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- One of the first moments where Du Bois comes onto the national stage is the brewing controversy between his ideas about racial progress and how to move the race forward and the leading African-American figure of that time period, the late 19th and early 20th century, Booker T Washington. In the beginning, they agreed on many points about the importance of education in moving the race forward. It turns out, though, that because Du Bois was Northern born and had access to some of the best schools in New England and really was encouraged to think broadly, it's been part of his elite graduate education, being trained in Berlin, working with Max Weber.

By contrast to Booker T Washington, who was self-educated, a very gifted and talented man, but he was born as a slave. That fundamental difference certainly shaped their sense of change over time. The life that Booker T Washington eventually led as the leading, most recognized figure of African-American society meant that his expectations for what the white race was willing to do on behalf of Black people were very different than of Du Bois. You could say Du Bois was a Utopian idealist, in some respects, and Booker T Washington was a pragmatist, better known as an accommodationist.

And so it set up an ongoing debate. Eventually, Booker T Washington's program sustained the ethos of Jim Crow America because it was about Black people working, but on white people's terms. It was about a lack of political enfranchisement because Black people were subject to poll taxes and literacy tests and the inability to vote. And it was ultimately about a form of second class citizenship that was segregated America. In this regard, Du Bois did see that real change, fundamental change, living up to the real promises of racial democracy in America depended upon agitation, depended upon a grasp for power.