READ AND TEACH MY PEOPLE!
Recently, I began reading THE NEGRO PROBLEM, a reprint of an earlier 1903 edition by Booker T. Washington. This rare classic of African American history and literature contains essays by Booker T. Washington, "Industrial Education for the Negro;" W.E.B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth;" Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Disfranchisement of the Negro;" Wilford H. Smith, "The Negro and the Law;" H. T. Kealing, "The Characteristics of the Negro People;" Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "Representative American Negroes;" and T. Thomas Fortune, "The Negro's Place in American Life in the Present Day."
I confess that when I started writing this post, it was for the purpose of highlighting the linear thinking of DuBois. He had written, "[T]o attempt to establish any sort of a system of common and industrial school training, without 'first' providing for the higher training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds" p.7 My hackles rose up!
"Linear" means consecutive here, as though his 'first' was definitive in the scheme of anything in nature. Stated differently, one must start where one is, with what one has, to work with. Starting is "first,"'not waiting, watching, hoping, praying!
But, my intention changed when I learned that my 2018 reprint of this important, black 1903 book had been edited and published by Booker T. Washington, and yet he included the "Talented Tenth" essay of Dr. DuBois who was supposedly his arch-enemy by modern standards!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Problem_(book)
Of course, I was aware that Washington had offered DuBois a job at Tuskegee, as he had other leading black scholars and professionals of the era , like legendary George Washington Carver (agricultural science) and Robert R. Taylor, of M.I. T., the first accredited African American architect. DuBois declined to accept, for whatever reason, although he worked at Atlanta University for ten years. What blew me away, though, was then thereafter reading that Washington and DuBois had co-authored THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH (1907), which I have not read, but yet may!
Just goes to show that when great people are dead, others, yet living persons, have used them as they wish for any peculiar purpose. That is all the more reason to read and to teach, regardless of any degree!

Wednesday, May 2, 2018
READ AND TEACH MY PEOPLE
READ AND TEACH MY PEOPLE!
Recently, I began reading THE NEGRO PROBLEM, a reprint of an earlier 1903 edition by Booker T. Washington. This rare classic of African American history and literature contains essays by Booker T. Washington, "Industrial Education for the Negro;" W.E.B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth;" Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Disfranchisement of the Negro;" Wilford H. Smith, "The Negro and the Law;" H. T. Kealing, "The Characteristics of the Negro People;" Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "Representative American Negroes;" and T. Thomas Fortune, "The Negro's Place in American Life in the Present Day."
I confess that when I started writing this post, it was for the purpose of highlighting the linear thinking of DuBois. He had written, "[T]o attempt to establish any sort of a system of common and industrial school training, without 'first' providing for the higher training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds" p.7 My hackles rose up!
"Linear" means consecutive here, as though his 'first' was definitive in the scheme of anything in nature. Stated differently, one must start where one is, with what one has, to work with. Starting is "first,"'not waiting, watching, hoping, praying!
But, my intention changed when I learned that my 2018 reprint of this important, black 1903 book had been edited and published by Booker T. Washington, and yet he included the "Talented Tenth" essay of Dr. DuBois who was supposedly his arch-enemy by modern standards!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Problem_(book)
Of course, I was aware that Washington had offered DuBois a job at Tuskegee, as he had other leading black scholars and professionals of the era , like legendary George Washington Carver (agricultural science) and Robert R. Taylor, of M.I. T., the first accredited African American architect. DuBois declined to accept, for whatever reason, although he worked at Atlanta University for ten years. What blew me away, though, was then thereafter reading that Washington and DuBois had co-authored THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH (1907), which I have not read, but yet may!
Just goes to show that when great people are dead, others, yet living persons, have used them as they wish for any peculiar purpose. That is all the more reason to read and to teach, regardless of any degree!

