Born a slave in 1865, on a plantation near Hales Ford, Virginia, Booker Taliaferro

Washington at age twenty-five he became the founder and first principal of the Tuskegee

Normal and Industrial Institute in the heart of Alabamas Black Belt.1 His mother was a

servant in a white planters home and his biological father was a white man, of whom he

had no impression.

Educated at Hampton Institute, Washington was a popular and powerful leader. In

the eyes of white America, he was seen as the most influential spokesman for African

Americans from 1895 until his death in 1915. He was a skilled at politics and was also a

confidential advisor to presidents. During this time he received some of the most effusive

praise ever given a living American and also some of the most extreme denunciations. 2

Washington symbolized the strengths and weaknesses with on the Afro-American

community at the turn of the century. As historian Louis R. Harlan observed, Washington

was not an intellectual, but a man of action. He cared little for ideas as power was his

game; and he used ideas simply as instruments to gain power. In the worsening

conditions of the segregated South in the 1880s, Washington according to Marable

possessed the ability not only to appeal to blacks but simultaneously to affluent whites.

This was observed by the audience gathered for the opening of the 1895 Atlanta Cotton

States and International Exposition. 3However, Washingtons address at that meeting

coined the Atlanta Compromise by W.E. B. DuBois would later spark much debate not

only among blacks but throughout the United States of America. Therefore this essay will

1
Manning, Marable. W.E.B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1986) p. 41
2
Hugh Hawkins, Booker T. Washington and his critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership (Boston: D. C.
Heath and Company, 1962) p. v
3
Manning, Marable. W.E.B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1986) p. 41
attempt to discuss Booker T. Washington, as to whether his private papers reveal a picture

of the man and his activities is at variance with the stereotype of him as an Uncle Tom.

The Atlanta Compromise on September 18, 1895, catapulted Booker T.

Washington from obscurity to prominence. It was one of the most effective pieces of

political oratory in the history of the United States. The language was simple, the words

pictures, understandable by all and the gestures unforgettable by all. 4 According to

DuBois, it startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many

decades of bitter complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested

and won the admiration of the North, had after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced

if its did not the blacks themselves.5

In the Atlanta address in 1895, the year the old militant leader Frederick Douglass

died, Washington declared, "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. Put down your

buckets where they are, make peace and common cause with your white neighbor, seek a

white patron, but also improve yourself slowly through education and property, through

"severe and constant struggle rather than . . . artificial forcing."'6

Work, suggests that the Atlanta address was on the one hand a plea to the Negro to

let down his bucket where he was into the opportunities of the South. It was urged that no

place in the world afforded greater opportunities for his progress than the place in which

4
Hugh Hawkins, Booker T. Washington and his critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership (Boston: D. C.
Heath and Company, 1962) p. 21
5
Hugh Hawkins, Booker T. Washington and his critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership (Boston: D. C.
Heath and Company, 1962) p.33
6
Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington in Biographical Perspective The American Historical Review Vol.
75 No. 6 (Oct, 1970) p. 1582
he was living. The Atlanta address was also a plea for the Negroes to have more faith in

the white people among whom they were living.7

He also observes that the importance of this address was that it formulated a

program for whites and blacks to work each for their own advantage, for their mutual

interests and for the prosperity of the South. It was not a new doctrine or the advocacy of

something that had not been tried. What Booker T. Washington did however, was to point

out that what was needed was not some untried method of dealing with the race problem;

but rather the developing and extending of the things which were already being done.8

Washington was more than convinced that if things go as he expected, a new heaven and

new earth would emerge in the South where racial animosities and suspicions were

cleared completely, absolute justice was administered to all, and economic prosperity was

achieved.9

This Atlanta Compromise speech according to DuBois, was interpreted by the

South in many ways; the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for

civil and political equality and the conservatives, as a generously conceived working

basis for mutual understanding. 10As a result, Washington became famous, almost

overnight. Washingtons address was trumpeted without restraint by southern white

newspapers. Some newspapers said that it marks distinctly a turning point in the

progress of the Negro race; whilst others contended that it was the beginning of a moral

revolution in America. Booker T. Washington was even termed, the negro Moses and

7
Monroe Work, Booker T. Washington, a Pioneer Journal of Social Forces, Vol. 3 No.2 (Jan, 1925) p.312
8
Monroe Work, Booker T. Washington, a Pioneer Journal of Social Forces, Vol. 3 No.2 (Jan, 1925) p.312
9
Zhang Jugo, W.E.B. DuBois, The Quest for the Abolition of the Color Line (New York: Routledge, 2001)
p.50
10
Hugh Hawkins, Booker T. Washington and his critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership (Boston: D. C.
Heath and Company, 1962) p.33
Heaven appointed Herald. President Grover Cleveland also sent him a letter to express

thanks for making the address.11

However, Logan argues that Washington in his speech had unmistakably accepted

a subordinate position for Southern Negroes, a position which was far different from the

unequivocal standard for equal citizenship advanced by Fredrick Douglas in 1889.

Likewise Marable states that the general impression Washington projected to the white

South was the Negros subservience to Jim Crow, lynching and political terror.12

On the other hand, Somwell et al argues that there was good reason for Booker T.

