Read W. E. B. DuBois: from The Souls of Black Folk and Marcus Garvey "Africa for the Africans"
Because Reconstruction did not fulfill the promise it had for Black Americans in the southern states, leaders came up with different visions for solving their problems. Booker T. Washington argued that salvation and upward mobility lay in former slaves learning vocational trades. In the first decades of the twentieth century, however, ideas that differed significantly from Washington's emerged. Two at the forefront were W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
After reading their essays, write one of your own that describes whether the point of view of Garvey or Du Bois would be more applicable to Black people in the U.S. today. One of the most important issues that distinguished Garvey from Du Bois was the question of Black identity.
Fifty years after the Civil War, it was still difficult for many Black people in the country to consider themselves American. Yet, for many of them, the connection to their African identity was equally difficult to argue. What do you think they would argue today?