AMERICANS' TALE OF TWO'S
Virginia and Massachusetts are early British colonies, which later were symbolic of later American hegemony for whites, black, native.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Virginia in 1856. William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born free in Massachusetts in 1868. On the lives of these two: states, men, statuses, the history of American politics, people, privilege, do pend.
Each state advanced in accordance with its conceptions, as did each man, as did the nation in each era: colonial, Revolutionary, equivocal, Constitutional, industrial, imperial .
Washington knew slavery's scorns intimately. He worked hard to get education with blacks and Indians. DuBois never experienced slavery. He attended school with whites in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Black Americans' lives were shaped by the life experiences of these: two states, two men, two eras: slave and free, along with others.