In 1903, in his classic book of essays "The Souls of Black Folk," Du Bois, who was teaching at Atlanta University at the time, offered the most stinging rebut of Washington's belief of racial accommodation and gradualism in his essay "Of Mr. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.” “It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem,” Washington said. He went further by saying that blacks would do well to take advantage of the knowledge of labor – some of which he was teaching at Tuskegee – rather than in their limited knowledge of the arts. “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing,” Washington said. In addition, those same blacks would not agitate for equality, integration or justice.
He told the crowd that Southern blacks would work quietly and submit to white political and legal rule in exchange for a guarantee that blacks would receive a basic education and due process in the law.
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