The racial climate in the United States in the 1890s and early 1900s was described by the African American scholar Rayford Logan as "the nadir of Negro life in America." Lynching of African Americans was not uncommon. Southern states had disenfranchised African Americans. Segregation of public facilities, schools, and public transportation was widespread. Given this potentially explosive climate, African American leaders pondered the best way to approach racial issues. Should they be dealt with quietly behind the scenes to avoid conflicts -- or should they be approached with open, public protest?
Washington practiced the politics of accommodation. His public statements throughout most of his career can be characterized as cautious, conservative, and designed not to cause open conflict with the whites who held political power.
"One third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success."
-- Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895
"To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise [sic] a life which, beginning with so little, has done so much.... But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds...we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them."
-- Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 1903
The Niagara Movement, which Du Bois founded in 1905, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) both used public protest as a means of redressing grievances.
"The American Negro demands equality -- political equality, industrial equality, and social equality; and he is never going to rest satisfied with anything less. He demands this in no spirit of braggadocio and with no obsequious envy of others, but as an absolute measure of self-defense and the only one that will assure to the darker races their ultimate survival on earth."
-- Du Bois, writing in the NAACP magazine The Crisis, 1915
In spite of his public pronouncements, Washington had an elaborate "secret life" that found him fighting for civil rights privately, by financing court cases, using his political clout to influence national leaders, and even helping Du Bois on several civil rights matters behind the scenes.
"It is not the Negro that keeps the South in its present dead political condition. It is the intollerence [sic] of the Southern white man. It is the determination not to permit freedom of speech and freedom of action."
-- Washington, draft of a Statement on Southern Politics, 1900
