their board. Wishing to gain admission to Hamp-
ton, Washington traveled at first by coach to
Hampton, then walked after he ran out of funds,
sleeping under wooden sidewalks in Richmond.
Undiscouraged, he arrived at Hampton dirty and
disheveled. To gain admission, he cleaned a class-
room, immaculately, the way Mrs. Ruffner, a strict
taskmistress, had taught him to do. This experi-
ence, which Washington described as his first test,
as well as the lessons he learned while at Hampton
from his mentor, General Samuels C. Armstrong,
the founder who had dedicated his life to “lifting
up [the black] race” (59), convinced Washington
of the value of discipline, hygiene, and industrial
education. These are the principles and values
Washington employed in his critical role as the
architect of the Tuskegee experiment in Alabama.
By the beginning of the 20th century, many
Americans came to view Washington as the lead-
ing black expert on what was frequently referred
to as the “Negro Problem,” largely because of
the program for black economic self-reliance he
outlined in his infamous “Atlanta Exposition Ad-
dress” (1895). Beginning with the premise that the
South was the only place that would give blacks
“a man’s chance for economic growth,” Washing-
ton discouraged black migration to the North and
admonished them, instead, to “cast down your
buckets where you are” (147). Simultaneously de-
claring the ostensible faithfulness and docility of
the former slaves, Washington encouraged south-
ern whites to cast down their buckets “among the
eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know,
whose fidelity and love you have tested.” He fur-
ther assured them, “As we have proved our loy-
alty to you in the past... so in the future, in our
humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion
that no foreigner can approach” (148). To illus-
trate his commitment to work within well-estab-
lished post-Reconstruction southern boundaries
of “separate but equal,” Washington promised, “In
all things that are purely social we can be separate
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things es-
sential to mutual progress.”
With this stance, Washington was recognized
by whites as the most important black leader—
indeed as one of the founding fathers of the na-
tion, like Benjamin Franklin, whose name Wash-
ington indirectly invokes from the beginning of
Up from Slavery. President Grover Cleveland, to
whom Washington sent a copy of his speech, wrote
to offer his congratulations, confirming Washing-
ton’s accomplished goal. “Your words cannot fail
to delight and encourage all who wish well for you
and 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” (151).
Calling Washington’s “Atlanta Exposition Ad-
dress” the “Atlanta Compromise,” DuBois wrote,
“His doctrine has tended to make the whites,
North and South, shift the burden of the Negro
problem to the Negro’s shoulder and stand aside
as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when
in fact the burden belongs to the nation” (251).
According to biographer Louis R. Harlan, with
this speech, Washington “stood on its head the
whole theory of abolition and Reconstruction”
(219). Recent critics such as HOUSTON A. BAKER,
JR., identify Washington—preeminently a south-
ern spokesperson—as an accomplished speaker,
deft in his ability to manipulate and master the
minstrel’s mask. According to Baker, “Washing-
ton’s narrator not only plays the role of the judi-
ciously southern, post-Reconstruction racist but
also supplies a preposterous character direct from
minstrelsy to play the darky role in this condem-
natory drama” (28).BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Re-
naissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987.
DuBois, William E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. In
Three Negro Classics, edited by John H. Franklin,
213–289. New York: Avon Books, 1965.
Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making
of a Black Leader, 1856–1901. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971.
Olney, James. “The Founding Fathers—Frederick
Douglass and Booker T. Washington.” In SlaveryWashington, Booker T. 533