To What Extent Were Achievements In Civil Rights Mainly Due To The Efforts Of Civil Rights Leaders?

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To What Extent Were Achievements In Civil Rights Mainly Due To The Efforts Of Civil Rights Leaders?

        The advancement of Civil Rights in the earlier period of the movement was generally based upon giving the black population a sense of self dependency and equal standard of living to the whites. Many black Civil Rights Leaders thought they knew the most effective way to achieve this, and their organisation and ideas were essential to how things panned out.

        Booker T. Washington, a former slave himself, did not believe that blacks should fight to forward their political standing, or to end social discrimination. Instead they should learn how to stand on their own two feet, and become self reliant. He was appointed first principal of Tuskegee Institute where he taught young black men and women a vocational curriculum, on how to live, work, and be dependent on themselves.

        Washington became known as a racial accomadationist, this route became very attractive to investors, who helped him raise funds to finance his projects. He helped fund many challenges to the Jim Crow laws and also many black newspapers. Washington also became an advisor to Theodore Roosevelt on any racial issues he encountered. Washington was a very important figure in the Civil Rights movement because he helped black people realise they didn’t have to depend on the white people to live. He also showed the USA what black people could really achieve, and their potential as political powers.

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        Washington, however, was not as hero to everyone. Many African Americans, including William Dubois, another Civil Rights leader, were very critical of his accomadationist philosophy. Dubois criticised Washington failing to realise that without political power, economic gains were only going to be short term, and vulnerable. He also made clear that only teaching vocational courses would deprive African American’s of the well-trained leaders which they need. Dubois urged people to press for Civil Rights and not to just accept inequality and accommodate it.

        Washington may have proved to be the most powerful black person in the US at this time. ...

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