Washington to be apprehensive. For a black man to be invited to address the

distinguished audience at the Exposition was itself controversial. The South was a

tinderbox of raw emotions over racial issues and more than a hundred blacks a year were

being lynched.13According to Norrel, during the 1890s Southern newspapers made great

fun of African Americans in courts, demonstrating blacks alleged criminality while

providing great hilarity to readers.14 In addition, Voting rights, and even basic personal

security against violence that Southern blacks once enjoyed after the Civil War, were now

eroding throughout the South. The right to a fair trial became a mockery for blacks, and

the shadow of the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist night riders fell over black

communities across the South.15

Therefore in this atmosphere, what could Washington say to this audience of

white Southerners, to many of whom, he knew, had come only to see him make a fool of
11
Zhang Jugo, W.E.B. DuBois, The Quest for the Abolition of the Color Line (New York: Routledge, 2001)
p.50
12
Manning, Marable. W.E.B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1986) p.
43
13
Somwell et al, Up from Slavery <http://www.lfpl.org/western/htms/washing2.htm>
14
Robert Norrell, Booker T. Washington: Understanding the Wizard of Tuskegee The Journal of Blacks in
Higher Education, No. 42 (Winter 2003-2004) p. 97
15
Somwell et al, Up from Slavery <http://www.lfpl.org/western/htms/washing2.htm>
himself; and at the same time be true to the blacks in the audience who were full of pride

that someone of their race was for the first time being given the honor of addressing an

audience including dignitaries, such as the governor of Georgia. By one sentence,"

Washington said later, "I could have blasted, in a large degree, the success of the

Exposition;" but, one careless remark could have blasted any hopes of racial peace and

progress.16

Washington believed that Industrial Education was the solution to the Negro

problem. Consequently they were mired in extreme poverty and kept near the bottom of

the economic leader. Therefore it was imperative to teach them ways to make a living and

help them to their feet through industrial education. The Tuskegee Industrial Institute

founded in Alabama 1881 by Washington was the instrument for the implementation of

his program. To Washington race prejudice would completely evaporate when African

Americans showed social value and had such marks of economic success as farms,

houses, stores and dollars. 17

The development of Tuskegee Institute met the objections of the Negroes with

regard to labor in that they saw it in a new light. This development met the objections of

the North in that the people there saw that the Negro was being trained to take his place

as a man and a citizen. According to Work, when Booker T. Washington died, Tuskegee

Institute was carrying on more than twenty-five different extension activities designed to

improve the general welfare of the Negroes in agriculture and in education. 18However,

Washingtons ideas did not go unchallenged. Broderick argues that to educated Negroes,

16
Somwell et al, Up from Slavery <http://www.lfpl.org/western/htms/washing2.htm>
17
Zhang Jugo, W.E.B. DuBois, The Quest for the Abolition of the Color Line (New York: Routledge, 2001)
p.53
18
Monroe Work, Booker T. Washington, a Pioneer Journal of Social Forces, Vol. 3 No.2 (Jan, 1925) p.311
particularly those who lived in cities outside the South, the traditionally servile position

of Negroes was abhorrent.

Although Du Bois assessment of the black masses at that time was not very

different from that of Booker T. Washington, who characterized many of them as sunk

into "listless indifference, or shiftlessness, or reckless bravado; Dubois grew increasingly

impatient with Washingtons approach to solve the Negro problem, since the dawn of the

20th century. To DuBois, Washingtons course of action was self contradictory. He asked

African-Americans to strive to become artisans, business-men and property owners, but it

was utterly impossible for them to defend their rights without the right to vote. Dubois

differences towards Washington were publicized when Dubois published The Souls of

Black Folk. 19

W.E. B. DuBois believed in the Talented Tenth. It singled out a select minority,

enriched it with the finest education and then bade it lead the masses. The training of the

Talented Tenth was a means to an end. Dubois claimed that the Negro race would be

saved by its exceptional men, trained to the knowledge of the world and mans relation to

it. He also contends that Washingtons appeal to moderation, and the publicly postponed

attainment of political , association with Northern white philanthropists such as Andrew

Carnegie and acceptance of the system of segregation made many view him as an Uncle

Tom and suggest that he had made a compromise.20

However, W.E.B. DuBois differed radically from Washington. He was born in

Great Barrington, Massachusetts. His family had long been free ad he grew up in an

environment containing little prejudice. According to Calista, DuBois was nonetheless an

19
Zhang Jugo, W.E.B. DuBois, The Quest for the Abolition of the Color Line (New York: Routledge, 2001)
p.58
20
Hugh Hawkins, Booker T. Washington and his critics: The Problem of Negro Leadership (Boston: D. C.
Heath and Company, 1962) pp.46-47
outsider to the mass of Negroes. He learned of the institution of slavery through books

and perhaps understood abstractly what kind of toll it took on the Negro personality. No

one need tell Washington of its dehumanizing effects; for he lived with it before and after

DuBois even held the masses of Negroes in contempt.21

Washington

21
Donald Calista, Booker T. Washington: Another Look The Journal of Negro History Vol.40 No. 4 (Oct,
1969) p.248