Despite the advancements made by Theodore Roosevelt
and other Progressives in the areas of labor reform, health and safety standards,
and protecting the environment, many argue that Roosevelt failed in the area of civil rights.
The Progressive Movement and its calls for reform had largely been the work of middle-class white
citizens seeking to improve their own lives. The Progressive Movement, and the Supreme Court,
largely ignored racial division and discrimination against African Americans. This ensured that the
early Civil Rights Movement would emerge on its own, independent course.
Despite the fact that African Americans found themselves abandoned by Progressives,
the early Civil Rights Movement was far from unified. Two powerful figures stood at the
forefront of the Civil Rights Movement near the turn of the 20th Century.
Booker T. Washington, who had been born a slave in Virginia in 1856,
sought avoiding confrontation over segregation and instead placed an emphasis on long-term
educational and economic advancement in the black community.
Through acquiring skills, Washington believed that African Americans could gradually improve their
position in society without facing much backlash from the white majority. Washington served as
president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama where he emphasized a message of self-reliance.
Washington trained African American teachers and taught practical skills that he believed were
needed to succeed in the rural South. At Tuskegee, African American students constructed buildings,
planted and harvested crops, and worked with livestock.
The other prominent figure in the civil rights community was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.
Du Bois had been born in Massachusetts, post slavery,
and he was the first African American to receive a doctorate degree from Harvard University.
Du Bois rose to prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement,
a group of educated African American activists who opposed Washington’s policies.
Du Bois believed that Washington’s approach would forever doom black Americans to the fate of being
second class citizens. Du Bois argued for immediate equal rights for black Americans.
In 1909, at the National Negro Conference, Du Bois and his fellow attendees founded the
NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The organization’s mission
is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights
of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination."
The goals of Washington and Du Bois found little to no support amongst middleclass Progressives.
In the first year of his presidency, Roosevelt
did invite Washington to have dinner with the Roosevelt family at the White House.
When news of the visit reached the wire service, it unleashed a tidal wave of fury. Roosevelt began
receiving death threats, and Southern newspapers strongly ridiculed the president for the meeting.
Roosevelt refused to apologize for his actions, but his administration did very little
to better the conditions of African Americans for the remainder of his time in office.