New Georgia Encyclopedia: Atlanta Compromise Speech

NGE >> History and Archaeology >> Late Nineteenth Century, 1877-1900 >> Events >> Atlanta Compromise Speech

Atlanta Compromise Speech

On September 18, 1895, the African American educator and leader Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

delivered his famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Considered the definitive statement of what Washington termed the "accommodationist" strategy of black response to southern racial tensions, it is widely regarded as one of the most significant speeches in American history.

Two years earlier, Washington had spoken in Atlanta during the international meeting of Christian Workers. That audience, comprising northern and southern whites, responded favorably to his speech, in which he advocated vocational-industrial education for blacks as a means of improving southern race relations. In the spring of 1895 Washington traveled to Washington, D.C., with a delegation of mostly white Georgians to solicit support from Congress for an exposition on social and economic advances in the South. Washington pointed out to a congressional committee that since emancipation, blacks and whites had made advancements in race relations that should be highlighted in an exposition, and he urged federal support for the event, to be held in Atlanta. This speech, along with his 1893 address to the Christian Workers, prompted the exposition's board of directors to ask Washington to speak at its opening exercises.

Washington's speech responded to the "Negro problem"—the question of what to do about the abysmal social and economic conditions of blacks and the relationship between blacks and whites in the economically shifting South.

Cotton Expo Attendees

Appealing to white southerners, Washington promised his audience that he would encourage blacks to become proficient in agriculture, mechanics, commerce, and domestic service, and to encourage them to "dignify and glorify common labour." Steeped in the ideals of the Protestant work ethic, he assured whites that blacks were loyal people who believed they would prosper in proportion to their hard work. Agitation for social equality, Washington argued, was but folly, and most blacks realized the privileges that would come from "constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing."

Washington also eased many whites' fears about blacks' desire for social integration by stating that both races could "be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." Washington's speech also called for whites to take responsibility for improving social and economic relations between the races. Praising the South for some of the opportunities it had given blacks since emancipation, Washington asked whites to trust blacks and provide them with opportunities so that both races could advance in industry and agriculture. This shared responsibility came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise.

The speech was greeted by thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Clark Howell, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, moved forward to the speaker's platform and proclaimed the speech to be "the beginning of a moral revolution in America." Washington's words, telegraphed to every major newspaper in the country, were greeted enthusiastically by whites—both northern and southern—and by most African American leaders.

But Washington had his critics, none more stringent than another leading black educator and scholar of his day—W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, a native of Great Barrington, Massachusetts,

Booker T. Washington

was educated at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of Berlin in Germany. In 1897 he accepted an appointment to the faculty of Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University) and moved to Atlanta. Although Du Bois recognized Washington's speech as important, he soon came to see Washington's ideas of gradualism for civil rights as acquiescence to many southerners who wanted to maintain the inferior status of blacks. In Du Bois's view, "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission. ... [His] programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races."

Du Bois's upbringing in New England and his exposure to liberal democratic views elicited a very different response to the Negro problem. He believed that blacks should launch legal and scholarly attacks on racism and discrimination without hesitation, and he called for education of the most talented blacks to lead this struggle. The "talented tenth," he believed, should represent the antithesis of gradualism and should seek to free blacks in the present.

The Atlanta Compromise represented Booker T. Washington's strategy for addressing the Negro problem and has long served as the basis for contrasting Washington's views with those of Du Bois. Even today, scholars and educators debate the utility of Washington's educational ideas. Most agree that to understand Washington's speech, it is necessary to place his thinking within its historical context. Despite the continued debates over the speech and the criticisms of Washington by many black progressive thinkers, his address continues to be one of the most important speeches in African American letters.