BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
SPEECH AT THE ATLANTA WORLD FAIR
Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech
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.”
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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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Source: Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 3,
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 583–587