Authors | Booker T. Washington W. E. B. Du Bois Charles W. Chestnutt Wilford H. Smith H.T. Kealing Paul Laurence Dunbar T. Thomas Fortune |
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Language | English |
Publisher | J. Pott & Company |
Publication date | 1903 |
Publication place | United States |
The Negro Problem is a collection of seven essays by prominent Black American writers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Booker T. Washington, and published in 1903. It covers law, education, disenfranchisement, and Black Americans' place in American society.
Like much of Washington's own work, the tone of the book was that Black Americans' social status in the United States was a matter of personal responsibility, but it also confronted issues of legal and social racism. [1] [2] While this represented the point of view of the authors at the time, some—Du Bois, for example—would later revise their stance to consider the effects of systemic and institutional racism.[ citation needed ] [3] Washington and Du Bois were again reunited in the 1907 collection The Negro in the South . [4]
The Negro Problem and its constituent essays were written in the post-Civil War, Jim Crow era, when African Americans struggled with oppressive laws and systems meant to curb their rights. As White leaders in both the South and the North worked to promote white supremacy, Black leaders sought to redefine and improve their image and identity, through racial uplift ideology. [5] As such, the essays within The Negro Problem reflect this desire for Black uplift.
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, two of the more notable authors featured in The Negro Problem, had a long professional history both preceding and following the publication of the book. Their clashing ideologies led to immense discourse between both the authors and those subscribing to their ideologies. For example, following Washington's Atlanta address, now known as the Atlanta Compromise, DuBois responded with his own address, touching on what DuBois believed to be the weaknesses in Washington's argument. Later, while Washington delivered another speech, a man interrupted him, resulting in the man's arrest. DuBois advocated for the man, while Washington held that he should remain in jail. Other such disagreements built between the two authors in the years preceding the publication of The Negro Problem. [6]
Charles W. Chesnutt also had a long professional history preceding and following the publication of The Negro Problem. He was widely known for his first nationally recognized short story, "The Goophered Grapevine," which was the first short story written by a Black person that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly . In 1883, Chesnutt and his family relocated to Cleveland, Ohio. There he passed the state bar examination and established his own court reporting firm. Chesnutt continued to write and publish stories during the latter years of his life but he was largely eclipsed in the 1920s by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Wilford Horace Smith was an American lawyer who specialized in constitutional law. He was the first African American lawyer to win a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an American author, essayist, political activist, and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. Two of his books were adapted as silent films in 1926 and 1927 by the African-American director and producer Oscar Micheaux. Following the Civil Rights Movement during the 20th century, interest in the works of Chesnutt was revived. Several of his books were published in new editions, and he received formal recognition. A commemorative stamp was printed in 2008.
The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mary Dunlop Maclean. The Crisis has been in continuous print since 1910, and it is the oldest Black-oriented magazine in the world. Today, The Crisis is "a quarterly journal of civil rights, history, politics and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color."
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.
The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is a 1903 work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African-American literature.
Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 is a history of the Reconstruction era by W. E. B. Du Bois, first published in 1935. The book challenged the standard academic view of Reconstruction at the time, the Dunning School, which contended that the period was a failure and downplayed the contributions of African Americans. Du Bois instead emphasized the agency of Black people and freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction and framed the period as one that held promise for a worker-ruled democracy to replace a slavery-based plantation economy.
The talented tenth is a term that designated a leadership class of African Americans in the early 20th century. Although the term was created by white Northern philanthropists, it is primarily associated with W. E. B. Du Bois, who used it as the title of an influential essay, published in 1903. It appeared in The Negro Problem, a collection of essays written by leading African Americans and assembled by Booker T. Washington.
Afrocentric education refers to a pedagogical approach to education designed to empower people of the African diaspora with educational modes in contact and in line with the cultural assumptions common in their communities. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by having their awareness of themselves limited and by being indoctrinated with ideas that work against them and their cultures.
What came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise stemmed from a speech given by Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. It was first supported and later opposed by W. E. B. Du Bois and other African-American leaders.
The Negro Problem can refer to:
Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept is a 1940 autobiographical text by W. E. B. Du Bois that examines his life and family history in the context of contemporaneous developments in race relations.
The Voice of the Negro was a literary periodical aimed at a national audience of African Americans which was published from 1904 to 1907. It was created in Atlanta, Georgia in June 1904 by Austin N. Jenkins, the white manager of the publishing company J. L. Nichols and Company. He gave full control of the magazine to the Black editors John W. E. Bowen, Sr. and Jesse Max Barber.
James David Corrothers was an African-American poet, journalist, and minister whom editor Timothy Thomas Fortune called "the coming poet of the race." When Corrothers died, W. E. B. Du Bois eulogized him as "a serious loss to the race and to literature."
The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups.
The Negro in the South is a book written in 1907 by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois and educator Booker T. Washington that describes the social history of African-American people in the southern United States. It is a compilation of the William Levi Bull Lectures on Christian Sociology from that year. Washington and Du Bois had recently co-contributed to the Washington-edited 1903 collection The Negro Problem.
The American Negro Academy (ANA), founded in Washington, DC in 1897, was the first organization in the United States to support African-American academic scholarship. It operated until 1928, and encouraged African Americans to undertake classical academic studies and liberal arts.
William Hannibal Thomas was an American teacher, journalist, judge, writer and legislator. He battled racism throughout his life. In 1861, he was rejected entry from the Union's Army until 1863 when he served, and was wounded by gunshot, leading to the amputation of his right arm. He published "Land and Education," in 1890, promoting avenues for Black people to obtain land and largely criticizing white people for troubles brought onto Black people. He garnered heavy attention from the Black community when he published his most famous work, The American Negro, which took a large conceptual leap from his earlier work, shifting failures of the Black community onto themselves.
Hightower Theodore Kealing, also known as H.T. Kealing was a writer, educator, and prominent member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Born as the son of former slaves, Kealing was among the first generation of African Americans to attend school during Reconstruction.
Racial uplift is a term within the African-American community that motivates educated black people to be responsible in the "lifting" of the race. This concept traced back to the late 1800s, introduced by black elites, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and African-American musicians like Florence Price, who were significant contributors. During the beginnings of racial uplift, hymns and negro spirituals played a vital role in shaping the spiritual culture of African Americans. Although these musical selections are mainly prevalent inside the black church, contemporary gospel music has been utilized for the liberation and uplift of the oppressed black race. Aside from music, African-American leaders have used concepts such as Du Bois's double consciousness that describe the idea of blackness and the complexities of identity in the various lens in which the black race envisions themselves in American society.