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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 of 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.
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