Page 52 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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The Development of African American Nationalism
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came the principal of Tuskegee Institute, an industrial school in Alabama, and devel-
oped a “program of agriculture and industrial training that would make the education
144
of Negroes palatable to the dominant elements of the New South.”
Washington internalized the notion of accommodation and emerged as an oppor-
tunist and pragmatist leader. Hence, he was favored by the White establishment. As a
result, he became a rich man from the money he obtained from his White mentors
and established Tuskegee Institute. Ignoring the importance of higher and liberal ed-
ucation for African Americans, Washington said, “Cast it down in agriculture, me-
chanics,in commerce,in domestic service,and the profession . . .it is in the South that
145
He publicly attacked
the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world.”
the struggle for equality and citizenship rights:“The wisest among my race understand
that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and the progress
in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of a se-
146
For Washington, Blacks
vere constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”
could not achieve social equality with Whites since they did not work as hard as
Whites did. Meier and Rudwick argue that the compromising of the Black interest
with that of racist Whites “satisfied those philanthropists and leading Southerners who
opposed race equality yet liked to think that they were in favor of Negro uplift. Fi-
nally it enabled many Negroes to convince themselves that it was a way not only of
obtaining money for Negro schools but also indirectly and ultimately elevating the
race to the point where it would be accorded its citizenship rights.” 147
Washington convinced conservative Blacks and some protest organizations such as
the Afro-American Council to adopt his philosophy. 148 “Though he covertly spent
thousands of dollars fighting disenfranchisement and segregation laws,” Meier and
Rudwick assert, “he publicly advocated a policy of conciliation and gradualism.” 149
Publicly, he blamed African Americans for their problems and saw the White man as
their “best friend”;Washington “recommended economic accumulation and cultiva-
tion of Christian character as the best methods for advancing the status of blacks in
America,” “favored vocational training and working with hands at the expense of
higher education and the professions” discouraged political activism, minimized the
impact of racism and discrimination, and endorsed segregation. 150 Until his death in
1915,Washington limited the effectiveness of the NAACP and Black intellectuals be-
cause of his challenge to legal political action,his emphasis on economic development,
and his access to American power and capital. 151
After Washington’s death,the NAACP gathered momentum and continued its legal
attack on disenfranchisement and American apartheid. It challenged the “grandfather
clauses” that limited the right to vote and municipal residential segregation ordinances
in 1915 and 1917 respectively.The NAACP created its branch offices in the south in
1918 and linked its activities to the Black church and began to fight against lynching,
segregated education and transportation, and political disenfranchisement. 152 It vigor-
ously attacked the poll tax and school segregation between the 1920s and the 1950s.
The NAACP provided organizational and management skills for the Black national
struggle by recruiting and training ministers, lawyers, doctors, union organizers, and
activists and teaching them how to organize themselves and establish working rela-
tionships among themselves. 153 Although its bureaucracy discouraged the participation
of the Black masses in their struggle for freedom, the NAACP did serious preparatory
work for the struggle of the 1950s and the 1960s. 154 The NAACP and its lawyers suc-
cessfully challenged the legality of school segregation and, as a result, the Supreme