Chapter 9: Social Science, Ambition, and Tuskegee
A. They move to Atlanta where DuBois will plunge himself into teaching and especially research -- his ambitious Atlanta University Studies. But his wife, Nina, hated the South with its raw racism, lack of educational,recreational, medical facilities for blacks.
B. Atlanta University was isolated -- "an ivory tower of race." "Matthew Arnold's precepts guided their pedagogy -- the 'disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known throughout the world.'" (only in Georgia)
1. It was an integrated campus, faculty and students, which was unusual and raised the ire of white Atlantans -- "...the school had been subjected for several years to an almost total boycott by white Atlanta, its faculty treated as pariahs and its students periodically intimidated." (p. 214) the Georgia legislature took steps to cripple it financially.
a.) Notes what was an article of faith in the 1890s as it concerned educating Negroes. See, top p. 215.
C. DuBois was quite a campus character with his cane, and he was a stickler for punctuality and abiding by the rules -- no smoking on campus. As a rule, the brighter students were attracted to him and several research papers were done by students under his direction.
D. In setting up the Atlanta University series, DuBois had to challenge the bias of the university president and other white professors who saw the Negro's moral failings as the problem, not discrimination.
1. Lewis comments on several of these studies: "The Negro in Business," "The Negro Artisan," "The Negro Church," "The Negro American Family," etc.-- these broke new ground in terms of methodology, data collection, and historical analysis, drawing connections to slavery and even pre-slavery days.
2. Couple interesting points: (a) compiled much-needed data on public and college education for Negroes: The disclosure that there were 2,600 Negroes with college degrees was met with disbelief when DuBois testified in Washington, D.C. about this. (b) documented the wholesale exclusion of African Americans in the union movement. And they did all this -- conferences, publications, even DuBois's salary -- on a shoestring $5,000 budget.
E. This work and speaking engagements placed DuBois in the vanguard of social science scholarship in America. Yet the South, with its rabid racism, was unchanged. It appeared that all this knowledge, this scientific truth, repeatedly broadcast, was apparently impotent to ameliorate racist collective behavior. (I would note that this is similar to Dr. King's realization of the limits of moral persuasion and education.)
1. DuBois realized it was not enough to expose ignorance, tell the truth, but you needed to induce people to act on the truth, implement it politically. In this context, Lewis recalls a ghastly lynching in the summer of 1899, the Wilmington, NC riot. And most devastating personally -- the death of his son, due in large part to the lack of black doctors and the unwillingness of white doctors to treat black patients. Nina was devastated. Imagine, being called "niggers" when they walked behind the horse-drawn cart carrying their son's coffin to the Atlanta train station!
F. DuBois meets Washington on a fund-raising tour in New England. Washington was well-disposed toward him and even made a vague offer of employment at Tuskegee.
1. DuBois had earlier even defended Washington at an Afro-American Council meeting in Chicago in 1898. Washington had spoken out about some racial injustices. They also collaborated in defeating a bill in Georgia that would have restricted voting rights for blacks.
2. Nonetheless, DuBois interpreted Washington's offer of a job at Tuskegee as a subtrefuge designed to co-op him. But DuBois had his sights set on becoming a superintendent of colored schools in Washington, DC, but Booker T. Washington put his weight behind someone else who got the job. DuBois felt betrayed by the "Tuskegee Machine."
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That brings us up to Chapter 10, where I will pick up tomorrow (Tues., 3/1) and try to do better getting through several chapters. We'll see how close we can get to finishing volume 1 of his biography by the end of this week.
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