Briefly explain ONE way Booker T thinking was compatible with the New South movement

This post comes to us from Danna Bell-Russel of the Library of Congress.

Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition speech, September 18, 1895.

As the United States entered the 20th century, African Americans faced a new and challenging landscape. A mere thirty-five years after the abolition of slavery, the majority of African Americans had learned to read and hundreds were heading to colleges and universities to continue their studies. The 1900 Paris Exposition created by W.E.B. DuBois showcased the gains that African Americans had made since emancipation.

However, many of the freedoms gained during the era of reconstruction were beginning to disappear. It became more and more difficult for African Americans to vote; the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling made segregation the law of the land; and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia tried to reverse the successes of African Americans, sometimes using violence and lynching to strike fear in the African American community.

Many contributed to the debates on how best to secure and advance the rights of African Americans, but one of the major contributors was the educator Booker T. Washington. Washington, the leader of Tuskegee Institute, stated his views in a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1895.

Booker T. Washington. C.M. Battey, 1917.

This speech, which is often called the “Atlanta Compromise,” was the first speech given by an African American man in front of a racially mixed audience in the South. In it, Washington suggested that African Americans should not agitate for social and political equality in return for the opportunity to acquire vocational training and participate in the economic development of the New South. He believed that through hard work and hard-earned respect, African Americans would gain the esteem of white society and eventually full citizenship.

After giving this speech Washington became an extremely popular speaker and gave speeches around the United States. He also helped found the National Negro Business League to support African American entrepreneurs, and was invited to the White House for dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt. Washington continued to give speeches and provide support to the African American community until his death in 1915.

Teaching Ideas

How do you think historic speeches like the Atlanta Compromise could be incorporated into classroom teaching? If you have successful examples from your own teaching, please let us know in the comments.

As the United States entered the 20th century, African Americans faced a new and challenging landscape. A mere thirty-five years after the abolition of slavery, the majority of African Americans had learned to read and hundreds were heading to colleges and universities to continue their studies. The 1900 Paris Exposition created by W.E.B. DuBois showcased the gains that African Americans had made since emancipation.

However, many of the freedoms gained during the era of reconstruction were beginning to disappear. It became more and more difficult for African Americans to vote; the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling made segregation the law of the land; and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia tried to reverse the successes of African Americans, sometimes using violence and lynching to strike fear in the African American community.

Many contributed to the debates on how best to secure and advance the rights of African Americans, but one of the major contributors was the educator Booker T. Washington. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, stated his views in a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1895. This speech, which is often called the “Atlanta Compromise,” was the first speech given by an African American in front of a racially mixed audience in the South. In it, Washington suggested that African Americans should not agitate for social and political equality in return for the opportunity to acquire vocational training and participate in the economic development of the New South. He believed that through hard work and hard-earned respect, African Americans would gain the esteem of white society and eventually full citizenship.

After giving this speech Washington became an extremely popular speaker and gave speeches around the United States. He also helped found the National Negro Business League to support African American entrepreneurs, and was invited to the White House for dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt. Washington continued to give speeches and provide support to the African American community until his death in 1915.

Teaching Ideas

Have students read Washington’s speech. Who do you think was the audience for this speech?

Ask students to investigate what was happening at the time the speech was delivered. Would the content of the speech be different if it had been delivered 10 years later? If it were delivered now?

Visit the Chronicling America website and locate responses to Washington’s speech in the Washington Bee, one of African-American newspapers published at the time. Students can select one or more of the responses to defend or refute.

Have students study the placement of articles about Washington’s speech in other newspapers within Chronicling America during the months of September and October 1895. Where were articles about the speech placed? Was the placement different in papers with majority white readers than in papers with majority African American readership?

Look more specifically at the actual articles on the Cotton Exposition. What was said about Washington’s speech? Does it receive extensive coverage or is it a minor footnote within the larger article on the exposition?

One of the people who spoke out against Washington’s view was W.E.B DuBois. Students can compare Washington’s speech and chapter three of the book The Souls of Black Folk, and identify points at which DuBois agree or disagree with each other. Have students consider if their debate is still relevant today.

