Booker T.
Washingtons Address in plain words
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1. You need and can use blacks in your rebuilding of the South.
2. We must work from the bottom up.
3. Blacks should set aside their bitterness and drop their buckets into the water an analogy for trusting the blacks will gain experience.
4. There is honour and growth in labour. It is the foundation for everything.
5. Foreigners can trust us, we will work hard for you too, like the fingers on a hand.
6. The best way for all is through mutual support of each other.
7. We for 1/3 of the population of the South. We can really help or hurt your growth as a nation.
8. You can see we are progressing thanks to the Northern philanthropists and Southern education efforts.
9. We must apply our efforts to business building, rather than to civil revolts and protests.
10. We will help you rebuild the south if you recognize our worth. Lets pray that god will do away with the hatred we have known.
On
September 18, 1895, African-American spokesman and leader Booker T.
Washington spoke before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States
and International Exposition in Atlanta. His Atlanta Compromise address, as it came to be called, was
one of the most important and influential speeches in American history.
Although the organizers of the exposition worried that public sentiment was not prepared for
such an advanced step, they decided that inviting a black
speaker would impress Northern visitors with the evidence of racial
progress in the South. Washington soothed his listeners concerns about uppity blacks by claiming that his race would
content itself with living by the productions of our hands.
Mr. President and
Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 mans 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 labour, 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.
5. 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
labour 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.
6. 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 blessedblessing 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...
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. The wisest among
my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is
the extremest 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.
10. 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.