The Atlanta Exposition Speech was an address on the topic of race relations given by African-American scholar Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. The speech, [1] presented before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition (the site of today's Piedmont Park) in Atlanta, Georgia, has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. [2] The speech was preceded by the reading of a dedicatory ode written by Frank Lebby Stanton. [3]
Washington began with a call to the African-American population, who composed one third of the Southern United States, to join the world of work. He declared that the South was where black people were given their chance, as opposed to the North, especially in the worlds of commerce and industry. He told the white audience that rather than relying on the immigrant population arriving at the rate of a million people a year, they should hire some of the nation's eight million African-American population. He praised black peoples’ loyalty, fidelity and love in service to the white population, but warned that they could be a great burden on society if oppression continued, stating that the progress of the South was inherently tied to the treatment of black people and protection of their liberties.
He addressed the inequality between commercial legality and social acceptance, proclaiming that "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." Washington also promoted segregation by claiming that blacks and whites could exist as separate fingers of a hand.
The title "Atlanta Compromise Speech" was given to the speech by W. E. B. Du Bois, who believed it was insufficiently committed to the pursuit of social and political equality for African Americans.
Although the speech was not recorded at its initial presentation in 1895, Washington recorded a portion of the speech during a trip to New York in 1908. This recording has been included in the United States National Recording Registry. [4]
Washington used this phrase several times in the speech. [5] The phrase was originally a call for a doomed ship to "cast down your bucket" to the ocean, upon which the sailors discovered fresh water to drink from the nearby Amazon River mouth.
For Washington's audience, the phrase had different meanings for whites and blacks. For whites, Washington seemed to be challenging their common misperceptions of black labor. The North had been experiencing labor troubles in the early 1890s (Homestead Strike, Pullman Strike, etc.) and Washington sought to capitalize on these issues by offering Southern black labor as an alternative, especially since his Tuskegee Institute was in the business of training such workers. For blacks, however, the "bucket motif" represented a call to personal uplift and diligence, as the South needed them to rebuild following the Civil War.
This phrase appeared at the end of the speech's fifth paragraph. [6] It is commonly referred to as the "Hand simile." Certain historians, like Louis Harlan, saw this simile as Washington's personal embrace of racial segregation. [7] The entire simile reads as follows:
In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. [6]
Ultimately, many Southern whites (Porter King, William Yates Atkinson, etc.) praised Washington for including such a simile, because it effectively disarmed any immediate threat posed by blacks toward segregation (accommodationism).
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
Terrell County is a county located in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,185. The county seat is Dawson. Terrell County is included in the Albany, GA metropolitan statistical area.
The history of Atlanta dates back to 1836, when Georgia decided to build a railroad to the U.S. Midwest and a location was chosen to be the line's terminus. The stake marking the founding of "Terminus" was driven into the ground in 1837. In 1839, homes and a store were built there and the settlement grew. Between 1845 and 1854, rail lines arrived from four different directions, and the rapidly growing town quickly became the rail hub for the entire Southern United States. During the American Civil War, Atlanta, as a distribution hub, became the target of a major Union campaign, and in 1864, Union William Sherman's troops set on fire and destroyed the city's assets and buildings, save churches and hospitals. After the war, the population grew rapidly, as did manufacturing, while the city retained its role as a rail hub. Coca-Cola was launched here in 1886 and grew into an Atlanta-based world empire. Electric streetcars arrived in 1889, and the city added new "streetcar suburbs".
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of the American educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). The book describes his experience of working to rise up from being enslaved as a child during the Civil War, the obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, and his work establishing vocational schools like the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to help Black people and other persecuted people of color learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of teachers and philanthropists who helped educate Black and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and dignity into students. His educational philosophy stresses combining academic subjects with learning a trade. Washington explained that the integration of practical subjects is partly designed to "reassure the White community of the usefulness of educating Black people".
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
Charles Augustus Collier was an American banker, lawyer, and politician who served as Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, from 1897 to 1899.
The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-black racism, was more open and pronounced than it had ever been during any other period in the nation's history. During this period, African Americans lost access to many of the civil rights which they had gained during Reconstruction. Anti-Black violence, lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans were also not spared from such sentiments.
