At mealtime he went out and stood in the vestibule…. Washington got up slowly and went forward to the empty dining car and sat there among the disheveled tables. He announced to the conductor and to the public that he did not propose “to sit with a nigger.” The conductor shrugged his shoulders and made off. They had seats for a day ride and the seats were in Mr. He had hired his Pullman berth from Chicago to Montgomery and was riding during the day alone in his section. Washington was already beneath the shadow of death.
It was not more than two months before the end. In the following, and apparently misdated, essay Du Bois uses Washington's response to Jim Crow racism on a Pullman train to define his legacy: Washington and Others,” before the Boston riot, and before the two had effectively broken ties. This interaction exemplifies the friendship of Du Bois and Washington at its height, before Du Bois ( Reference Du Bois1994) published “On Mr. Washington ( Reference Washington, Harlan and Smock1989) publicly submitted to his old friends and then privately went on to help Du Bois by providing him with legal contacts and money for their services, even hand-delivering money so as to ensure his help remained secret (vol. However, Lewis ( Reference Lewis2009) reports, Washington's associates eventually told him to give up on the suit as it “would cause nothing but bitterness” (p. Washington chose one associate from his trove of well-connected and influential benefactors and convinced him to file a law suit against the railway company. Washington for help in obtaining redress.
Du Bois submitted a formal protest with the Southern Railway Company, parent to the Pullman Company, and wrote to his then friend Booker T.
Certainly this was not a unique experience for African Americans during the years of burgeoning disfranchisement and Jim Crow laws, but Du Bois saw it as an opportunity to agitate for greater civil rights, to challenge the legality of segregation. Du Bois was on official business, helping plan the United States' participation in the upcoming Paris Exposition, and was thus, as Lewis describes, “compelled to ‘sit up all night’ in the crowded, filthy ‘colored’ car hooked just behind the engine” (p. Du Bois exhausted every option in obtaining the ticket according to Lewis ( Reference Lewis2009), he argued with “the Pullman conductor, the train conductor, the bagman, and even the hapless car porter” (p. Du Bois was refused a ticket for a Pullman Company sleeper train from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia.
0 kommentar(er)
