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Document A: Booker T. Washington (Modified)
This is an excerpt from a speech Booker T. Washington delivered in 1895 at the
opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. The
exposition promoted the American South and touted its agricultural and technological
achievements. Almost 800,000 visitors attended from around the world, and the
invitation to speak at its opening was a great honor. Washington’s speech was widely
applauded at the time and helped to make him the most powerful African American
leader in the United States. His critics would later call his address the “Atlanta
Compromise” speech because he appealed, in part, to white Southerners who were
oppressing African Americans in the Jim Crow Era.
To those of my race who want to move to a foreign land or who underestimate the
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importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their
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next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”cast it down
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in making friends of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.
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Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the
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professions. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we
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may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands,
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and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper if we learn to dignify and glorify common
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labor. . . . No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field
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as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor
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should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.
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To those of the white race who look to immigrants for the prosperity of the South, were I
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permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, Cast down your bucket where you
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are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know. . . . Cast
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down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled
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your fields, cleared your forests, and built your railroads and cities. . . . While doing this,
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you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be
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surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the
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world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your
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children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them
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with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall
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stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our
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lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and
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religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all
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things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand
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in all things essential to mutual progress.
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The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality
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is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will
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come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial
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forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any
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degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is
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vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The
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opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the
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opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.
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Source: Excerpt from Booker T. Washingtons Atlanta Address, 1895.
Vocabulary
grievances: complaints of unfair treatment or injustice
agitation: concern
ostracized: excluded, ignored
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Document B: W.E.B. Du Bois (Modified)
The most influential critique of Booker T. Washington’s ideas came in 1903 when
W.E.B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk. The following is an excerpt from the
book.
Mr. Washington asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things
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First, political power; Second, insistence on civil rights; Third, higher education of Negro
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youth—and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of
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wealth, and the conciliation of the South. . . . What has been the return? . . .
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1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
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2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
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3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
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These movements are not . . . direct results of Mr. Washington’s teachings; but his
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propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. Is it
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possible . . . that [African Americans] can make economic progress if they are deprived
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of political rights and allowed only the most meager chance for developing their
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exceptional men? . . . [The] answer. . . is an emphatic No. . . .
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So far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, . . . does not value the privilege and
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duty of voting, . . . and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,
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we must firmly oppose them. . . . We must strive for the rights . . . which the sons of the
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Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are
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created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
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that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
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Source: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903).
Vocabulary
conciliation: appeasement, an act to keep peace
disfranchisement: being kept from the right to vote
fain: gladly
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Guiding Questions: Washington and Du Bois
Document A: Booker T. Washington
1. (Close reading) Read lines 1-5. What is Washington encouraging African
Americans to do when he tells them to “cast down their bucket” in making
friends?
2. (Close reading) Read lines 7-13. What sort of work is Washington encouraging
African Americans to do? And why?
3. (Close reading) Read lines 15-30. What is Washington encouraging white
Southerners to do? And why?
4. (Close reading, corroboration) Louis Harlan, a historian who wrote extensively
about Booker T. Washington’s life and career, has argued that Washington was
willing to ignore evils of racial segregation in the South if it brought financial and
professional gains to African Americans. What passages from lines 29-39 of this
speech could be used to support Harlan’s conclusion? (Cite the line numbers of
specific sentences or passages.)
5. (Close reading, corroboration) Raymond Smock, a historian who wrote a book
about Washington’s career in 2009, has argued that Washington was willing to
appease white Southerners’ demands for racial inequality in exchange for their
support for his plans. What passages from this speech could be used to support
Smock’s conclusion? (Cite the line numbers of specific sentences or passages.)
6. (Contextualization) Given the context of the time, why might Washington have
chosen to look the other way on segregation and to appease white Southerners?
Questions 7-8
Historian Louis Harlan, who has been highly critical of Washington’s approach to civil
rights, acknowledges that Washington privately financed lawsuits that challenged Jim
Crow laws.
7. (Contextualization) Why might Washington have fought inequality privately
instead of openly calling for an end to legal discrimination?
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8. Does the fact that he chose to fight Jim Crow laws privately change your
understanding of Washington’s philosophy?
Document B: W.E.B. Du Bois
1. (Close reading) Read lines 1-9. Based on this passage, what is Du Bois’s main
critique of Washington’s approach to civil rights and education?
2. (Close reading) Read lines 12-15. What is Du Bois saying about Washington’s
emphasis on pursuing economic advancement for African Americans before
pushing for political or social equality?
3. (Contextualization) How might have Du Bois’s background and experiences
influenced his perspective on Washington’s philosophy?
4. (Close reading, corroboration) Du Bois advocated a different approach to
education for African Americans than did Washington. Where does this
document provide evidence of these differences? (Cite relevant line numbers.)
Questions 5-6
(Contextualization) Du Bois wrote a letter to Washington after the Atlanta speech in
1895, saying “Let me congratulate you heartily upon your phenomenal success at
Atlanta—it was a word fitly spoken.”
5. How do Du Bois’s sentiments in the letter differ from what he wrote in The Souls
of Black Folk eight years later?
6. (Contextualization) What might explain the differences between what he wrote in
this letter and what he wrote in The Souls of Black Folk?