Review the drafts of the poem “Ballad of Booker T.” by Langston Hughes. //lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mcc:@field%[email protected]%28mcc/024%29%29 What is Hughes’ opinion of Booker T. Washington? How did Hughes’ life experiences shape his writing? What do you think Washington would have thought of the poem?

Additional Resources

You’ll find more primary sources from this era in the Library of Congress online exhibition NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom.

How do you think historic speeches like the Atlanta Compromise could be incorporated into classroom teaching? If you have successful examples from your own teaching, please let us know in the comments.

Two great leaders of the black community in the late 19th and 20th century were W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. However, they sharply disagreed on strategies for black social and economic progress. Their opposing philosophies can be found in much of today’s discussions over how to end class and racial injustice, what is the role of black leadership, and what do the ‘haves’ owe the ‘have-nots’ in the black community.

Booker T. Washington, educator, reformer and the most influentional black leader of his time (1856-1915) preached a philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity and accomodation. He urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed in education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. This, he said, would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated into all strata of society.

W.E.B. Du Bois, a towering black intellectual, scholar and political thinker (1868-1963) said no–Washington’s strategy would serve only to perpetuate white oppression. Du Bois advocated political action and a civil rights agenda (he helped found the NAACP). In addition, he argued that social change could be accomplished by developing the small group of college-educated blacks he called “the Talented Tenth:”

“The Negro Race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education then, among Negroes, must first of all deal with the “Talented Tenth.” It is the problem of developing the best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the worst.”

At the time, the Washington/Du Bois dispute polarized African American leaders into two wings–the ‘conservative’ supporters of Washington and his ‘radical’ critics. The Du Bois philosophy of agitation and protest for civil rights flowed directly into the Civil Rights movement which began to develop in the 1950’s and exploded in the 1960’s. Booker T. today is associated, perhaps unfairly, with the self-help/colorblind/Republican/Clarence Thomas/Thomas Sowell wing of the black community and its leaders. The Nation of Islam and Maulana Karenga’s Afrocentrism derive too from this strand out of Booker T.’s philosophy. However, the latter advocated withdrawal from the mainstream in the name of economic advancement.

Links/Readings for Du Bois & Washington

A Last Interview with W.E.B. Du Bois

This interesting 1965 article by writer Ralph McGill in The Atlantic combines an interview with Du Bois shortly before his death with McGill’s analysis of his life. In the interview, Du Bois discusses Booker T., looks back on his controversial break with him and explains how their backgrounds accounted for their opposing views on strategies for black social progress

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E. B. Du Bois

Here is the full text of this classic in the literature of civil rights. It is a prophetic work anticipating and inspiring much of the black consciousness and activism of the 1960s. In it Du Bois describes the magnitude of American racism and demands that it end. He draws on his own life for illustration- from his early experrience teaching in the hills of Tennessee to the death of his infant son and his historic break with the ‘accomodationist’ position of Booker T. Washington..

Black History, American History

This archival section of The Atlantic magazine online offers several essays by Du Bois (as well as Booker T. Washington). In particular, in “The Training of Black Men” he continues his debate with Washington.

W.E.B.Du Bois

This site on Du Bois offers a lengthy biographical summary and a bilbiography of his writings and books.

Booker T. Washington

A summary of Booker T.’s life, philosophy and achievements, with a link to the famous September 1895 speech, “the Atlanta Compromise,” which propelled him onto the national scene as a leader and spokesman for African Americans. In the speech he advocated black Americans accept for awhile the political and social status quo of segregation and discriminaton and concentrate instead on self-help and building economic and material success within the black community.

Up From Slavery

Here is the full text of Booker T. Washington’s fine autobiography, published in 1900.

Two Essays by Booker T.

“Signs of Progress Among the Negroes,” “Awakening of the Negro” written around the turn of the century can be accessed from this web page; scroll down to ‘Washington.’

Booker T. Washington Ambassador and Spokesman

Washington was the first black to be invited to the White House for dinner with a President. The invitation came from Theodore Roosevelt and this article, written at the time by a Howard University professor, deals with this event and conveys the very powerful image of Washington in the eyes of ten million black Americans during the turn of the century.