Atlanta Compromise

The Atlanta Compromise was a proposal put forth in 1895 by prominent African American leader Booker T. Washington. His proposal called for Southern blacks to accept segregation and to temporarily refrain from campaigning for equal rights, including the right to vote. In return, he advocated that blacks would receive basic legal protections, access to property ownership, employment opportunities, and vocational and industrial education.

The proposal was met with opposition from other black leaders, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois, who rejected the compromise’s emphasis on accommodation and limited political ambition. Du Bois and others instead advocated for full civil rights and the immediate end of segregation. From 1903 until Washington’s death in 1915, the two figures engaged in an extended public debate over the direction of African American advancement.

The Compromise was the dominant policy pursued by black leaders in the South from 1895 to 1915. However, it did not end segregation, nor produce equal rights for Southern blacks. Those goals were not significantly advanced until the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Background

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, freed all slaves living in the Confederate States. The institution of slavery was abolished nationwide with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. During the Reconstruction Era (from about 1865 until 1877), the federal government enacted many progressive in the South. These measures aimed to eliminate legal segregation and extend civil and political rights to former slaves. Southern blacks gained the right to vote and became able to hold public office at local, state, and national levels.

Beginning around 1877, the progress made during the Reconstruction Era was reversed as white Southerners gained more political power at both the state and federal levels. Between 1877 and 1908, Southern states systematically implemented laws designed to disenfranchise black citizens and bar them from holding public office.

Washington was a witness to that period of history, as he was born into slavery in 1856 in West Virginia. After attending Hampton Institute for a few years, Washington became president of the newly formed Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in 1881. According to historian Louis R. Harlan, Washington concluded that "the Reconstruction experiment in racial democracy failed because it began at the wrong end, emphasizing political means and civil rights acts rather than economic means and self-determination." Hence, Washington's strategy for improving life for Southern blacks primarily involved developing the black community's economic infrastructure.

African American leader Frederick Douglass died in February 1895, leaving a power vacuum in the black community that Washington stepped into. One of Washington's first major acts after Douglass' death was the Atlanta Compromise speech. Until he died in 1915, Washington and his alliescollectively known as the "Tuskegee Machine"dominated the African American press, political appointments, and relations with white philanthropists.

The Compromise

Washington's 1895 speech

The Atlanta Compromise originated in a speech delivered by Washington to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. The exposition was conceived in early 1895, when Washington and white business leaders from Georgia presented to a committee of the US Congress, asking for support to host an exposition in Georgia. The white members of the delegation were impressed with Washington's address to the committee and invited him to speak at the exposition when it was held later that year.

The master of ceremonies of the Cotton Exposition was former governor of Georgia Rufus Bullock, who introduced Washington by saying: "We have with us today a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization." The address was delivered to a segregated audience of blacks and whites, and was delivered in less than ten minutes.

Washington summarized his proposal near the end of the address:

Upon the speech's conclusion, the whites in the audience gave Washington a standing ovation. Clark Howell, editor of the ''Atlanta Constitution'', stood on the stage and proclaimed the speech to be “the beginning of a moral revolution in America.” Washington was congratulated by many white leaders present in the audience, including former governor Bullock. The text of the speech was distributed to most major US newspapers via telegraph. A few days after the speech, Washington received a letter of congratulations from President Grover Cleveland.

Elements of the Compromise

The Atlanta Compromise was Washington's solution to what was then called " the Negro problem": a phrase used to refer to the dismal economic and social and conditions of blacks, and the tense relationship between black and whites in the post-Reconstruction South.

The essence of the Compromise was a bargain: blacks would remain peaceful, tolerate segregation, refrain from demanding equal rights, refrain from holding political office, avoid college education, and provide a dependable workforce for Southern industry and agriculture. In exchange, whites would offer job opportunities, permit blacks to own property and homes, build schools for children, and create vocational institutes to give blacks the skills needed in the Southern economy.

Washington's speech appealed to the white businessmen in the audience because it promised them a cooperative, peaceful, reliable workforce; particularly in the areas of industry, agriculture, business, and housekeeping.

