Message

Supporters

Methods

Significance

Booker T. Washington

(1856-1915)

Atlanta Compromise

Accept social/ political inequality

Work for economic equality in farming/trades

Blacks should learn vocational skills

Southern, rural blacks

Southern whites

Wealthy, white industrialists

Accommodation with whites

Created Tuskegee Institute

Blacks/whites remain separate socially

Emphasized black economic development

Got money for black schools

Advised presidents on racial issues

Secretly tried to overturn segregation

Battled NAACP/W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois

(1868-1963

Talented tenth of the black community must lead for equality

Strive for full and immediate equality, including full suffrage

Intellectuals

Black professionals

Urban, northern blacks

White progressives

Founded Niagara Movement in 1905

Helped form NAACP in 1909

Wrote books to energize blacks

Challenged B.T. Washington

Agitated for equality

Challenged conservative racial policies

Marcus Garvey

(1887-1940)

Black self-sufficiency

Opposed integration

Black pride in African heritage/seek roots in Africa

Proposed a ‘Back-to-Africa’ movement

Expand black economic power

Urban blacks

Some whites who supported segregation of the races

Created Universal Negro Improvement Association

Formed Black Star Line, a black-owned shipping company

Tried to establish African economic ties

First leader to base much of his program on ties to Africa

Reached many urban, northern blacks

Arrested for mail fraud, deported

Martin Luther King, Jr.

(1929-1968)

Justice by religious, moral, peaceful means

Whites must see injustices in Jim Crow

Later targeted economic inequality

Rural, southern church-going people

White northern liberals

Nonviolent protest

Marches, demonstrations

Speeches, articles, books

Opened eyes of country to immorality of segregation

Great moral leader

Assassinated 1968

Malcolm X (Little)

(1925-1965)

Black power

Enemy is white man

Supported black nationalism

May have been less separatist, more moderate at end of his life

Northern urban black youth

Nation of Islam

Northern white student radicals

Militant speeches, confrontations with white establishment

Challenged King’s nonviolence

Urged self-defense against white violence

Black Muslims identified with violence in 1960s

Opposed gradualism, accommodation

Frightened whites

Assassinated 1965