Atlanta Compromise

 

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Classic statement on race relations by Booker T. Washington, made in a speech at the Atlanta Exposition (1895). He asserted that vocational education, which gave blacks a chance for economic security, was more valuable than social equality or political office. Many African Americans feared that such a limited goal would doom them to indefinite subservience to whites; that fear led to the Niagara Movement and later to the founding of the NAACP.

The Atlanta Compromise was an address by African-American leader Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. Given to a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition (later the site of Piedmont Park) in Atlanta, Georgia, the speech has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history,^[1] because it forever changed hiring practices.^{[citation needed]}

Washington began with a call to the African-American race, which comprised one third of the Southern population, to join the world of work. He declared that the South was where an African-American was given his or her chance, as opposed to the North, and especially in the worlds of commerce and industry. He then addressed the White audience, telling them rather than rely on the immigrant population arriving at the rate of a million souls a year, they should hire some of the eight million African-Americans. He praised their loyalty, fidelity, and love in service to the white population, but warned that they could be a great burden on society if oppression continued, stating outright that the progress of the south was inherently tied to the treatment of African-Americans and their liberties.

He addressed the inequality between commercial legality and social acceptance, proclaiming that "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."

References

1. ^ Atlanta Compromise Speech. New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.

• Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech. History Matters. George Mason University. Retrieved on 2006-01-30.

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