Narrator: By the turn of the century Washington had become one of the most popular figures in America. Washington journeyed up and down the country preaching the gospel of material wealth, moral virtue and Christian character, while warning his audiences to avoid agitating for political and civil rights. He said the best things to do about civil rights to let them alone and work at making a businessman of the Negro.

Margaret Clifford (V.O.): He started the National Business League while He was in Tuskegee so people could learn how to start a business, make a business develop and prosper. When I went to high school, they explored all the trades. The girls explored cooking, sewing and handicrafts the first two years and the last two years they specialized. The last two years of my high school, I specialized in advance dress making. So, that when I graduated, my high school diploma like your college degree says that I have a skill in advanced dress making.

Narrator: But Washington’s optimism and his passion for industrial education was not shared by all. At Atlanta University in Georgia, the highly respected, Harvard-educated sociologist and scholar of black life, Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, saw that despite Washington’s conciliatory efforts, racial terror continued to rage across the South.

Narrator: Although Du Bois had once backed Washington’s program, he had decided the time had come to challenge him.

James Anderson (V.O.): In 1903 he wrote the Souls of Black Folk with a chapter with the title of Mr. Booker T. Washington and others. And it was...it was just this wonderful analysis and attack on all those who supported Jim Crow including Booker T. Washington. And saying in a very forthright way, we cannot give up the right to vote, we cannot give up civil and political equality, we cannot accept being an unequal subordinate race in America.

Du Bois (Actor): We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social: and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and to assail the ears of America.

Narrator: By the early 1900’s, Washington was the most influential black man in America. His critics called him King Booker. He received financial support from powerful industrialists including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. He was embraced by Theodore Roosevelt. All of them enthusiastically endorsed his
program of black economic uplift within the framework of black subordination and Jim Crow.

Narrator: As Washington’s power and influence increased, his criticism became sharper, more personal.

DuBois (Actor):He has accepted revised constitutions. He has acquiesced in the "Jim crow" car policy… He has kept dumb as an oyster in regard to peonage. He has even discovered that colored people can better afford to be lynched than the white people can afford to lynch them.

Narrator: In 1906, Washington visited Atlanta, a city in which blacks had achieved success.

Mark Bauerlein: Atlanta was a boomtown, one of the most prosperous cities in the country. In fact, the only city that exceeded Atlanta for rate of growth was Los Angeles.

Leroy Davis: Booker T. Washington did look at Atlanta as a model for the kind of philosophy that he used about what he considered ideal race relations.