Addressing blacks, Washington encouraged them to focus on manual labor, and accept it as their fate for the near future, claiming that "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 the top." Washington also urged Southern blacks to remain in their home states and avoid the temptation to move to Northern states, repeatedly emphasizing the phrase "Cast down your bucket where you are."

The Compromise perpetuated the racial segregation that was already enforced in Southern schools and universities. The Compromise also de-emphasized the construction of new universities for Southern blacks. Instead, it promoted the construction or expansion of vocational schools (such as Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute) to produce nurses, teamsters, farmers, housekeepers, factory workers, repairmen, teachers, cooks, and other tradespeople that would support Southern agriculture and industry.

The Compromise counted on white philanthropists to fund new schools for blacks. Washington's speech specifically applauded the Northern philanthropists who had provided funding for black schools during the Reconstruction era: "... 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 Atlanta Compromise rejected integration in transportation, education, recreation, or social life. It clarified that whites only had to associate with blacks when required for work or commerce. Washington employed a simile to describe his acceptance of segregation: "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."

Washington did not entirely reject civil rights and racial equality. Still, he viewed them as long-term results that would be obtained only after blacks had demonstrated their worth through loyal, dedicated work within the Southern economy.

Origin of the name

When Washington made his speech, the principles in his proposal were sometimes called "accommodationism." The phrase "Atlanta Compromise" was not coined until eight years after the address, by Du Bois in his 1903 essay "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others", which was published in his book '' The Souls of Black Folk''.

Reception by African American leaders

After Washington proposed the Atlanta Compromise in 1894, he emerged as the preeminent leader of the African American community. Many of Washington's associates supported the Compromise, including Robert Moton, who later would become the leader of the Tuskegee Institute upon Washington's death. However, other African American leaders disagreed with the Compromise, including members of the American Negro Academy, which in the late 1890s fought against segregation. The Academy raised objections to the 1896 Supreme Court case '' Plessy v. Ferguson'', which legalized segregation by endorsing the " separate but equal" doctrine.

Around 1900, additional leaders within the black community began voicing opposition to the Atlanta Compromise by challenging racist government policies and advocating for equality for blacks. Opponents included northern intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, then a professor at Atlanta University; William Calvin Chase; and William Monroe Trotter, a Boston activist who in 1901 founded the '' Boston Guardian'' newspaper as a platform for radical activism. Trotter lived in New England, and in 1899, he observed that conditions in the South were growing worse and that Southern-style racism was creeping into the Northern states.

In 1902 and 1903, black advocates for equal rights fought to gain a larger voice in the conventions of the National Afro-American Council, but they were marginalized because the conventions were dominated by Washington supporters (also known as Bookerites). In July 1903, Trotter orchestrated a confrontation with Washington in Boston, a stronghold of activism. This resulted in a minor melee with fistfights and the arrest of Trotter and others. The event generated headlines nationwide.

Criticisms from W. E. B. Du Bois

Harvard-educated W. E. B. Du Bois was born and raised in New England and was twelve years younger than Washington. Where Washington represented rural, Southern blacks, Du Bois represented urban, educated, Northern blacks. Northern blacks had relatively more freedom than those in the South, and were more willing to fight for equal rights. Some Northern blacks felt that the Atlanta Compromise was effectively imposed the on Southern blacks by white Southerners.

Although Du Bois initially supported the Atlanta Compromise, over time he came to strongly disagree with Washington's approach. The rift between the two men began to develop in 1898 when Washington resigned from an institute governed by a friend of Du Bois. In 1900, Du Bois proposed the creation of a national organization of black businessmen, but Washington quickly plagiarized the idea and created the National Negro Business League. In 1901, Du Bois included a negative assessment of the Atlanta Compromise in his review of Washington's autobiography ''Up From Slavery''.

In 1903 Du Bois harshly criticized the Atlanta Compromise in his influential book, '' The Souls of Black Folk'', which included the statement: "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission... isprogramme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races." The same year, Du Bois criticized the Atlanta Compromise's plan to build vocational job-training schools instead of universities, writing: " heobject of all true education is not to make men carpenters; it is to make carpenters men."

