Transcript Practice Thesis Statements - Hudson Falls Middle School

Practice Thesis Statements
African American Civil Rights DBQ
Question:
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois
represented two different points of view23
on how to secure African American civil
rights. Define the problems faced by
African Americans at he beginning of the
20th century and identify which method
they chose to seek their political and social
freedom.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the
African American people had lost all rights,
social and political, that had been gained
through the bloodshed of the Civil War. The
Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896) and “Jim Crow Laws” of the southern
states had reduced the African American to a
kind of servitude not too much better than
slavery. First Booker T. Washington and then
W.E.B. DuBois attempted to leverage better
conditions for the African American. The passive
approach to achieving some rights offered by
Booker T. Washington was rejected by African
Americans in favor for a demand for complete
and total civil rights represented by the
leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois.
At the beginning of the twentieth
century the African American
people had lost all rights, social
and political, that had been gained
through the bloodshed of the Civil
War. The Supreme Court decision
in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and
“Jim Crow Laws” of the southern
states had reduced the African
American to a kind of servitude not
too much better than slavery. First
Booker T. Washington and then
W.E.B. DuBois attempted to
leverage better conditions for the
African American. The passive
approach to achieving some rights
offered by Booker T. Washington
was rejected by African Americans
in favor for a demand for complete
and total civil rights represented by
the leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Does this thesis
paragraph
address all major
issues of the
question?
• Does it draw a
relationship
between the two
leaders and the
core issues?
• Does it show the
need for a choice
between
contrasting
views?
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois had
the same goal, but different approaches to
achieving that goal. Washington seemed to
believe that by obtaining economic security and
then growing as a people the African American
could win the respect of the whites through his
success in farming, industry, and the crafts. At
that point Washington believed African
Americans would gradually earn their civil and
social rights. W.E.B. Du Bois believed that the
whites of the South would never grant equal
rights to the blacks unless African Americans
stood up and demanded those rights. In the first
decades of the twentieth century African
Americans had to decide between the
contrasting approaches to gaining their rightful
civil and social rights offered by the opposite
positions proposed by Washington and Du Bois.
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du
Bois had the same goal, but different
approaches to achieving that goal.
Washington seemed to believe that by
obtaining economic security and then
growing as a people the African
American could win the respect of the
whites through his success in farming,
industry, and the crafts. At that point
Washington believed African
Americans would gradually earn their
civil and social rights. W.E.B. Du Bois
believed that the whites of the South
would never grant equal rights to the
blacks unless African Americans stood
up and demanded those rights. In the
first decades of the twentieth century
African Americans had to decide
between the contrasting approaches
to gaining their rightful civil and social
rights offered by the opposite positions
proposed by Washington and Du Bois.
• Does this thesis
paragraph
address all major
issues of the
question?
• Does it draw a
relationship
between the two
leaders and the
core issues?
• Does it show the
need for a choice
between
contrasting
views?