A New South for Whom

HIST 1700
Stephanie George
3 May 2016
Booker T. Washington was an African-American, well-known black
educator and the director of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He was
an advocate of industrial education and economic self-help.
Washington accepted racial segregation, proposing that, "In all things
that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers." [Foner]
African-Americans had lost many of the rights and opportunities
of Reconstruction with the return of white supremacist "home" rule
under the Redeemers after 1877. On September 18, 1885, Washington
gave one of the most important and influential speeches in American
History, the Atlanta Compromise. The address was given at the Cotton
Northern visitors would see that there was racial progress in the South.
In his speech, Washington expressed his concerns about uppity
blacks. He claimed that his race would content itself with living by the
productions of our hands.
Washington characterized the political ambitions of AfricanAmericans during the preceding reconstruction period by reminding
them who tilled their fields, cleared their forests, built their railroads
and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth,

and helped make the magnificent representation of the progress of the

South possible. Whether men are ignorant and inexperienced, they
began at the top instead of at the bottom. They pursued jobs in
congress or the state legislature more than real estate or industrial
skill. The political convention had more attractions than starting a dairy
farm or truck garden. [Louis]
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. [Foner]
Thirty years ago everyone had to start again with practically
nothing. Washington describes thirty years since the civil war as a time
that has given them so much hope and encouragement.
Washington asked everyone to, Cast down your bucket where
you are. Asking this was a plea to the people to make friends with
people of all races they are surrounded by. He ensures, doing so, that
families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding,
and unresentful people that the world has seen. Then reminds the
people of all the times his people have been there for them: in nursing
their children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers,
and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves. He

says that they would even lay down their lives in defense of theirs.
[Louis]
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.
Booker T. Washington described how they were all one, no matter their
differences.

References:
Booker T. Washington, advocate of industrial education and economic
self-help.
(Foner 527)
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History (Brief Fourth Edition)
(Vol. 2), 4th
Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 20140205. VitalBook file.
Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 3, (Urbana:
University of
Illinois Press, 1974), 583587.