Booker T. Washington giving
the
Atlanta Compromise Speech
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Atlanta Compromise
Speech Facts: Fast Fact Sheet
Fast, fun facts and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
about the Atlanta
Compromise Speech.
Who made the Atlanta Compromise Speech? The
Atlanta Compromise Speech was
written and delivered by its author, Booker
T. Washington.
When was the Atlanta Compromise Speech made? The date of the
Atlanta Compromise Speech was on
September 18,
1895 at the Cotton States and
International Exposition at Piedmont Park in
Atlanta, Georgia
What was the Atlanta Compromise speech
about?
The Atlanta Compromise Speech was about
progress since emancipation and racial
cooperation. Booker T. Washington urged
African Americans to accept social
segregation as the price for acquiring
education and economic security - for facts
and info refer to the
Atlanta
Compromise.
Atlanta Compromise speech vs the Niagara
Movement Speech
It is interesting to compare the text of the
Atlanta Compromise Speech with the text,
tone and words used in the Atlanta
Compromise Speech by Booker T. Washington
Niagara Movement Speech by
W. E. B. Du
Bois
Text of the
Atlanta Compromise Speech
Atlanta Compromise Speech by Booker T. Washington
Delivered at the Cotton States and International
Exposition
at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia on September 18,
1895
Mr. President and
Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens:
One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro
race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or
moral welfare of this section can disregard this element
of our population and reach the highest success. I but
convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the
sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no
way have the value and manhood of the American Negro
been more fittingly and generously recognized than by
the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every
stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do
more to cement the friendship of the two races than any
occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.
Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will
awaken among us a new era of industrial progress.
Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in
the first years of our new life we began at the top
instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the
state legislature was more sought than real estate or
industrial skill; that the political convention or stump
speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm
or truck garden.
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a
friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel
was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The
answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast
down your bucket where you are.” A second time the
signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the
distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your
bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for
water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you
are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last
heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it
came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of
the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on
bettering their condition in a foreign land or who
underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly
relations with the Southern white man, who is their
next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket
where you are”— cast it down in making friends in every
manly way of the people of all races by whom we are
surrounded.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in
domestic service, and in the professions. And in this
connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever
other sins the South may be called to bear, when it
comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South
that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial
world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent
than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is
that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may
overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by
the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind
that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to
dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and
skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper
in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the
superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws
of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it
learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field
as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we
must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our
grievances to overshadow our opportunities.
To those of the white race who look to the incoming of
those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for
the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would
repeat what I say to my own race, “Cast down your bucket
where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of
Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love
you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous
meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket
among these people who have, without strikes and labor
wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded
your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures
from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible
this magnificent representation of the progress of the
South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping
and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds,
and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find
that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the
waste places in your fields, and run your factories.
While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in
the past, that you and your families will be surrounded
by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and
unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have
proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your
children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and
fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes
to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we
shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can
approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in
defense of yours, interlacing our industrial,
commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a
way that shall make the interests of both races one. In
all things that are purely social we can be as separate
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress.
There is no defense or security for any of us except in
the highest intelligence and development of all. If
anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the
fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned
into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most
useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so
invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These
efforts will be twice blessed—blessing him that gives
and him that takes. There is no escape through law of
man or God from the inevitable:
The laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with
oppressed; And close as sin and suffering joined We
march to fate abreast...
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling
the load upward, or they will pull against you the load
downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the
ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third [of] its
intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third
to the business and industrial prosperity of the South,
or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating,
depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body
politic.
Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our
humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must
not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with
ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins
and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources),
remember the path that has led from these to the
inventions and production of agricultural implements,
buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary,
carving, paintings, the management of drug stores and
banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns
and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as
a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a
moment forget that our part in this exhibition would
fall far short of your expectations but for the constant
help that has come to our educational life, not only
from the Southern states, but especially from Northern
philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant
stream of blessing and encouragement.
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation
of questions of social equality is the extremist 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. No
race that has anything to contribute to the markets of
the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is
important and right that all privileges of the law be
ours, but it is vastly more important that we be
prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The
opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is
worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a
dollar in an opera-house.
In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years
has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us
so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity
offered by the Exposition; and here bending, as it were,
over the altar that represents the results of the
struggles of your race and mine, both starting
practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge
that in your effort to work out the great and intricate
problem which God has laid at the doors of the South,
you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic
help of my race; only let this he constantly in mind,
that, while from representations in these buildings of
the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory,
letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and
beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that,
let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of
sectional differences and racial animosities and
suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute
justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the
mandates of law. This, coupled with our material
prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new
heaven and a new earth.
The
Atlanta Compromise Speech:
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