Many years ago, they should have listened to this man whose picture you posted, not W.E.B. Dubois.
Booker T. Washington was a self-reliant inspiration...his book “Up From Slavery” is a classic that espoused hard work to fix race relations. He thought that if blacks could run profitable businesses and produce quality goods, whites would patronize their business and the races would get along better.
Instead, all we hear about these days relates to the socialist POS Dubois.
They didn’t listen to BTW because his advice didn’t sound easy.
So they followed DuBois’ path and nothing has been easy.
Those who expect things to be easy are usually disappointed.