HOME PRESIDENT
THE US CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE CORNER
HOME PRESIDENT
THE US CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE CORNER
Booker T. Washington
“Speech to the
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 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
attraction than starting a dairy farm or a stockyard.
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!" went 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
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, making friends in every manly
way of the people of all races by whom you 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.
"Cast
down your bucket where you are!"
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. Casting down your bucket among my
people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to
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 defense 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 defense 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 millions of 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, carvings, 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 extremist 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 results of 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 law.
This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.
Booker
T. Washington
Delivered
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