Chapter XIV.

The Atlanta Exposition Address

The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as

a representative of the Negro race, as stated in the last chapter, was

opened with a short address from Governor Bullock. After other

interesting exercises, including an invocation from Bishop Nelson, of

Georgia, a dedicatory ode by Albert Howell, Jr., and addresses by the

President of the Exposition and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, the President of

the Woman’s Board, Governor Bullock introduce me with the words, “We

have with us to-day a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro

civilization.”

When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from

the coloured people. As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost

in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the

friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between

them. So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing

that I recall distinctly now is that when I got up, I saw thousands of

eyes looking intently into my face. The following is the address which

I delivered:—

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 neighbour, 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 of 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, 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 defence 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 defence 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 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 education 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 exercises 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 be 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, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into

our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

The first thing that I remember, after I had finished speaking, was

that Governor Bullock rushed across the platform and took me by the

hand, and that others did the same. I received so many and such hearty

congratulations that I found it difficult to get out of the building. I

did not appreciate to any degree, however, the impression which my

address seemed to have made, until the next morning, when I went into

the business part of the city. As soon as I was recognized, I was

surprised to find myself pointed out and surrounded by a crowd of men

who wished to shake hands with me. This was kept up on every street on

to which I went, to an extent which embarrassed me so much that I went

back to my boarding-place. The next morning I returned to Tuskegee. At

the station in Atlanta, and at almost all of the stations at which the

train stopped between that city and Tuskegee, I found a crowd of people

anxious to shake hands with me.

The papers in all parts of the United States published the address in

full, and for months afterward there were complimentary editorial

references to it. Mr. Clark Howell, the editor of the Atlanta

Constitution, telegraphed to a New York paper, among other words, the

following, “I do not exaggerate when I say that Professor Booker T.

Washington’s address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches,

both as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever

delivered to a Southern audience. The address was a revelation. The

whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with

full justice to each other.”

The Boston Transcript said editorially: “The speech of Booker T.

Washington at the Atlanta Exposition, this week, seems to have dwarfed

all the other proceedings and the Exposition itself. The sensation that

it has caused in the press has never been equalled.”

I very soon began receiving all kinds of propositions from lecture

bureaus, and editors of magazines and papers, to take the lecture

platform, and to write articles. One lecture bureau offered me fifty

thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if I

would place my services at its disposal for a given period. To all

these communications I replied that my life-work was at Tuskegee; and

that whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of Tuskegee school

and my race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to

place a mere commercial value upon my services.

Some days after its delivery I sent a copy of my address to the

President of the United States, the Hon. Grover Cleveland. I received

from him the following autograph reply:—

Gray Gables, Buzzard’s Bay, Mass.,

October 6, 1895.

Booker T. Washington, Esq.:

My Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your address

delivered at the Atlanta Exposition.

I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read it

with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully

justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its

delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish

well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from

your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain

every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be

strange indeed.

Yours very truly,

Grover Cleveland.

Later I met Mr. Cleveland, for the first time, when, as President, he

visited the Atlanta Exposition. At the request of myself and others he

consented to spend an hour in the Negro Building, for the purpose of

inspecting the Negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in

attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him. As soon as I met Mr.

Cleveland I became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged

honesty. I have met him many times since then, both at public functions

and at his private residence in Princeton, and the more I see of him

the more I admire him. When he visited the Negro Building in Atlanta he

seemed to give himself up wholly, for that hour, to the coloured

people. He seemed to be as careful to shake hands with some old

coloured “auntie” clad partially in rags, and to take as much pleasure

in doing so, as if he were greeting some millionaire. Many of the

coloured people took advantage of the occasion to get him to write his

name in a book or on a slip of paper. He was as careful and patient in

doing this as if he were putting his signature to some great state

document.

Mr. Cleveland has not only shown his friendship for me in many personal

ways, but has always consented to do anything I have asked of him for

our school. This he has done, whether it was to make a personal

donation or to use his influence in securing the donations of others.

