This week, 238 years ago, Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. In the spirit of Independence Day, the Fourth of July is the perfect time to pay homage once again to America’s Founding Fathers on this most American of holidays. But if there was a Mount Rushmore for African Americans who would you pick to immortalize on a mountain as a monument that African Americans for generations to come can look up to?
BlackEnterprise.com selected four from a list of more than 20 African Americans that we believe should have their faces sculpted and chiseled into our hypothetical mountain of eternal and unparalleled achievement. However, our choices are open to debate. Feel free to send us your top picks if you disagree with ours. Here are our four:
Frederick Douglass Called the father of the civil rights movement and the leading African American voice of the nineteenth century, Douglass’ brilliance and intelligence was a beacon blazing with the light and luminescence of the black spirit.
He channeled his drive and determination into the fight for the progress of black people. He has been recognized as an abolitionist, human and women’s rights activist, orator, journalist, publisher and social reformer. He served as an adviser to presidents, including Abraham Lincoln who considered him the “most meritorious man of the nineteenth century.” President James Garfield appointed him District of Columbia recorder of deeds. President Benjamin Harrison appointed him U.S. Minister to Haiti and President Grant appointed him the secretary of the commission of Santa Domingo. Booker T. Washington Washington was reportedly the most famous man in America from 1895 until his death in 1915. He has also been called the most influential black educator of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Though criticized by some for seemingly accepting racial subordination, an organized resistance to Washington actually formed within the black intellectual community, Washington remained beloved by middle-class and working class blacks. Because of his reputation as a conciliator,
Washington couldn’t publicly criticize injustice, but he constantly challenged segregation behind the scenes. Harriet Tubman Tubman has been called the “Moses of Black America.” Despite being plagued with health problems after one of several beatings from slave owners split open her skull, Tubman fought tirelessly and selflessly to help others, risking her life several times in the process. In the space of just a decade, Tubman rescued hundreds of African Americans from a life of slavery. During the civil war, Tubman first registered as a nurse before utilizing her experience and knowledge of the routes through which she helped slaves escape to map terrain for the Union Army.She even reportedly led armed assaults and recruited liberated slaves into the Union Army. For most of her life she never received the recognition she deserved or compensation from the army for her tireless work to help win the war. But she never deviated from her selfless mission— nor let her health or poverty get in her way.
W.E.B Du Bois Du Bois was recognized as the outstanding African American intellectual of his period in America. His literature is the backbone of black pride. As poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, sociologist, historian, and journalist, Washington wrote 21 books, edited 15 more, and published more than 100 essays and articles.
For many young African Americans in the period from 1910 through the 1930s, Du Bois was the voice of black America. He attacked Woodrow Wilson when the president allowed his cabinet members to segregate the federal government. He continued to fight against the demand by many whites that black education be primarily industrial and that black students in the South learn to accept white supremacy. In 1909, Du Bois was among the founders of the NAACP and served as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of the Crisis, its monthly magazine.
He was also the first African American to receive a Ph.D. at Harvard University. Although he reportedly joined the communist party in 1961 and became a naturalized Ghanian citizen, his lasting contributions to the black community is a legacy that cannot be denied. According to PBS.org, Du Bois had hoped that social science could help eliminate segregation, but eventually concluded that the only effective strategy against racism was agitation. He also famously challenged the ideology of Booker T. Washington in his book, The Souls of Black Folk, saying his policies kept the black man down rather than elevated him. He died in Ghana in 1963, on the eve of the civil rights march in Washington, D.C.
What African American leaders would be on your Black Mt. Rushmore? Take our BlackEnterprise.com poll or leave a comment below:
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