On this date in history in 1895, leading black educator Booker T. Washington delivered an address on the Atlanta Compromise. This agreement, struck by black leaders and Southern white leaders, called for blacks to work meekly and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education and due process in law. Blacks would not agitate for equality, integration, or justice, and Northern whites would fund black educational charities. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Institute, asserted that vocational education, which gave blacks an opportunity for economic security, was more valuable to them than social advantages or political office. In one sentence during his speech he summarized his concept of race relations appropriate for the times; “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.” While Northern and Southern white leaders greeted Washington’s speech enthusiastically, it disturbed black intellectuals who feared that Washingtons philosophy would doom Blacks to indefinite subservience to whites. That apprehension led to the creation of the Niagara Movement (see previous post on Mary Burnett Talbert) and later to the founding of the NAACP. After Washingtons death in 1915, supporters of the Atlanta compromise gradually shifted their support to civil rights activism, until the modern civil rights movement began in the 1950s.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 16:06:48 +0000
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