Judging from my personal acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland, I do not

believe that he is conscious of possessing any colour prejudice. He is

too great for that. In my contact with people I find that, as a rule,

it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never

read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a

way to permit them to come into contact with other souls—with the great

outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into

contact with what is highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in

many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the

most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least. I have

also found that few things, if any, are capable of making one so blind

and narrow as race prejudice. I often say to our students, in the

course of my talks to them on Sunday evenings in the chapel, that the

longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I

am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living

for—and dying for, if need be—is the opportunity of making some one

else more happy and more useful.

The coloured people and the coloured newspapers at first seemed to be

greatly pleased with the character of my Atlanta address, as well as

with its reception. But after the first burst of enthusiasm began to

die away, and the coloured people began reading the speech in cold

type, some of them seemed to feel that they had been hypnotized. They

seemed to feel that I had been too liberal in my remarks toward the

Southern whites, and that I had not spoken out strongly enough for what

they termed the “rights” of my race. For a while there was a reaction,

so far as a certain element of my own race was concerned, but later

these reactionary ones seemed to have been won over to my way of

believing and acting.

While speaking of changes in public sentiment, I recall that about ten

years after the school at Tuskegee was established, I had an experience

that I shall never forget. Dr. Lyman Abbott, then the pastor of

Plymouth Church, and also editor of the Outlook (then the Christian

Union), asked me to write a letter for his paper giving my opinion of

the exact condition, mental and moral, of the coloured ministers in the

South, as based upon my observations. I wrote the letter, giving the

exact facts as I conceived them to be. The picture painted was a rather

black one—or, since I am black, shall I say “white”? It could not be

otherwise with a race but a few years out of slavery, a race which had

not had time or opportunity to produce a competent ministry.

What I said soon reached every Negro minister in the country, I think,

and the letters of condemnation which I received from them were not

few. I think that for a year after the publication of this article

every association and every conference or religious body of any kind,

of my race, that met, did not fail before adjourning to pass a

resolution condemning me, or calling upon me to retract or modify what

I had said. Many of these organizations went so far in their

resolutions as to advise parents to cease sending their children to

Tuskegee. One association even appointed a “missionary” whose duty it

was to warn the people against sending their children to Tuskegee. This

missionary had a son in the school, and I noticed that, whatever the

“missionary” might have said or done with regard to others, he was

careful not to take his son away from the institution. Many of the

coloured papers, especially those that were the organs of religious

bodies, joined in the general chorus of condemnation or demands for

retraction.

During the whole time of the excitement, and through all the criticism,

I did not utter a word of explanation or retraction. I knew that I was

right, and that time and the sober second thought of the people would

vindicate me. It was not long before the bishops and other church

leaders began to make careful investigation of the conditions of the

ministry, and they found out that I was right. In fact, the oldest and

most influential bishop in one branch of the Methodist Church said that

my words were far too mild. Very soon public sentiment began making

itself felt, in demanding a purifying of the ministry. While this is

not yet complete by any means, I think I may say, without egotism, and

I have been told by many of our most influential ministers, that my

words had much to do with starting a demand for the placing of a higher

type of men in the pulpit. I have had the satisfaction of having many

who once condemned me thank me heartily for my frank words.

The change of the attitude of the Negro ministry, so far as regards

myself, is so complete that at the present time I have no warmer

friends among any class than I have among the clergymen. The

improvement in the character and life of the Negro ministers is one of

the most gratifying evidences of the progress of the race. My

experience with them, as well as other events in my life, convince me

that the thing to do, when one feels sure that he has said or done the

right thing, and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he

is right, time will show it.

In the midst of the discussion which was going on concerning my Atlanta

speech, I received the letter which I give below, from Dr. Gilman, the

President of Johns Hopkins University, who had been made chairman of

the judges of award in connection with the Atlanta Exposition:—

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,

President’s Office, September 30, 1895.

Dear Mr. Washington: Would it be agreeable to you to be one of the

Judges of Award in the Department of Education at Atlanta? If so, I

shall be glad to place your name upon the list. A line by telegraph

will be welcomed.

