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Who is Booker T. Washington?

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Booker T. Washington: Founder of Tuskegee University & Champion for Civil Rights | Biography

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Read this excerpt from Booker T. Washington's 1901 autobiography, "Up From Slavery"

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Read this excerpt from Booker T. Washington's 1903 "Industrial Education for the Negro"

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Listen to Booker T. Washington's 1908 Speech, "The Atlanta Compromise"

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In this, the only known sound recording made by Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the African American leader and educator, reads an excerpt of the famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech that he delivered at the Atlanta Exposition on September 18, 1895. The recording was made on December 5, 1908, for private purposes and was made available commercially by Washington's son in 1920.

Transcript

Booker T. Washington: Mr. President and gentlemen of the board of directors and citizens, one-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success.

I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way has the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom. Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress.

Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or a truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water. We die of thirst."

The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are."

A second time the signal, "Water, send us water," ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are."

A third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are."

The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction cast down his bucket and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.

To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, "Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom you are surrounded."

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I have said to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped to make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South."

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" Speech

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In this, the only known sound recording made by Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the African American leader and educator, reads an excerpt of the famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech that he delivered at the Atlanta Exposition on September 18, 1895. The recording was made on December 5, 1908, for private purposes and was made available commercially by Washington's son in 1920.

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Who is Harriet Beecher Stowe?

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Read excerpts from the autobiography of the man who inspired Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin

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In The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in support of her characterization of Tom as a Christian hero, Stowe quotes several passages from Josiah Henson's 1849 narrative of his enslavement and escape. In 1858 she wrote a preface to Henson's revised and expanded autobiography, Father Henson's Story of His Own Life.

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An 1852 Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin in "Fraser's Magazine"

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An 1852 Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin in "Fraser's Magazine"

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An 1852 review of *Uncle Tom’s Cabin* in *Fraser’s Magazine*. | DPLA

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The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.