Meanwhile,
Booker T. Washington was Black America’s other main leader. He told Black people to accept jobs like farming and physical labor, since he thought that would please white people. He was an
assimilationist, just like
Du Bois, but they weren’t friends. Du Bois was an intellectual, while Washington was a “man of the people.” In his popular book
Up from Slavery, Washington thanked white people for “saving” Black people from slavery, which Du Bois couldn’t stand. In his own famous book,
The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois explored Black people’s “double consciousness”—they see themselves as Black but also as American. He argued that the best Black people, or the “Talented Tenth,” would help win white people’s approval.