Yours very truly,

D.C. Gilman

I think I was even more surprised to receive this invitation than I had

been to receive the invitation to speak at the opening of the

Exposition. It was to be a part of my duty, as one of the jurors, to

pass not only upon the exhibits of the coloured schools, but also upon

those of the white schools. I accepted the position, and spent a month

in Atlanta in performance of the duties which it entailed. The board of

jurors was a large one, containing in all of sixty members. It was

about equally divided between Southern white people and Northern white

people. Among them were college presidents, leading scientists and men

of letters, and specialists in many subjects. When the group of jurors

to which I was assigned met for organization, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page,

who was one of the number, moved that I be made secretary of that

division, and the motion was unanimously adopted. Nearly half of our

division were Southern people. In performing my duties in the

inspection of the exhibits of white schools I was in every case treated

with respect, and at the close of our labours I parted from my

associates with regret.

I am often asked to express myself more freely than I do upon the

political condition and the political future of my race. These

recollections of my experience in Atlanta give me the opportunity to do

so briefly. My own belief is, although I have never before said so in

so many words, that the time will come when the Negro in the South will

be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and

material possessions entitle him to. I think, though, that the

opportunity to freely exercise such political rights will not come in

any large degree through outside or artificial forcing, but will be

accorded to the Negro by the Southern white people themselves, and that

they will protect him in the exercise of those rights. Just as soon as

the South gets over the old feeling that it is being forced by

“foreigners,” or “aliens,” to do something which it does not want to

do, I believe that the change in the direction that I have indicated is

going to begin. In fact, there are indications that it is already

beginning in a slight degree.

Let me illustrate my meaning. Suppose that some months before the

opening of the Atlanta Exposition there had been a general demand from

the press and public platform outside the South that a Negro be given a

place on the opening programme, and that a Negro be placed upon the

board of jurors of award. Would any such recognition of the race have

taken place? I do not think so. The Atlanta officials went as far as

they did because they felt it to be a pleasure, as well as a duty, to

reward what they considered merit in the Negro race. Say what we will,

there is something in human nature which we cannot blot out, which

makes one man, in the end, recognize and reward merit in another,

regardless of colour or race.

I believe it is the duty of the Negro—as the greater part of the race

is already doing—to deport himself modestly in regard to political

claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from

the possession of property, intelligence, and high character for the

full recognition of his political rights. I think that the according of

the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of

natural, slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair. I do not

believe that the Negro should cease voting, for a man cannot learn the

exercise of self-government by ceasing to vote, any more than a boy can

learn to swim by keeping out of the water, but I do believe that in his

voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence

and character who are his next-door neighbours.

I know coloured men who, through the encouragement, help, and advice of

Southern white people, have accumulated thousands of dollars’ worth of

property, but who, at the same time, would never think of going to

those same persons for advice concerning the casting of their ballots.

This, it seems to me, is unwise and unreasonable, and should cease. In

saying this I do not mean that the Negro should truckle, or not vote

from principle, for the instant he ceases to vote from principle he

loses the confidence and respect of the Southern white man even.

I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an

ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black

man in the same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust,

but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of

such a law is to encourage the Negro to secure education and property,

and at the same time it encourages the white man to remain in ignorance

and poverty. I believe that in time, through the operation of

intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the

ballot-box in the South will cease. It will become apparent that the

white man who begins by cheating a Negro out of his ballot soon learns

to cheat a white man out of his, and that the man who does this ends

his career of dishonesty by the theft of property or by some equally

serious crime. In my opinion, the time will come when the South will

encourage all of its citizens to vote. It will see that it pays better,

from every standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have that

political stagnation which always results when one-half of the

population has no share and no interest in the Government.

As a rule, I believe in universal, free suffrage, but I believe that in

the South we are confronted with peculiar conditions that justify the

protection of the ballot in many of the states, for a while at least,

either by an education test, a property test, or by both combined; but

whatever tests are required, they should be made to apply with equal

and exact justice to both races.