The African-American Intellectuals and the Integration Question (1900-1930)

Abstract

The Negro-Americans were humiliated by the white Americans for hundreds of years. But after the end of slavery, they started looking for being not half human but complete citizens. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey were the three black leaders I have chosen to study the situations of Blacks in America in the twentieth century, with taking consideration their ways of defense regarding their people‘s need. This work is composed of three chapters; the first chapter is a historical background about the first early emergence of Negroes in the U.S, with taking into consideration all Negroes‘ efforts and contributions which they made in order to be accepted in the white society. In the second chapter, I took the situation of Blacks after WWI &WWII; besides I studied the black leader Booker T. Washington‘s policy, aims, and critics. In the third chapter, a-post Washington period, Du Bois‘ period expressed his literary responses to what happened in the 1920‘s. In the last chapter, I was interested in raising the idea of going back to Africa. To conclude with, I wanted to deliver whether the integration idea was one of the intentions of the leading Black intellectuals of that time.