Ida B. Wells and Washington T. Booker
Ida B. Wells was born in 1862 in Mississippi. She was the oldest of eight children and her parents were very active in Reconstruction. She went to Rust College and then became a teacher. Her first big confrontation was with a white conductor on a train. After being told she was supposed to move to the back of the train in the colored section, she refused to move and bit the man's hand resisting it (1).
Wells was a huge advocate for her people and wrote in a paper all about the violence and racism they had to deal with so often. She was fired from her teaching position after writing so many controversial articles including one condemning the lynching of Tom Moss. After the article was written and she had gone out of town, the newspaper building was burned down and she was forced out of town. She moved to England and wrote many more pamphlets there. Her main cause was against lynching and she took daring strides to make people aware of it and fight against it.
Ida was also quite the feminist and went on to form the National Association of Colored Women. In 1909, she helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1). Her reforms made people more aware of the injustices that were occurring and although she stirred up a lot of trouble concerning lynching her arguments were passionate and compelling.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave in the backcountry of Virginia. After working in salt furnaces and coal mines all his life, he really wanted to become educated and worked very hard to end up at Hampton Institute. There he worked very hard and caught the attention of General Armstrong (2).
Washington was under the teachings of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. He mentored him and opened the opportunity was Washington to move to Tuskegee, Alabama and there Washington founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. He was able to convince the whites there that there was no threat to white supremacy by opening up the institute.
The main difference between Ida Wells and Booker Washington is the approaches they took to overcome the problems they were faced. Wells was extremely passionate and daring when it came to getting the truth out into the world and not really thinking about the consequences whereas Washington thought about his actions a little more and talked his way through many situations in order to get things done.
Washington attended many conferences and spoke many times. Another difference between him and Wells is that he accepted there was always going to be strains of segregation but that would be ok if whites didn't interfere with black economic progress, education, and equal rights in courts. He founded the National Negro Business League in 1909 and wrote an autobiography "Up From Slavery" in 1901. His reforms were pretty effective until Woodrow Wilson took presidency and he had less influence (2).
Bibliography:
1. Wormser, Richard. "Ida B. Wells." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2014
2. Wormser, Richard. "Booker T. Washington." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 20143. Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Print.
1. Wormser, Richard. "Ida B. Wells." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2014
2. Wormser, Richard. "Booker T. Washington." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 20143. Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Print.