The Negro in the South, His Economic Progress in Relation to His Moral and Religious Development

Book excerpt: Four lectures given as part of an endowed Lectureship on Christian Sociology at Philadelphia Divinity School. Washington's two lectures concern the economic development of African Americans both during and after slavery. He argues that slavery enabled the freedman to become a success, and that economic and industrial development improves both the moral and the religious life of African Americans. Du Bois argues that slavery hindered the South in its industrial development, leaving an agriculture-based economy out of step with the world around it. His second lecture argues that Southern white religion has been broadly unjust to slaves and former slaves, and how in so doing it has betrayed its own hypocrisy.