WRITING/PRESENTING FROM SOURCES

Directions: Closely read the three text(s) provided and prepare an evidence-based presentation/ argument on the topic below. You may use the margins to take notes as you read and the next page to plan your response.

Topic: How did different African-American leaders respond to their societal lack of freedom, and how did each believe that progress could best be achieved?

Your Task: Carefully read each of the three texts provided. Then, using evidence from all three of the texts, write a well-developed argument regarding differing responses to the African-American plight nearing the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Clearly establish your claim, distinguish your claim from alternate or opposing claims, and use specific and relevant evidence from at least four of the texts to develop your argument.

Do not simply summarize each text.

Guidelines:

Be sure to:

  • Establish your claim regarding differing responses to the African-American plight nearing the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century
  • Distinguish your claim from alternate or opposing claims
  • Use specific, relevant, and sufficient evidence from at least four of the texts to develop your argument
  • Identify the source that you reference by text number and line number(s) or graphic (for example: Text 1, line 4 or Text 2, graphic
  • Organize your ideas in a cohesive and coherent manner
  • Maintain a formal style of writing
  • Follow the conventions of standard written English

Texts:

Text 1 – Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Exposition Address” (October 18, 1895)

Text 2 – W.E.B Dubois “To the Nations of the World” (July 25, 1900)

Text 3 – Marcus Garvey’s “The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association”

(November 25, 1922)

PowerPoint Component

  1. You will each be producing your own essays, but you will work in groups of three and present via PowerPoint an organized component that achieves the following.
  2. Provides background information on each speaker
  3. Provides historical context for each speech
  4. Provides an explanation of the target audience (or other target?)
  5. Precisely explains the subject matter purpose of the speech. What was each particular speech aiming to accomplish?
  6. Provides a rhetorical analysis of the effective means by which the speaker achieves his purpose?
  7. Compares their differing points of view
  8. Formulates a conclusion about your findings
  9. Includes a Works Cited page that identifies any outside source material

“To the Nations of the World” (1900) by W.E.B. Dubois

W.E.B. Dubois would eventually emerge as a founder of the NAACP, a leading human rights activists and the most important African American intellectual of the 20th Century. However those developments lay in the future when the 32-year-old DuBois gave the closing address at the first Pan African Convention. He used the occasion to utter one of his most quoted statements, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line..." DuBois's remarks given on July 25, 1900 at the convention meeting site, Westminster Hall in London, appear below.
In the metropolis of the modern world, in this the closing year of the nineteenth century, there has been assembled a congress of men and women of African blood, to deliberate solemnly upon the present situation and outlook of the darker races of mankind. The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, the question as to how far differences of race-which show themselves chiefly in the color of the skin and the texture of the hair-will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.

To be sure, the darker races are today the least advanced in culture according to European standards. This has not, however, always been the case in the past. And certainly the world's history, both ancient and modern, has given many instances of no despicable ability and capacity among the blackest races of men. In any case, the modern world must remember that in this age when the ends of the world are being brought so near together the millions of black men in Africa, America and the Islands of the Sea, not to speak of the brown and yellow myriads elsewhere, are bound to have a great influence upon the world in the future, by reason of sheer numbers and physical contact.

If now the world of culture bends itself towards giving Negroes and other dark men the largest and broadest opportunity for education and self-development, then this contact and influence is bound to have a beneficial effect upon the world and hasten human progress. But if, by reason of carelessness, prejudice, greed and injustice, the black world is to be exploited and ravished and degraded, the results must be deplorable, if not fatal-not simply to them, but to the high ideals of justice, freedom and culture which a thousand years of Christian civilization have held before Europe.

And now, therefore, to these ideals of civilization, to the broader humanity of the followers of the Prince of Peace, we, the men and women of Africa in world congress assembled, do now solemnly appeal: Let the world take no backward step in that slow but sure progress which has successively refused to let the spirit of class, of caste, of privilege, or of birth, debar from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness a striving human soul. Let no color or race be a feature of distinction between white and black men, regardless of worth or ability.

Let not the natives of Africa be sacrificed to the greed of gold, their liberties taken away, their family life debauched, their just aspirations repressed, and avenues of advancement and culture taken from them. Let not the cloak of Christian missionary enterprise be allowed in the future, as so often in the past, to hide the ruthless economic exploitation and political downfall of less developed nations, whose chief fault has been reliance on the plighted faith of the Christian church.

Let the British nation, the first modern champion of Negro freedom, hasten to crown the work of Wilberforce, and Clarkson, and Buxton, and Sharpe, Bishop Colenso, and Livingston, and give as soon as practicable, the rights of responsible government to the black colonies of Africa and the West Indies. Let not the spirit of Garrison, Phillips, and Douglass wholly die out in America; may the conscience of a great nation rise and rebuke all dishonesty and unrighteous oppression toward the American Negro, and grant to him the right of franchise, security of person and property, and generous recognition of the great work he has accomplished in a generation toward raising nine millions of human beings from slavery to manhood.

