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 introduced 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 colored
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 of 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, built 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 un-resentful
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 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 drugstores 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 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 equaled.” 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 the 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 colored 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 colored 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 colored people. He seemed to be as careful to
shake hands with some old colored “auntie” clad partially in rags, and
to take as much pleasure in doing so, as if he were greeting some
millionaire. Many of the colored 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 color 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 color 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 colored people and the colored 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 colored 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 the
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 colored 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 oneor, 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
colored 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 a
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, convinces 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 colored 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, consisting 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 labors 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 program, 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 color 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 neighbors.
I know colored 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
educational 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.