Self Help During the Civil Rights Era
... World War I, several large educational foundations were established that worked directly to advance Southern African-American education: the Peabody Education Fund, the John F. Slater Fund, the General Education Board, the Anna T. Jeanes Fund, the Julius Rosenwald Fund and the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Booker T. Washington believed that African Americans needed first to take care of their survival and safety needs and then worry about the more complex needs of belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Once the basic needs were met, then they could focus on economic independence, home and land ownership and starting a business. The humanistic efforts of adult educators like Booker T. Washington placed the personal needs of the learners first. Washington advocated self-help within the race and engaged African Americans to pursue “industrial” education, which he felt would allow them to be more independent. At that point, they would know how to position themselves strategically in the social, political and economic structure of America. There was an uneasy feeling that Washington and his theories, which seemed for the moment to dominate the country, would prevail in the discussion as to what ought to be done. Although the country at large seemed to be accepting and adopting Washington’s theories of industrial education, a large number agreed with DuBois that it was impossible to limit the aspirations and endeavors of an entire race within the confines of the industrial education program. W.E.B. DuBois believed that in self-help for African Americans and understood the social dynamics that race played in America for blacks. DuBois’s answer to the problems that confronted Black America was the power of education to transform the race, in contrast to Washington’s humanistic philosophy. DuBois was concerned with the activism that African Americans needed in order to gain social and political freedoms. In other words, he did not want to wait to meet survival needs first, but was more militant about the need to demand one’s rights. He understood the interplay of race, economics, and education and the conflicting feelings many blacks had of being a...