Atlanta Exposition Speech

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) delivered the Atlanta Exposition Speech on September 18, 1895, at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. A formerly enslaved person and prominent Black educator, Washington was the best-known Black advocate for progress in race relations in the post-Reconstruction South. His speech engages with the problem of racial justice by promoting the idea that Southern Black people should work for social and political rights by gaining wealth and economic independence rather than through political activism.

This study guide refers to the version of Washington’s speech found online at “History Matters: the U.S. Survey Course on the Web,” published by George Mason University (Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech) and is cited by paragraph. In 1908, Washington recorded part of the speech, which is the only extant recording of Washington’s voice. It can be found on the website of the Library of Congress (Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Compromise” Speech - The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom | Exhibitions - Library of Congress).

Content Warning: The source material references racial prejudice.

Washington begins his speech with the simple premise that “one-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race” (Paragraph 1). Thus, both Black and white Southerners have a stake in the success of Black people, because without success the South will fail to reach its economic and cultural potential. He praises the organizers of the exposition for recognizing “more fittingly and generously” than ever before the “value and manhood of the American Negro,” suggesting that the Exposition offers the best opportunity since the end of the Civil War for Black and white people to “cement” their “friendship” (Paragraph 1).

Washington sets about convincing his majority white audience that they should not feel threatened by the rising status of their Black neighbors. He concedes that immediately after the Civil War, Southern Black people were “ignorant and inexperienced,” and that “in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom” (Paragraph 2). That is, Black people during Reconstruction sought positions of political power and the superficial “ornamental gewgaws of life” without the necessary education and preparation for leadership and success. (Paragraph 4). (Washington here adopts a common view of his time that the reason Reconstruction failed to achieve racial equality is that the Black people who took power in the South after the Civil War were incompetent and corrupt. This view is not generally accepted by historians today.)

Washington instead encourages Black Americans to seek economic prosperity and educational achievement before political and cultural authority. For most, this will mean some form of common labor—which should be considered an honorable pursuit: “No race can prosper,” he says, “until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem” (Paragraph 4). We must begin at “the bottom of life,” he argues, to build a successful Black American culture.

Washington’s plan requires the cooperation of successful Southern white people, who must hire Black people before immigrants. In a reverential tone, he reminds his mainly white audience of their Black neighbors’ “fidelity and love,” and their work ethic. He promises that Black workers are not only humble and loyal but also the “most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people the world has seen,” prepared to stand by white Americans “with a devotion that no foreigner can approach” (Paragraph 5). As the interests of each race are inextricably linked, the two must work together. He says that the “industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life” of the two races must be “interlaced” (Paragraph 5). However, Washington does not advocate forced integration in the social sphere: “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” (Paragraph 5). He is willing to accommodate, and may prefer, forms of segregation that do not hinder the economic and cultural development of the South.

Washington reiterates that because Black people are such a large portion of the Southern population, the success the South depends on granting them opportunity: “We shall constitute [either] one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third [of] its intelligence and progress” (Paragraph 9). Washington suggests economic development is the necessary foundation for political rights and equality. He argues that pursuing equality through “agitation” and “artificial forcing” is counterproductive. It frightens Southern white people, and puts Southern Black people in leadership positions they are not prepared for. He argues that Black people should attain “all privileges of the law” only once they are prepared to enjoy and use those privileges appropriately. Putting social and political equality before economic development leaves that equality empty and fragile: “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.” He concludes with the hope that and economically prosperous Black population will turn “our beloved South” into a “new heaven and a new earth” (Paragraph 10).