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$Title{Up From Slavery An Autobiography
Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address}
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$Author{Washington, Booker T.}
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$Date{1902}
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Title:       Up From Slavery An Autobiography
Author:      Washington, Booker T.
Date:        1902

Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address

     The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as a
representative of the Negro race, as stated in the last chapter, was opened
with a short address from Governor Bullock.  After other interesting
exercises, including an invocation from Bishop Nelson, of Georgia, a
dedicatory ode by Albert Howell, Jr., and addresses by the President of the
Exposition and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, the President of the Woman's Board,
Governor Bullock introduced me with the words, "We have with us to-day a
representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization."

     When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from
the coloured people.  As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in my
mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the
races and bring about hearty cooperation between them.  So far as my outward
surroundings were concerned, the only thing that I recall distinctly now is
that when I got up, I saw thousands of eyes looking intently into my face. The
following is the address which I delivered: -

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens.

     One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race.  No
enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can
disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success.  I but
convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my
race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American
Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of
this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress.  It is a
recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than
any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

     Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a
new era of industrial progress.  Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange
that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the
bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than
real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump
speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

     A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From
the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of
thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down
your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us
water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your
bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered,
"Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel,
at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of
fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. 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 neighbour, 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.

[Hear To My Race]
Cast down your bucket where you are.

     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 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 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, in 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 educational 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 home 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 as 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 the 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 millionnaire.  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 the 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 or 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 a
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, consisting 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 educational 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.