Harlem became a center of African-American culture and a gathering place for artists in the north. Many artists such as the poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes and musicians such as Roland Hayes lived in Harlem. Their cultural contributions changed African Americans' outlook on life. During this "New Negro Movement," African-Americans began to assert their individuality, their independence and originality--to be different from white Americans.
One important African-American before and during the Harlem Renaissance was Booker T. Washington. He played a critical role in the development of social and political thought during the turn of the century. During this period, Booker T. Washington waged his campaign for self-help and race pride. He believed that the demands of African-Americans for social and political equality should be abandoned and they should have a friendlier relationship with whites while accepting lesser status. Booker T. Washington's philosophy advocated white philanthropy to help African-Americans gain prosperity.
In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Booker T. Washington would have favored the Brotherhood, an organization that peacefully promotes equality for African Americans through their friendships and partnerships with whites. The character of Invisible Man visits the house of a wealthy white benefactor and is used by her. The members of the Brotherhood, who are both black and whte men, believe that African-Americans should attempt to enter upper society as individuals, even at the expense of the achievement of equality for their race. They do so by sponsoring peaceful speeches made by skilled speakers who argue that it is right to accept white help while attempting to emulate the white man.
Other writers such as W.E.B. DuBois believed in educating blacks so they could not only work on behalf of their race's interests but also serve as living examples of African-Americans' rights to equal opportunity and treatment with whites. He advocated political and social equality as goals to be obtained through agitation and protest. Many middle-class African-Americans did not believe in confrontation, which they believed would jeopardize their chances for assimilation. DuBois believed in working for the African-American cause with African-Americans only. He did not want to be supported by white philanthropists.
Unlike the Brotherhood, Ras the Exhorter, a character in Invisible Man, believes in agitation, strikes, and rallies. Ras the Exhorter represents the ardent African-American Nationalist who hates the white man. He in no instance would join with whites and believes that the African Americans must make their own separate place in society.
BiographyWilliam Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois was an American writer and sociologist who helped establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was born on February 23, 1868, and was educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities. He was the first black to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard. His focus in the early 20th century was on his race, and he openly opposed Booker T. Washington's views, which were popular with many blacks and whites at that time. DuBois was a devoted advocate of complete racial equality and discounted Booker T. Washington's views of blacks as a minority in a white society. He served as the NAACP's director of publications and later as the editor of The Crisis, the NAACP's news magazine. He became the chairman of the Peace Information Center because he was increasingly immersed in the promotion of world peace, lobbying for the equality of all mankind, not just blacks and whites. DuBois was awarded the 1959 Lenin Peace Prize and joined the Communist Party and settled in Ghana. He died on August 27, 1963.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator who urged blacks to attempt to improve their lots through educational attainments and economic advancement. Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856. He attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a newly founded school for blacks in Hampton, Virginia. Booker T. Washington made his famous compromise speech on September 18, 1895, urging blacks to accept their inferior social position for the present and to strive to raise themselves through vocational training and economic self-reliance. Many whites, pleased by his views, and many blacks awed by his intellect and prestige, supported him. More radical blacks, such as the American writer and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois, refused to settle for such peaceful tactics, however, and opposed Washington. He died on November 14, 1915.