MISGUIDED MAGAZINE SPRING 2020

VOL 4
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Frederick Douglass was an outspoken and eloquent speaker against
slavery, and was a supporter of women’s rights. Frederick Douglass
tried to escape from slavery twice before he succeeded. Eventually
Douglass was asked to tell his story at abolitionist meetings, after
which he became a regular anti-slavery lecturer. In addition to the
abolition, Douglass became an outspoken supporter of women’s rights.
In 1848, he was the only African American to attend the first women’s
rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
asked the assembly to pass a resolution stating the goal of women’s
suffrage. Many attendees opposed the idea. Douglass stood and
spoke eloquently in favor, arguing that he could not accept the right
to vote as a black man if women could not also claim that right. The
resolution passed. By the time of the Civil War he was one of the most
famous black men in the country. He conferred with President Lincoln
on the treatment of black soldiers, and with President Andrew Jackson
on the subject of black’s having the right to vote. In 1872 he became
the first African American nominated to be vice president of the United States on the Equal Rights Party
ticket. Nominated without his knowledge or consent, Douglass never campaigned.
Source: biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324
W.E.B. DU BOIS
W.E.B. DuBois was co-founder of the N.A.A.C.P. He was also an author
and outspoken social justice advocate. While growing up in a mostly
European American town, he identified himself as “mulatto,” but freely
attended school with whites and was enthusiastically supported
in his academic studies by his white teachers. In 1885, he moved to
Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first
encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the
deep troubles of American racism. After earning his bachelor’s degree
at Fisk, Du Bois entered Harvard University. In 1895, he became the first
African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. A year
later (1896), Du Bois published his landmark study, The Philadelphia
Negro, marking the beginning of his expansive writing career. In the
study, he coined the phrase “the talented tenth,” a term that described
the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race. While
working as a professor at Atlanta University, Du Bois rose to national
prominence when he very publicly opposed Booker T. Washington’s
“Atlanta Compromise,” an agreement that asserted that vocational
education for blacks was more valuable to them than social advantages
like higher education or political office. In 1903 he published his seminal
work, “The Soul of Black Folks.” He was a proponent of Pan Africanism.
Source: biography.com/people/web-du-bois-9279924
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