Early Du Bois advocated moral uplift over legal enforcement

Evidence

Blocked by a filibuster of Democratic senators, the Force Bill never passed, angering Frederick Douglass. But Du Bois remained calm and focused on the moral struggle of uplift suasion. “When you have the right sort of black voters, you will need no election laws,” Du Bois wrote in the New York Age. “The battle of my people must be a moral one, not a legal or physical one.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 721

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is a striking counterexample to test against Kendi’s inversion — here the well-meaning intellectual (Du Bois) holds an ideas-first position, which per Kendi’s scheme is assimilationist. Worth chasing how Du Bois later migrated from assimilationist to antiracist.