Booker T. Washington: A “Reasonable” Champion for African Americans 539not especially wish blacks ill; they simply consigned
them complacently to oblivion, along with the
Indians. A vicious circle was established. By denying
blacks decent educational opportunities and good
jobs, the dominant race could use the blacks’ resul-
tant ignorance and poverty to justify the inferior facil-
ities offered them.
Southern blacks reacted to this deplorable situa-
tion in a variety of ways. Some sought redress in racial
pride and what would later be called black nationalism.
Some became so disaffected that they tried to revive the
African colonization movement. “Africa is our home,”
insisted Bishop Henry M. Turner, a huge, plainspoken
man who had served as an army chaplain during the
war and as a member of the Georgia legislature during
Reconstruction. Another militant, T. Thomas Fortune,
editor of the New YorkAgeand founder of the Afro-
American League (1887), called on blacks to demand
full civil rights, better schools, and fair wages and to
fight against discrimination of every sort. “Let us stand
up like men in our own organization,” he urged. “If
others use... violence to combat our peaceful argu-
ments, it is not for us to run away from violence.”
For a time, militancy and black separatism won
few adherents among southern blacks. For one thing,
life was better than it had been under slavery.
Segregation actually helped southern blacks who
became barbers, undertakers, restaurateurs, and shop-
keepers because whites were reluctant to supply such
services to blacks. Even when whites competed with
black businesses, the resentment caused by segrega-
tion led blacks to patronize establishments run by
people of their own race. According to the most con-
servative estimates, the living standard of the average
southern black more than doubled between 1865 and
- But this only made many southern whites more
angry and vindictive.
This helps explain the tactics of Booker T.
Washington, one of the most extraordinary
Americans of that generation. Washington had been
born a slave in Virginia in 1856. Laboriously he
obtained an education, supporting himself while a
student by working as a janitor. In 1881, with the
financial help of northern philanthropists, he
founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. His experi-
ences convinced Washington that blacks must lift
themselves up by their own bootstraps but that they
must also accommodate themselves to white preju-
dices. A persuasive speaker and a brilliant fund-
raiser, he soon developed a national reputation as a
“reasonable” champion of his race. (In 1891
Harvard awarded him an honorary degree.)
In 1895 Washington made a now-famous speech
to a mixed audience at the Cotton States International
Exposition in Atlanta. To the blacks he said, “Cast
down your bucket where you are,” by which he meant
stop fighting segregation and second-class citizenship
and concentrate on learning useful skills. “Dignify
and glorify common labor,” he urged. “Agitation of
questions of racial equality is the extremest folly.”
Progress up the social and economic ladder would
come not from “artificial forcing” but from self-
improvement. “There is as much dignity in tilling a
field as in writing a poem.”
Washington asked the whites of what he called
“our beloved South” to lend the blacks a hand in
their efforts to advance themselves. If you will do so,
he promised, you will be “surrounded by the most
patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people
that the world has seen.”
This Atlanta Compromise delighted white
Southerners and won Washington financial support
in every section of the country. He became one of
the most powerful men in the United States, con-
sulted by presidents, in close touch with business
and philanthropic leaders, and capable of influenc-
ing in countless unobtrusive ways the fate of mil-
lions of blacks.
Blacks responded to the compromise with mixed
feelings. Accepting Washington’s approach might
relieve them of many burdens and dangers. BeingBooker T. Washington in his office at Tuskegee Institute, 1900.
Washington chose a policy of accommodation. Washington did
not urge blacks to accept inferiority and racial slurs but to ignore
them. His own behavior was indeed subtle, even devious. In
public he minimized the importance of civil and political rights.
Behind the scenes he lobbied against restrictive measures,
marshaled large sums of money to fight test cases in the courts,
and worked hard in northern states to organize the black vote
and make sure that black political leaders got a share of the
spoils of office.