In 1904, Du Bois and Washingtoneach accompanied by a team of supporters met in New York in an attempt to defuse tensions between the two factions. The summit was not successful: although they agreed to create a "Committee of Twelve" to coordinate future efforts, the committee fell apart within a year. In early 1905, Du Bois wrote an article in '' The Voice of the Negro'' periodical, which asserted that Washington was effectively bribing the African American press to provide positive reporting on Washington's programs. Washington and his allies disputed Do Bois' allegations.

Historian Mark Bauerlein concluded that 1905 marked the end of any collaboration between the two leaders, writing: " rom Du Bois' perspectiveWashington controlled the black press, bought loyalty, planted spies, ostracized critics, and co-opted reform movements and let them die. His accommodation of whites had become too obsequious, but
more important, his black power had become oppressive."

In 1905, Trotter, Du Bois, and other full and equal rights advocates formed the Niagra Movement to channel their efforts. Their "Declaration of Principles" emphatically rejected the Atalanta Compromise, and urged African Americans to fight for civil rights. Text of the Niagra Movement's Declaration of Principles. Although the Niagra Movement dissolved after two years, it served as the NAACP's forerunner, formed in 1909 by Du Bois and others. Several of the co-founders of the NAACP were liberal whites who were beginning to realize that the Atlanta Compromise would not provide civil rights or full equality for African Americans. After founding the NAACP, the schism between Washington's Atlanta Compromise and Du Bois' advocacy for full equality became pronounced and public.

Aftermath and results

The Atlanta Compromise failed to achieve its long-term goals of ending segregation or providing equal rights for blacks. Black Southerners upheld their end of the bargain by tolerating segregation and by accepting prohibitions against voting or holding public office, but those sacrifices did not lead white Southerners to provide blacks with equal rights gradually.

After Washington introduced the Atlanta Compromise in his 1895 speech, Southern states continued to aggressively adopt Jim Crow laws which formalized segregation in nearly all walks of life. Southern states prevented blacks from voting through constitutional amendments and other laws, which raised barriers to voter registration. These obstacles included poll taxes, residency and record-keeping requirements, subjective literacy tests, and other devices.

Violence against blacks continued after the Atlanta Compromise. Over fifty blacks were lynched in most years until 1922, and lynchings continued into the 1940s. Race riots in dozens of cities spanned several decades, killing hundreds of blacks, including in Atlanta (1906), Illinois (1908), East St. Louis (1917), during the Red Summer (1919), and in Tulsa (1921). Coates characterizes the race riots as "the pogroms that greeted Booker T’s compromise." The 1906 massacre in Atlanta was notable because Washington's speech was presented there only eleven years earlier; Du Bois believed that the massacre was partially the result of the Atlanta Compromise.

In his 1895 speech, Washington urged Southern African Americans to remain in their home states and find prosperity by working within the local economy. However, starting around 1910, millions of African Americans began to move northward, many to major cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Washington D.C.
In 1917, black leaders from the Tuskegee Institute pleaded with Southern blacks to remain in the south, leading Du Bois to respond "any ... Negro leadership today that devotes ten times as much space n their reportto the advantages of living in the South as it gives to lynching and lawlessness is inexcusably blind."

After Washington died in 1915, his Tuskegee Machine collapsed, and organized support for the Atlanta Compromise faded. In the following decades, campaigns to end segregation and achieve equal rights gained momentum, finally achieving success during the civil rights movement with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

References

Footnotes

Citations

Sources

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* Title of this book is sometimes reported as ''Booker T. Washington''.

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* Includes full text of Washington's 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" speech.

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* Logan, Rayford Whittingham, ''The Betrayal of the Negro, from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson'', Da Capo Press, 1997, pp. 275–313.

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External links

"Atlanta Compromise"
Full text of Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise speech.

"Booker T. and W. E. B."
1969 poem by poet Dudley Randall about the conflict between Washington and Du Bos.

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1895 in Georgia (U.S. state)
1900s neologisms
African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement
African-American segregation in the United States
Booker T. Washington
Democratic backsliding in the United States
Electoral restrictions
Historically black universities and colleges in the United States
History of Atlanta
History of African-American civil rights
History of racial segregation in the United States
History of voting rights in the United States
History of the Southern United States
Jim Crow
Reconstruction Era
W. E. B. Du Bois
White supremacy in the United States