The Black Experience in America

by Norman Coombs

Washington built on the image of the ship's needing fresh water to persuade Negroes to start where they were in building their future. He said:

"To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: 'Cast down your bucket where you are, cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. 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 labor 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."

Washington then turned to the whites in the audience and urged them to start where they were in building national prosperity and racial unity. He said:

"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 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 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 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.... 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."

He summed up his plea for racial cooperation with the second pictorial image. He told the audience that "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This proposal brought forth thunderous applause. He went on to say that the wisest in his race were aware that fighting for social equality was folly. The ex-slave, he believed, must first struggle and prepare himself for the assumption of his rights, which were privileges to be earned. While he did believe that his people would receive their full rights at some future date, he insisted 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." Economic opportunity was far more important than either social equality or political rights. He closed the speech by praising the Exposition for the effect it would have in bringing fresh material prosperity to the South, and added:

"... 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, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth."

When he finished, the audience applauded wildly. Governor Bullock rushed across the platform and shook his hand. The next day he was greeted and praised enthusiastically on the Atlanta streets. President Cleveland, after having read the speech, wrote Washington and thanked him for what he had said. The following year Harvard University granted him an honorary Master's degree. The press both North and South quoted all or parts of the speech, and most of the newspapers carried appreciative editorials. The Charleston News and Courier, for example said "His skin is colored, but his head is sound, and his heart is in the right place." Money poured in to finance the Tuskegee Institute. Overnight Washington was skyrocketed to national fame.

However, there were those who did not appreciate their new leader's call to conciliation. In view of the growing virulence of racism and the spread of Jim Crow legislation, they believed that his refusal to demand their rights was, in fact, a form of emasculation.

John Hope was one of those who had heard the Atlanta speech and did not want to accept the compromise. He was a professor at Roger Williams University in Nashville, Tennessee, and later was to become president of Atlanta University. The following year, after carefully considering Washington's speech, he made an address of his own to his colleagues in Nashville. He bitterly attacked the compromise and said that he believed it to be cowardly for a black man to admit that his people were not striving for equality. If money, education, and honesty would not bring the black man as much respect as they would to another American citizen, they were a curse and not a blessing.

This was obviously an attack on Washington's statement that the right to earn a dollar was worth more than anything else. He said that if he did not have the right to spend a dollar in the opera house and to do those things that other free men do, he was not free. Hope was not content with demanding equality in vague terms. He insisted that what he wanted was social equality. Instead of urging conciliation, he advocated that the Afro-Americans should be restless and dissatisfied. When their discontent broke through the wall of discrimination, then there would be no need to plead for Justice. Then they would be men. A decade later, those who opposed Washington's leadership decided that they needed to organize and coordinate their activities.