Black America & the Early 20th Century

Importance of HBCUs in the late 19th/20th Centuries

  • 1865: Shaw University (Raleigh)

    • First HBCU to be established in the south

    • Estey Hall is the oldest building (1874)

  • 1868: Hampton Normal Institute

    • A vocational school that focused on economics

  • 1881: Tuskegee Normal Institute

    • Mainly masonry

    • World famous for its bricks

The Great Debate

  • Booker T. Washington: Southerner raised in post-Reconstruction South

    • If black folks focused on more vocational skills, they can become wealthy and be business leaders.

    • Believed that the dignity of work can prove that black americans are capable of first class citizenship

    • Preached “accommodation”

      • Build wealth and economic/social opportunities

  • W.E.B. DuBois: New Englander raised with considerable privileges

    • Preached political activism

    • Believed that we don’t need to prove ourselves, but

Plessy vs. Ferguson: Jim Crow South

  • “Separate but equal”

  • Most did not agree with Plessy

  • Jim Crow is a character of an actual enslaved man

    • White audiences loved him

    • Became the foundation for scores of other Black-Face characters

    • Became a part of film and acting industry into the 1940s