He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.
This passage from "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" argues for the essential role of higher education in sustaining even common and industrial schools.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.