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CAST DOWN YOUR BUCKET - BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON 1895
Atlanta Compromise
It follows the full text transcript of
Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise
speech, delivered at Atlanta, Georgia — September 18, 1895.
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Mr. President and
Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and
Citizens: |
One-third of the
population of the South is of the Negro race. No
enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral
welfare of this section can disregard this
element of our population and reach the highest
success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and
Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my
race when I say that in no way have the value
and manhood of the American Negro been more
fittingly and generously recognized than by the
managers of this magnificent exposition at every
stage of its progress. It is a recognition that
will do more to cement the friendship of the two
races than any occurrence since the dawn of our
freedom.
Not only this, but
the opportunity here afforded will awaken among
us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant
and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the
first years of our new life we began at the top
instead of at the bottom; that a seat in
Congress or the state legislature was more
sought than real estate or industrial skill;
that the political convention or stump speaking
had more attractions than starting a dairy farm
or truck garden.
A ship lost at sea
for many days suddenly sighted a friendly
vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel
was seen a signal: "Water, water; we die of
thirst." The answer from the friendly vessel at
once came back: "Cast down your bucket where you
are." A second time the signal, "Water, water,
send us water!" ran up from the distressed
vessel, and was answered: "Cast down your bucket
where you are." And a third and fourth signal
for water was answered: "Cast down your bucket
where you are." The captain of the distressed
vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast
down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh,
sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon
River.
To those of my
race who depend on bettering their condition in
a foreign land or who underestimate the
importance of cultivating friendly relations
with the Southern white man, who is their
next-door neighbor, I would say: Cast down your
bucket where you are; cast it down in making
friends, in every manly way, of the people of
all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it
down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in
domestic service, and in the professions. And in
this connection it is well to bear in mind that
whatever other sins the South may be called to
bear, when it comes to business, pure and
simple, it is in the South that the Negro is
given a man's chance in the commercial world,
and in nothing is this exposition more eloquent
than in emphasizing this chance.
Our greatest
danger is that, in the great leap from slavery
to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the
masses of us are to live by the productions of
our hands and fail to keep in mind that we shall
prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and
glorify common labor, and put brains and skill
into the common occupations of life; shall
prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the
line between the superficial and the
substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and
the useful. No race can prosper till it learns
that there is as much dignity in tilling a field
as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of
life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor
should we permit our grievances to overshadow
our opportunities.
To those of the
white race who look to the incoming of those of
foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for
the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I
would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast
down your bucket where you are." Cast it down
among the 8 million Negroes whose habits you
know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in
days when to have proved treacherous meant the
ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket
among these people who have, without strikes and
labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your
forests, built your railroads and cities, and
brought forth treasures from the bowels of the
earth and helped make possible this magnificent
representation of the progress of the South.
Casting down your bucket among my people,
helping and encouraging them as you are doing on
these grounds, and, with education of head,
hand, and heart, you will find that they will
buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste
places in your fields, and run your factories.
While doing this,
you can be sure in the future, as in the past,
that you and your families will be surrounded by
the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and
unresentful people that the world has seen. As
we have proved our loyalty to you in the past,
in nursing your children, watching by the
sickbed of your mothers and fathers, and often
following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their
graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we
shall stand by you with a devotion that no
foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our
lives, if need be, in defense of yours;
interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil,
and religious life with yours in a way that
shall make the interests of both races one. 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.
There is no
defense or security for any of us except in the
highest intelligence and development of all. If
anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail
the fullest growth of the Negro, let these
efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging,
and making him the most useful and intelligent
citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a
thousand percent interest. These efforts will be
twice blessed — "blessing him that gives and him
that takes."
There is no
escape, through law of man or God, from the
inevitable:
The laws of
changeless justice bind Oppressor with
oppressed; And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.
Nearly 16 million
hands will aid you in pulling the load upward,
or they will pull against you the load downward.
We shall constitute one-third and more of the
ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third
its intelligence and progress; we shall
contribute one-third to the business and
industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall
prove a veritable body of death, stagnating,
depressing, retarding every effort to advance
the body politic.
Gentlemen of the
exposition, as we present to you our humble
effort at an exhibition of our progress, you
must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years
ago with ownership here and there in a few
quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from
miscellaneous sources), remember: the path that
has led from these to the invention and
production of agricultural implements, buggies,
steam engines, newspapers, books, statuary,
carving, paintings, the management of drugstores
and banks, has not been trodden without contact
with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in
what we exhibit as a result of our independent
efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our
part in this exhibition would fall far short of
your expectations but for the constant help that
has come to our educational life, not only from
the Southern states but especially from Northern
philanthropists who have made their gifts a
constant stream of blessing and encouragement.
The wisest among
my race understand that the agitation of
questions of social equality is the extremest
folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all
the privileges that will come to us must be the
result of severe and constant struggle rather
than of artificial forcing. No race that has
anything to contribute to the markets of the
world is long in any degree ostracized. It is
important and right that all privileges of the
law be ours, but it is vastly more important
that we be prepared for the exercise of those
privileges. 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.
In conclusion, may
I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given
us more hope and encouragement and drawn us so
near to you of the white race as this
opportunity offered by the exposition; and here
bending, as it were, over the altar that
represents the results of the struggles of your
race and mine, both starting practically
empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that,
in your effort to work out the great and
intricate problem which God has laid at the
doors of the South, you shall have at all times
the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only
let this be constantly in mind that, while from
representations in these buildings of the
product of field, of forest, of mine, of
factory, letters, and art, much good will
come — yet far above and beyond material benefits
will be that higher good, that let us pray God
will come, in a blotting out of sectional
differences and racial animosities and
suspicions, in a determination to administer
absolute justice, in a willing obedience among
all classes to the mandates of law. This,
coupled with our material prosperity, will bring
into our beloved South a new heaven and a new
earth.
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