Cary D. Wintz - African American Political Thought, 1890-1930

AFRICAN AMERICAN
POLITICAL THOUGHT

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Washington, DuBois, Garuey, and Randolph

To my mother, Madge Mackey Wintz

This volume represents an effort to create a deeper understanding of the issue of race and the impact of race on the political thought of African Americans in the early twentieth century. It approaches the subject through the writings of four major figures in African American historyBooker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and A. Philip Randolph. Each of these figures grappled with the complex issue of race and worked to define the most effective way for African Americans to respond to the racial situation that confronted them in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Each also approached the issue of race from a slightly different perspective and offered a range of strategies for confronting race and racial prejudice. Also, as the selections in this volume will underscore, not only did African Americans disagree (sometimes rather sharply) on the appropriate strategies and tactics for confronting racism in the United States, but each of the four men examined here modified his approach as circumstances changed and as his own interpretation of race and political power evolved.

Each of the four men encompassed in this collection represented a different approach to race in the United States in the early twentieth century. In each case, however, the complexity and evolving nature of their political thought undermine the generalizations usually made about their racial views. The result is that the lines dividing the racial thought of the four are not nearly as clear as many suppose.

Booker T. Washington is generally understood as an advocate of self-help and industrial education who avoided directly confronting the segregation and disfranchisement issues, while working quietly behind the scenes to combat the deteriorating racial situation at the tum of the century. Washington might be more accurately portrayed, however, as a pragmatic manipulator of political power who had a well-developed sense of the possibilities of the political and racial situation in the South, and used the power that he had to effect change in the context within which he operated. From this point of view, Washingtons most serious miscalculations were his misunderstanding of how deeply entrenched racism was in America, and his belief that the future of African Americans was in the rural South. W.E.B. Du Bois is generally defined as an alternative to Washington, who rejected the Tuskegeeans moderate response to segregation and disfranchisement as defeatist, and Washingtons commitment to industrial education as failing to prepare African Americans for either the political or the economic realities that they would face in the twentieth century. In reality, Du Boiss views were more complex and more fluid. Initially he accepted much of the Washingtonian political philosophy, but the deterioration of the racial situation in the late 1890s and his dissatisfaction with Washingtons exercise of political power caused him to side with the Tuskegeeans critics. Furthermore, Du Bois brought to bear on the African American experience a wide range of social, economic, political, and psychological theories. In the late nineteenth century, he became convinced of the duality of the African American experienceboth African and American. In the years that followed, he would explore the implications that socialism (and Marxism), pan-Africanism, and racial nationalism brought to the racial debate. Du Bois also came to understand that racial integration carried a priceespecially in a society that had not jettisoned its racial bigotry.

The political views of Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph are equally complex. Garvey, on the one hand, is seen as the advocate of a black nationalism based on economic self-help (which drew inspiration from Washington), and a pan-Africanism (not dissimilar from that of Du Bois) that envisioned the liberation and union of the 400 million world inhabitants who were of African descent. In practice Garveys nationalism brought him into conflict with advocates of desegregation, his iconoclasm and occasionally outrageous statements and actions brought him into conflict with most African American leaders, and his belief that African Americans must find their destiny in Africa ultimately isolated him from the African American masses. His flawed economic enterprises and his growing tendency to accuse his detractors from within the African American community with color prejudice further undermined his support and resulted in his ultimate failure. On the other hand, his vision of a self-sufficient African American community and his emphasis on the link between African Americans and Africa anticipated themes that Du Bois and other African American leaders would give voice to throughout the twentieth century.

A. Philip Randolph initially approached race from the perspective of class conflict. An advocate of radical socialism and a sympathizer with the Bolshevik revolution, Randolph represented the radical left within the African American community in the years during and immediately following World War I. He argued that all aspects of American racism, from lynching to economic poverty, had their roots in class warfare, and had their solution in the creation of a workers political movement. Within this context Randolph was very critical of the conservative leadership of blacks like Du Bois, and sympathetic with many of the elements in the early Garvey movement. In the early 1920s, however, Randolphs views moderated as he embraced trade unionism and desegregation, and turned his back on communism. As Du Bois became more radical in the late 1920s and 1930s, Randolph would emerge as the mainstream advocate of civil rights.