Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois: Conflicting Ideas of Freedom

I am a 30-year-old man that has very little education. I know how to read and write only a little bit. I support my family by working hard every day as a crop sharer. I work from sun break until a little after sundown, breakin' my back working in the fields. I wake up and start tillin' the fields, planting the crops, and maintaining the crops that support my family. My wife is 28 years old and was a domestic servant for her boss, she has more skills than I do she cook, clean, and raise our one boy. She can write and read real good.

After all my hard work, I am a supporter of Booker T. Washington because he is tryin' help folks like me to be able to be more successful with my hard work. Within the Life and Legacy of Booker T. Wahsington video, Washington supported helpin out folks like me to be able to see the value in the work I was doing, he made me believe that I could become more successful by giving us skills to be able to show the white man that we worth something. I wouldn't want my boy growing up not showing the integrity and the values of agricultural that Mr. Washington believes in.

I think that us black folks need to listen to what he be sayin' about being more successful and making us become just as good as the white man. Washington believes we will be able to build up our communities and we can succeed with our skills so that we can become stronger and better. I can stand behind Mr. Washington because folks like me don't have much besides our work to make us be good people and be seen as equals to the white man. If I can use my skills to become a better person, then you better bet on it that I will do all I can to be equal.

Mr. Du Bois someone I can't support in this time. I have no education to make me be able to fight the political side of things and our rights. As in the Philosophy of W.E.B Du Bois video, he ain't never been a slave like me and my wife, so I feel like he ain't really got any idea about how it truly is for us black folks. He wants us to stand up and say that we ain't be treated fair. He wanna sacrifice more of us just to prove a point? He don't really understand that for the ones of us that don't have no education, we ain't really got much else besides our labor to support us and to make us become seen as equals and of value. If I followed behind Du Bois, I may lose all that I got and have worked real hard for and I sure don't wanna lose it all.

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