The Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition Address Speech, given by Booker T. Washington in 1895 was a diplomatic request for recessions for blacks to obtain education, equal treatment regarding due process of law and subsequently the means for self-sustainment. This call was also communicated to blacks to join at the national level, the world of industry. Simultaneously this served as a message to allow blacks to join this industry. It was further requested, that instead of America looking to other countries to provide work to migrant workers that blacks as the current hosts of the nation be allowed to assimilate further into the South and North, where work for blacks were scarce due to the growing industrial complex which was developing in that particular region of the country.
Washington’s goal was simply to give blacks the chance to assume more of a role in the growing industrial world, while not necessarily via the arts and sciences. A more prudent angle that would benefit the economic and agricultural development of the United States was also relayed. In open praise for the white population, Washington decided that it would be more appropriate to appeal to the pride and sensibilities of both whites and blacks while expressing the loyalty and pride that blacks in America possessed, and warned that keeping blacks from becoming an asset in national development would result in societal problems in the future. Adding to the potential squalor that blacks under this new type of oppression would become a detriment, and not an asset came as a persuasive argument for the advancement of blacks, and the advent of creating together a tolerable society rather than the impending strife that whites would ultimately give way to a potential civil uprising.
“Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward,
or they will pull, against you, the load downward…or we shall prove a
veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to
advance the body politic”
(Brotz, pp. 358)
Washington’s plead of “casting down of buckets where you are” was the strongest message of the Atlanta Exposition speech. The steps forward that Washington proposed were again a diplomatic means of requesting the opportunity for blacks to add value to the country in which they belonged. The adage of “any progress is still progress” resounds multiple times in Washington’s compromise, and while not seeking immediate assimilation it is assumed that this speech was designed to offer blacks at the lowest bidder. This appears to be the weakness of his speech. While Washington sought “any progress is still progress”, minute details suggest that there was a bit of toothlessness in the method that his speech was given.
I believe that this affects blacks even to modern times. Instead of meek pleading for the lowest possible compromise to appease his listeners and to meet his ends, Washington would have been more apt to ask for more than the promise of one day, a nonspecific time that blacks would be able to advance in the world in an equal fashion. Today, there is still meek pleading. Not enough is asked of the world for opportunity in exchange for the potential of blacks to earn and achieve what would only benefit the national economy and well-being of America as a whole. It is only a recent facet of American history that Affirmative Action was created to provide opportunity. But it seems that more vocal means of asking for equality (namely in the age of Black Nationalism), that after the Civil Rights movement, more grassroots and revolutionary figures were seen as threats and dispatched, and organizations quelled or fragmented into perpetual powerlessness.
Washington’s goal was simply to give blacks the chance to assume more of a role in the growing industrial world, while not necessarily via the arts and sciences. A more prudent angle that would benefit the economic and agricultural development of the United States was also relayed. In open praise for the white population, Washington decided that it would be more appropriate to appeal to the pride and sensibilities of both whites and blacks while expressing the loyalty and pride that blacks in America possessed, and warned that keeping blacks from becoming an asset in national development would result in societal problems in the future. Adding to the potential squalor that blacks under this new type of oppression would become a detriment, and not an asset came as a persuasive argument for the advancement of blacks, and the advent of creating together a tolerable society rather than the impending strife that whites would ultimately give way to a potential civil uprising.
“Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward,
or they will pull, against you, the load downward…or we shall prove a
veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to
advance the body politic”
(Brotz, pp. 358)
Washington’s plead of “casting down of buckets where you are” was the strongest message of the Atlanta Exposition speech. The steps forward that Washington proposed were again a diplomatic means of requesting the opportunity for blacks to add value to the country in which they belonged. The adage of “any progress is still progress” resounds multiple times in Washington’s compromise, and while not seeking immediate assimilation it is assumed that this speech was designed to offer blacks at the lowest bidder. This appears to be the weakness of his speech. While Washington sought “any progress is still progress”, minute details suggest that there was a bit of toothlessness in the method that his speech was given.
I believe that this affects blacks even to modern times. Instead of meek pleading for the lowest possible compromise to appease his listeners and to meet his ends, Washington would have been more apt to ask for more than the promise of one day, a nonspecific time that blacks would be able to advance in the world in an equal fashion. Today, there is still meek pleading. Not enough is asked of the world for opportunity in exchange for the potential of blacks to earn and achieve what would only benefit the national economy and well-being of America as a whole. It is only a recent facet of American history that Affirmative Action was created to provide opportunity. But it seems that more vocal means of asking for equality (namely in the age of Black Nationalism), that after the Civil Rights movement, more grassroots and revolutionary figures were seen as threats and dispatched, and organizations quelled or fragmented into perpetual powerlessness.