Let the German Empire, and the French Republic, true to their great past, remember that the true worth of colonies lies in their prosperity and progress, and that justice, impartial alike to black and white, is the first element of prosperity. Let the Congo Free State become a great central Negro state of the world, and let its prosperity be counted not simply in cash and commerce, but in the happiness and true advancement to its black people.

Let the nations of the world respect the integrity and independence of the free Negro states of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, and the rest, and let the inhabitants of these states, the independent tribes of Africa, the Negroes of the West Indies and America, and the black subjects of all nations take courage, strive ceaselessly, and fight bravely, that they may prove to the world their incontestable right to be counted among the great brotherhood of mankind. Thus we appeal with boldness and confidence to the Great Powers of the civilized world, trusting in the wide spirit of humanity, and the deep sense of justice and of our age, for a generous recognition of the righteousness of our cause.

"Atlanta Exposition Address" (1895) by Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington was an educator and leading black intellectual of the late 19th and early 20th century. He founded the Tuskegee Institute a black school in Alabama devoted to industrial and moral education. In response to the rise of Jim Crow, Washington advocated accommodation, ignoring social and political inequalities while training blacks in the industrial arts so as to promote black economic progress. Washington delivered the following speech ­ sometimes called the Atlanta Compromise ­ before a white audience at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are."... The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water.... To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are" ­ cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And... it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that Negro is given a manís chance in the commercial world.... Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between... the ornamental... and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race... I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities.... Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure... that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers... so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious lives with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress....

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather that artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. That opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house....

I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race.... Let us pray a God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in

a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and new earth....

"The Principles of The Universal Negro Improvement Association" (1922) by Marcus Garvey,

In this speech given in New York City on November 25, 1922, Marcus Garvey explains the objectives of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the organization he believed would lead the worldwide movement toward black liberation.

Over five years ago the Universal Negro Improvement Association placed itself before the world as the movement through which the new and rising Negro would give expression of his feelings. This Association adopts an attitude not of hostility to other races and peoples of the world, but an attitude of self respect, of manhood rights on behalf of 400,000,000 Negroes of the world.

We represent peace, harmony, love, human sympathy, human rights and human justice, and that is why we fight so much. Wheresoever human rights are denied to any group, wheresoever justice is denied to any group, there the U. N. I. A. finds a cause. And at this time among all the peoples of the world, the group that suffers most from injustice, the group that is denied most of those rights that belong to all humanity, is the black group of 400,000,000. Because of that injustice, because of that denial of our rights, we go forth under the leadership of the One who is always on the side of right to fight the common cause of humanity; to fight as we fought in the Revolutionary War, as we fought in the Civil War, as we fought in the Spanish American War, and as we fought in the war between 1914 and 1918 on the battle plains of France and of Flanders. As we fought on the heights of Mesopotamia; even so under the leadership of the U. N. I. A., we are marshaling the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world to fight for the emancipation of the race and of the redemption of the country of our fathers.

We represent a new line of thought among Negroes. Whether you call it advanced thought or reactionary thought, I do not care. If it is reactionary for people to seek independence in government, then we are reactionary. If it is advanced thought for people to seek liberty and freedom, then we represent the advanced school of thought among the Negroes of this country. We of the U. N. I. A. believe that what is good for the other folks is good for us. If government is something that is worth while; if government is something that is appreciable and helpful and protective to others, then we also want to experiment in government. We do not mean a government that will make us citizens without rights or subjects with no consideration. We mean a kind of government that will place [our] race in control, even as other races are in control of their own governments.

That does not suggest anything that is unreasonable. It was unreasonable for George Washington, the great hero and father of the country, to have fought for the freedom of America giving to this great republic and this great democracy; it was not unreasonable for the Liberals of France to have fought against the anarchy to give to the world French Democracy and French Republicanism; it was no unrighteous cause that led Tolstoi to sound the call of liberty in Russia, which has ended in giving to the world the social democracy of Russia, an experiment that will probably prove to be a boon and a blessing to mankind. If it was to an unrighteous cause that led Washington to fight for the impendence of this country, and led the Liberals of France to establish the Republic, it is therefore not an unrighteous cause for the U. N. I. A. to lead 400,000,000 Negroes all over the world to fight the liberation of our country.

Therefore the U. N. I. A. is not advocating the cause of church building, because we have sufficiently large number of churches among us to minister to the spiritual needs of the people, and we not going to compete with those who are engaged in so splendid a work; we are not engaged in building any new social institutions, and Y. M. C. A. or Y. W. C. A.[,] because there are enough social workers engaged in those praise worthy efforts. We are not engaged in politics because we have enough local politicians, Democrats, Socialists, Soviets, etc., and the political situation is well taken care of. We are not engaged in domestic politics, in church building, or in social uplift work, but we are engaged in nation building ….