As we conclude our reading of "Of Booker T. Washington and Others" Du Bois' third essay in The Souls of Black Folk, there are several quotes I would like for us to think about:
Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,--criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led,--this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.
Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.
We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
His [Booker T. Washington] doctrine has tended to make the whites North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to the righting these great wrongs.
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