Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois were the two strongest African American leaders in the late 1800's. Although both were trying to advance African American Society, their differing origins, and their opposite philosophies led them to be rivals. Washington believed in a more gradual approach to black equality, while Du Bois proposed a more immediate one. While Washington's approach to African American advancement seems in retrospect to be more practical, Du Bois had more success as a leader, and is considered to be the best-known and most prominent black leader of the first half of the 20th century. Booker T. Washington was a graduate of the Hampton Institute in Virginia, and later founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881. He told students under him to tempor