In 1895 Washington was the only African American invited to address the Cotton
States and International Exposition in Atlanta. He was introduced as "a
representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization." This speech is sometimes
known as the "Atlanta Compromise", and opinions about Washington differ markedly
among different commentators..
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 nextdoor 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.
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 Expositon 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 defense 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 defense 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.
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,
coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a
new earth.
Source:
From Booker Taliaferro Washington, "Atlanta Exposition Address, September 18,
1895," The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. Louis R. Harlan et al., vol. 3
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), pp. 584-87.
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© Paul Halsall, July 1998
