Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther KingJoin now to read essay Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther KingFor African Americans, Jim Crow laws encompassed and affected every part of American life. The racial slur synonymous with negro and the laws used to discriminate against them. Two of the most recognizable figures advocating against of Jim Crow were Booker T. Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Though they lived through different times, they both shared the same goal of bettering circumstances of the African Americans people. While sharing a same common goal, Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr. had different approaches to confronting the color line, each approach with its positive and negative attributes.
Booker T. Washington’s beliefs surrounding the improvement of African Americans are shown in his “Atlanta Compromise.” According to Washington, the way to advance the standing of African Americans was for them to make themselves indispensable to their community. Once they had established themselves as a race, their importance would be realized and they would consequently gain more rights. He pushed African Americans to move towards economic success by telling them to “cast down their buckets” and use their skills such as “agriculture, mechanics, commerce, and domestic services”, to make a living. They were to support each other and work hard to ensure each others success. By working together as a race they could gain equality. By emphasizing group solidarity he hoped that African Americans would help each other and learn from each other; both according to Washington were necessities if they were to continue the upward climb to equality.
On the other hand, Dr. Martin Luther King believed that equality was going to come only by resistance. He was a firm believer that all humans were made equally in the image and likeness of God and he worked towards equality based on this belief. King did not think assimilation into the working world was enough to gain equal rights and instead proclaimed the belief that nonviolent means had to be taken to ensure that African Americans achieved success and equality. He organized many things such as protests and marches in which he used legal and nonviolent means to get his point across. One such protest was the Montgomery bus boycott that led to the lifting of legal segregation on Montgomery Alabama public
The NAACP of the 1950s, after a few years as a non-profit organization, attempted to unite and engage young people in the struggle. In fact, they began to actively participate in both civil rights and the broader political struggles in the South as well: (1) the NAACP founded the National Working Men’s Campaign in the spring of 1950, (2) the NAACP worked with several other civil rights organizations in its efforts to get all white Americans to join it.
One way they have participated is as political groups and groups in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. Some of these work also have begun to be open to the idea of forming anti-Black organizations as they continue to gain support in these states. For example, in Alabama, a group called the Sons of Freedom is formed, which is also a local political advocacy group that gives to black people in a variety of ways including community service. Additionally, an African American-in-transition program was organized through a Black Men’s Foundation, and Black Leaders’ Program is a civil rights program from its original beginning, at which young black men who were denied education and job opportunities become leaders. Many African American leaders in the U.S. have been part of that program by virtue of their support of the civil rights efforts in the region.
The NAACP of the 1960s worked with many other groups in the South including the Southeastern Regional Chamber of Commerce, Black Women’s League, and the Black Political Action Society which had a similar organizational structure but that was not affiliated with the NAACP. Both organizations were organized as a way to gain new and progressive support in both the South and North.
In many ways, despite the efforts (both political and social) for which they have found partners and partners, and despite the efforts of civil rights groups such as the NAACP, they have still been unable to successfully engage these younger groups in their efforts. While they may not have engaged many of the people in civil rights efforts of the 1960s which they could do, it is clear that they attempted to create and work through people they knew and those who were familiar with to engage some young African Americans into activism.
In the 1960s, the civil rights movement began to have a lot of change in the movement for the liberation of all people, including white people. The efforts of civil rights groups like the NAACP and SCC were unsuccessful. In addition, there has been a decrease in the number of civil rights groups which had members in the 1960s (many of which did not even exist in the day), especially since the early stages of the African American liberation movement of this time. While the abolition of segregation and the integration of blacks into American society were important issues facing the South in this time, it seems that there could be as many aspects of the civil rights movement which have lacked members in this period as there have been in