Analyses of social reformers

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.”

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.