Compliments of Advantage International
"We make it magic ... We make it PaperLess!"

		The Opening of the Atlanta Exposition
			 Booker T. Washington

Delivered at the Cotton States and International Exposition
Atlanta, Georgia  September 18, 1895

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
have 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 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, water; send us
water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast
down your bucket where you are."  And 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 we are surrounded.  Cast it down in
agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in
the professions.  And in this connection it is well to bear in
mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear,
when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South
that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world,
and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in
emphasizing this chance.

Our greatest danger is that, in the great leap from slavery to
freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live
by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we
shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify
common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations
of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line
between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental
gewgaws of life and the useful.  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 at the top.  Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow
our opportunities.

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 say to my own
race, "Cast down your bucket where you are."  Cast it down among
the eight million 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 make possible this magnificent representation of the
progress of the South.  Casting down your bucket among my people,
helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds,
and, with education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that
they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in
your fields, and run your factories.

While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the
past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most
patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the
world has seen.  As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past,
in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers
and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to
their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand
by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to
lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours; interlacing
our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours
in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.  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.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in the
highest intelligence and development of all.  If anywhere there
are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro,
let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and
making him the most useful and intelligent citizen.  Effort or
means so invested will pay a thousand percent interest.  These
efforts will be twice blessed -- "blessing him that gives and him
that takes."

There is no escape through law of man or God from the
inevitable:

The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.

Nearly sixteen million hands will aid you in pulling the load
upward, or they will pull against you the load downward.  We shall
constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the
South, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall
contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of
the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating,
depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble
effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect
overmuch.  Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there
in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from
miscellaneous sources), remember:  the path that has led from
these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements,
buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving,
paintings, the management of drug stores and banks, has not been
trodden without contact with thorns and thistles.  While we take
pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts,
we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition
would fall far short of your expectations but for 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 wisest among my race understand that the agitation of
questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that
progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to
us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than
of artificial forcing.  No race that has anything to contribute to
the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.  It is
important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it
is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of
these privileges.  The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory
just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a
dollar in an opera house.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has
given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you
of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition;
and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the
struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically
empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that, in your effort to
work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the
doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient,
sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind
that, while from representations in these buildings of the product
of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much
good will come -- yet far above and beyond material benefits will
be that higher good, that let us pray God will come, in a blotting
out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions,
in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing
obedience among all classes to the mandates of the law.  This,
coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved
South a new heaven and a new earth.


