Compare the ideas and strategies of African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells, and the founding of the NAACP, in response to Jim Crow and racial violence (Tennessee Academic Standards for Social Studies, United States History and Geography, US.10).

What this topic is asking

Standard US.10 asks you to compare how African American leaders responded to Jim Crow segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence in the late 1800s and early 1900s. For the EOC that means contrasting Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, knowing Ida B. Wells's anti-lynching crusade (which began in Memphis, Tennessee), and the founding of the NAACP.

The problem: Jim Crow and racial violence

By 1900 the South had built a full system of Jim Crow segregation, backed by the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). African Americans were disfranchised (poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses) and faced lynching, the murder of Black people by white mobs, often without trial, used as terror to enforce white supremacy. The question facing African American leaders was how best to respond.

Booker T. Washington: accommodation

Washington, born into slavery, founded the Tuskegee Institute to train African Americans in practical skills and trades. In his 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech he argued that economic progress should come before a push for social and political equality. His approach won support from white leaders and philanthropists, but critics said it gave up too much by tolerating segregation.

W. E. B. Du Bois: immediate rights

W. E. B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, rejected Washington's gradualism. He insisted on:

• Immediate political and civil rights, including the vote.
• The higher education of a "Talented Tenth", an educated elite who would lead the fight for equality.
• Active protest against segregation and injustice.

Du Bois helped launch the Niagara Movement (1905) and was a founder of the NAACP in 1909, which used lawsuits and publicity to attack segregation, a strategy that would win major victories decades later.

Ida B. Wells and the anti-lynching crusade

The founding of the NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909 by Du Bois and others (Black and white reformers), became the leading civil rights organization. Its main strategy was legal action, challenging segregation and disfranchisement in court, which eventually produced landmark wins such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Why this matters for the EOC

The EOC loves the Washington-versus-Du Bois contrast as a compare-and-contrast item, often paired with a quotation from one of them that you must identify by its point of view. The Ida B. Wells Memphis connection is a likely Tennessee item. The topic also links forward: these early-1900s leaders and the NAACP set the stage for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Try this

Q1. Contrast Booker T. Washington's and W. E. B. Du Bois's strategies. [2]

• Cue. Washington: accommodation, focus on vocational education and economic progress first. Du Bois: demand immediate political and civil rights and higher education for leaders.

Q2. Name the leader of the Memphis anti-lynching crusade and the organization founded in 1909. [2]

• Cue. Ida B. Wells; the NAACP.