Booker T Washington Address at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition Review

B ooker T . W ashington

Accost at the Cotton fiber States and International Exposition

delivered 10 September 1895, Atlanta, Georgia

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Lath of Directors, and Citizens:

One-tertiary of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, ceremonious, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this chemical element of our population and attain the highest success. I just convey to y'all, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of  the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and the manhood of the American Negro been more than fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. Information technology is a recognition which will do more than to cement the friendship of the 2 races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

Non merely this, but the opportunity hither afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, information technology is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the height instead of at the lesser; 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 than attractions than starting a dairy subcontract or truck garden.

A ship lost at bounding main for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen the signal: "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The respond from the friendly vessel at once came back: "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second fourth dimension the signal, "Water, water; send us h2o!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and as answered: "Cast down your saucepan where you are." And a third and a fourth indicate for water was answered: "Cast down your saucepan where you are." The helm of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up total 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 state, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white human being, who is their adjacent door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you lot are." Cast it downwards in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom nosotros are surrounded. Cast it down in agronomics, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in listen that whatever other sins the Southward may be chosen upon to bear, when it comes to business concern, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a homo'due south take chances in the commercial globe; and in nada is this Exposition more than eloquent than in emphasizing this adventure.

Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, nosotros may overlook the fact that the masses of the states are to alive by the productions of our easily, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and to 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 betwixt the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful.

No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life nosotros must begin, and not at the tiptop. Nor should nosotros 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 downward your saucepan where you are." Cast it downwards amidst viii,000,000 Negroes whose habits you know, whose loyalty and love y'all have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who accept, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped brand possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South.

Casting down your bucket amidst my people, helping and encouraging them every bit you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they volition buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you tin can exist sure in the futurity, as in the past, that yous and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, police force-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 sickbed of your mothers and fathers, and oftentimes following them with tear-dimmed optics to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner tin can approach, gear up to lay down our lives, if demand be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, ceremonious, 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 every bit the fingers, yet i as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defence force or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and evolution of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, allow these efforts exist turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the nearly useful and intelligent citizen.

Efforts or means so invested will pay a thou per cent involvement. These efforts will be twice-blessed, "blessing him that gives and him that takes."

There is no escape through constabulary 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 beside.

Near sixteen millions of hands will aid y'all in pulling the load upwards, or they volition pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute i-third and much more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or 1-3rd its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-tertiary to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or nosotros shall prove a veritable body of decease, stagnating, depressing every effort to advance the torso politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, every bit we nowadays to you lot our apprehensive effort at an exhibition of our progress, y'all must non expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with the ownership here and in that location in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), retrieve that the path that has led us 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 nosotros accept just pride in what we exhibit every bit a result of our contained efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our function in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations merely for the constant assist that has come up to our educational life, not only from the Southern States, just specially from Northern philanthropists, who take 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 astringent and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in whatsoever caste
ostracized. It is right and important 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 firm.

In decision, may I echo that nothing in thirty years has given united states of america more hope and encouragement, and nothing has drawn united states so almost to you of the white race, every bit the opportunity offered by this Exposition; and here angle, 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 agone, I pledge that in your endeavour to work out the great and intricate problems which God has laid at the doors of the South you shall take at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; simply let this be constantly in listen that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of the field, of the forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come: yet far in a higher place and across material benefits will be that college good, that let us pray God will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination even in the remotest corner to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience amid all classes to the mandates of law, and a spirit that will tolerate nothing only the highest equity in the enforcement of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

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Volume/CDs by Michael E. Eidenmuller, Published by McGraw-Hill (2008)

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Page Updated: ii/11/22

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Source: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/bookertwashingtonatlantacotteonstates.htm

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