"Du Bois marked a great stage in the history of Negro struggles when he said that Negroes could no longer accept the subordination which Booker T. Washington had preached"
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C. L. R. James's quote highlights a turning point in African American history marked by the ideological divergence between 2 prominent figures: W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. James recognized Du Bois's position as a transformative shift in the trajectory of African American civil liberties advocacy. This quote highlights the crucial point where African Americans began to challenge the accommodationist method that Booker T. Washington had traditionally advocated.
Booker T. Washington, a prominent African American leader in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasized self-help, employment training, and economic self-reliance for Black people in the United States. He preached patience and recommended that African Americans might slowly improve their status within the existing racist system by proving their financial worth.
On the other hand, W.E.B. Du Bois, an intellectual and civil liberties activist, argued for immediate and uncompromising demand for equal rights. He criticized Washington's technique as excessively accommodating to the overbearing structures of the time, recommending that it eventually relegated African Americans to an irreversible state of second-class citizenship. Du Bois advocated for the "Talented Tenth", a term he coined to represent the management class amongst African Americans who would lead the charge for civil rights and college.
The "excellent stage" that James references is the point at which African Americans started to line up more with Du Bois's vision of demanding equality and civil liberties, instead of accepting subordination and gradualism. This shift considerably affected the course of the civil liberties motion, motivating advocacy and the pursuit of social justice through direct action and legal difficulties.
In assessing this period through James's interpretation, it becomes evident that the philosophical and strategic shift initiated by Du Bois was instrumental in awakening a more assertive and confrontational technique to attaining racial equality, preparing for future motions for civil rights and social justice in the United States.
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