The Cotton States and International Exposition was a world's fair held in Atlanta, Georgia, United States in 1895. The exposition was designed "to foster trade between southern states and South American nations as well as to show the products and facilities of the region to the rest of the nation and Europe."
Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician and businessman from Georgia. A Republican, he served as the state's governor during the Reconstruction Era. He called for equal economic opportunity and political rights for blacks and whites in Georgia. He also promoted public education for both, and encouraged railroads, banks, and industrial development. During his governorship he requested federal military help to ensure the rights of freedmen; this made him "the most hated man in the state", and he had to flee the state without completing his term. After returning to Georgia and being found "not guilty" of corruption charges, for three decades afterwards he was an esteemed private citizen.
The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, also known as the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, was an episode of mass racial violence against African Americans in the United States in September 1906. Violent attacks by armed mobs of White Americans against African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia, began after newspapers, on the evening of September 22, 1906, published several unsubstantiated and luridly detailed reports of the alleged rapes of 4 local women by black men. The violence lasted through September 24, 1906. The events were reported by newspapers around the world, including the French Le Petit Journal which described the "lynchings in the USA" and the "massacre of Negroes in Atlanta," the Scottish Aberdeen Press & Journal under the headline "Race Riots in Georgia," and the London Evening Standard under the headlines "Anti-Negro Riots" and "Outrages in Georgia." The final death toll of the conflict is unknown and disputed, but officially at least 25 African Americans and two whites died. Unofficial reports ranged from 10–100 black Americans killed during the massacre. According to the Atlanta History Center, some black Americans were hanged from lampposts; others were shot, beaten or stabbed to death. They were pulled from street cars and attacked on the street; white mobs invaded black neighborhoods, destroying homes and businesses.
What came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise stemmed from a speech given by Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. It was first supported and later opposed by W. E. B. Du Bois and other African-American leaders.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
Frank Lebby Stanton, frequently credited as Frank L. Stanton, Frank Stanton or F. L. Stanton, was an American lyricist.
Black Atlantans form a major population group in the Atlanta metropolitan area, encompassing both those of African-American ancestry as well as those of recent Caribbean or African origin. Atlanta has long been known as a center of Black entrepreneurship, higher education, political power and culture; a cradle of the Civil Rights Movement.
Miriam Elizabeth Benjamin was an American schoolteacher and inventor. In 1888, she obtained a patent for the Gong and Signal Chair for Hotels, becoming the second African-American woman to receive a patent.
The Double Conscious: Race & Rhetoric is a 2011 educational documentary compilation of speeches, by a number of prominent figures, dealing with race and racism in America.
Lafayette M. Hershaw was a journalist, lawyer, and a clerk and law examiner for the United States General Land Office of the United States Department of the Interior. He was a key intellectual figure among African Americans in Atlanta in the 1880s and in Washington, D.C., from 1890 until his death. He was a leader of the intellectual social groups in the capital such as Bethel Literary and Historical Society and the Pen and Pencil Club. He was a strong supporter of W. E. B. Du Bois and was one of the thirteen organizers of the Niagara Movement, the forerunner to the NAACP. He was an officer of the D.C. Branch of the NAACP from its inception until 1928. He was also a founder of the Robert H. Terrell Law School and served as the school's president.
Orishatukeh Faduma was a Nigerian-American Christian missionary and educator who was also an advocate for African culture. He contributed to laying the foundation for the future development of African studies.
Irvine Garland Penn was an American educator, journalist, and lay leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was the author of The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, published in 1891, and a coauthor with Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Ferdinand Lee Barnett of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbia Exposition in 1893. In the late 1890s, he became an officer in the Methodist Episcopal Church and played an important role advocating for the interests of African Americans in the church until his death.
Black Kentuckians are residents of the state of Kentucky who are of African ancestry. The history of Blacks in the US state of Kentucky starts at the same time as the history of White Americans; Black Americans settled Kentucky alongside white explorers such as Daniel Boone. As of 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans make up 8.5% of Kentucky's population. Compared to the rest of the population, the African American census racial category is the 2nd largest.