetts showed him in essence how good life could be, though not completely void of racial discrimination[11]. When he studied at Fisk University, however, he soon learned that some citizens could not live like he had done when growing up because of the colour of their skin. As a consequence, Du Bois was steered by his life experiences towards a guidance type or mobilisation type leadership model because of his class, and how his better than average upbringing meant little or nothing in the South, where his skin colour was the only thing that mattered to white America.
Nevertheless, the drawback for Du Bois was that he was an exception to most people of his race. As White notes: “Unlike Booker T. Washington, Du Bois always felt himself apart from the mass of Negroes and, for significant periods of his life was definitely out of step with orthodox black responses to such issues as socialism, Marxism, and Pan-Africanism.[12]” While Du Bois’s upbringing meant he had the power to vividly convey to them a distinctly better life, it also distanced him from them on the basis of intra-racial class politics. I would suggest that this is the primary reason for Du Bois holding the power to his leadership in his pen[13], and not in stirring orations, as Martin Luther King would become famous for.
In conjunction with this, it can be said that the ideological differences between Du Bois and Washington reflect the personal differences between the two men, and in particular their contrasting upbringings. Early on in his life, Du Bois erred on the side of protest rather than leaning towards accomodationism. As Moore explains: “[Du Bois] wrote stirring calls to arms against racial discrimination in local politics.[14]” Her observation that “Du Bois’s articles for the [New York] Globe reflected what would be the basis of his own philosophy in years to come.[15]” reinforces the idea that a protest movement against racial injustice had been building from as far back as the time of Du Bois’s birth in the 1860’s.
It is possible to read “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” as a Du Boisian manifesto. The style of the essay and the way it is written contributes to this, as Du Bois lists on three separate lines the three things Washington “distinctly asks that the black people give up, at least for the present[16]”; shortly after this, Du Bois lists, in the same way, three unsatisfactory things which have occurred as direct or indirect results of the Washingtonian policy; a triple paradox of Washington’s career is then listed by Du Bois not long after, and then Du Bois lists three things he demands: “Such men feel bound in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to ability.[17]”
Du Bois does this so as to polarise himself as the direct opposite to Booker T. Washington. The polarisation is spelt out unmistakably to the reader.
Once Washington had passed away in 1915, the accomodationist leadership of African Americans was usurped as the mainstream ideology, though in truth it had begun to die away once the NAACP was born. With Washington’s death, no one stood up and continued to speak on behalf of black conservatives. The growth of Crisis, the journal of the NAACP under the editorship of Du Bois’ had been phenomenal. In November 1910 it had a circulation of 1,000 copies; less than twelve months later it was selling 16,000 copies a month[18]. The Tuskegee machine was finally breached by Du Bois’s charismatic and elegant editorials which stirred the black men who read them.
The philosophy which Crisis embodied stemmed from the Niagara Movement which came into being in July 1905. As General Secretary, Du Bois strongly insisted direct action was a political necessity if the African American race was going to achieve anything, any time soon. As Moore notes, “the focus of the Niagara Movement was to encourage action and open protest to challenge racism and discrimination.[19]” Five years later, Crisis -- the main organ of the NAACP -- was setting out with the same principles of the former movement, indicating only subtle changes in Du Bois’s leadership between 1905 and 1910.
With Crisis and the NAACP now front and centre with regard to the race problem in the United States, Du Bois was free to practice his mobilisation type leadership which would bridge the gap between Washington’s accomodationist leadership and Martin Luther King’s civil rights leadership. Indeed, many of the sentiments Du Bois expressed so forcefully would have not looked out of place in the 1960’s. His plainly spoken attacks on discrimination, lynchings and social disfranchisement elevated Crisis to new heights, as it grew into the best-known black journal in the United States[20]. It was more successful that the poorly-named The Moon, the journal of the Niagara Movement, for two main reasons: first, it had more substantial financial backing. The main characters of the Niagara Movement (John Hope, William Monroe Trotter, F.H.M. Murray et al) had been joined by people who left the Washington camp between 1905 and 1910 (Kelly Miller, Mary Church Terrell, Archibald Grimké[21]). The combination of the two groups into the amalgamation of the NAACP made for a more viable economic organisation.
The second reason was Du Bois’s editorship. His ability to simplify the racial issues made the journal popular among people of his own race, whilst at the same time it made white America sit up and take notice. As Paul Robeson put it: “We Negro students joined the NAACP which Dr. Du Bois helped to organise and build; we read religiously Crisis of which he was editor for so many years, and in which he wrote clearly, constructively and militantly on the complex problems of the American scene.[22]” Without such innovative militantism, the financial clout would not have been able to achieve as much. But with Du Bois at the helm, the journal practically paid for itself by the time of the Great War[23].
Education remained an important concept for Du Bois, and in 1920’s Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil he once more expressed its civilising qualities: “We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it.[24]” Du Bois’s emphasis on the importance of education was similar though not the same to Washington’s, as is mentioned in the next chapter. The difference, however, lies in Du Bois speaking of education as a stepping stone to political involvement and political inclusion, in a country where the black man had been hitherto exiled from the political arena.
Ultimately, however, a leader is not a leader unless he had men following him. The great tragedy of Du Bois’s time as editor of Crisis is that is influence failed to spread further than it did. He was almost always at odds with the NAACP executives, and when he very publicly resigned the editorship of the journal in 1934, in the hope that prominent African Americans would rally around him, he realised he had erred in not attempting to influence the organization more directly[25]. The power of his leadership was expressed in the presentation and clarification of issues from a certain point of view, but ultimately he had no direct say over NAACP policy. His intellectual capacity was never transformed into institutionalised social power through the organisation[26].
Notes
[1] These should be considered as rough bookends only
[2] That is not to say, however, that Du Bois spoke solely on behalf of African Americans. While Du Bois was, to a large degree, “muzzled” by white philanthropists (see chapter three), white liberals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were essential in the founding of the NAACP. Though no study has successfully characterised the role of white men in the formative years of the NAACP, it is sadly beyond the scope of this investigation to do so.
[3] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. [1903] 1994. p 26
[4] Kilson, Martin. “The Washington and Du Bois Paradigms Reconsidered.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 568. (March 2000): p 301-2
[5] Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Dover [1901] 1995. p 107
[6] Ibid. p 109
[7] Moore, Jacqueline M. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. London: S.R. Books. 2003. p 32
[8] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. p 27
[9] Ibid. p 30
[10] This might be a little exaggerated in Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery. As Moore notes, he was probably not quite the country bumpkin he later portrayed himself to have been. (p23)
[11] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 40
[12] White, John. Black leadership in America: From Booker T. Washington to Jesse Jackson. London: Longman. 1990. p 70
[13] Yancy, Dorothy Couser. “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’ Atlanta Years: The Human Side – A Study Based upon Oral Sources.” The Journal of Negro History. 63:1. (January 1978): p 65
[14] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 40
[15] Ibid. p 40
[16] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. p 30
[17] Ibid. p 32
[18] White, John. p 55
[19] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 78
[20] Ibid. p 85
[21] As listed in Moore, Jacqueline M. p 84
[22] Foner, Philip S. Ed. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918-74. New York: Citadel Press [1978] 1987. p 474
[23] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 85
[24] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Prometheus Books. [1920] 2003. p 151
[25] Rudwick, Elliot M. “W.E.B. Du Bois in the Role of Crisis Editor.” The Journal of Negro History. 43:3. (July 1958): p 239
[26] Ibid. p 239