Beyond Emancipation: Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise
American Realities 2,2 "Beyond Emancipation: Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise"
(This outline is not a “substitute” for reading the chapter, but it may help you review the story and understand it better.)
Overview: The long ordeal of slavery came to an end in 1865 for four million African Americans. Suddenly the freedom they had longed for during two centuries of bondage was theirs. The world opened before them: they could freely visit loved ones, attend schools, or run for public office. Blacks soon realized, however, that chains other than slavery still held them. Penniless, they could not afford to buy farms; untrained, they could not move into better jobs. During the 1870s and 1880s, they lost many of the privileges they had gained when freed, including the right to vote. Booker T. Washington grew to maturity in years when blacks experienced both the exhilaration of freedom and the humiliation of segregation. He proved in his early life that an ex-slave could prosper by hard work. When in his later years he saw the cords of prejudice tightening around his people, he responded in the best way he knew, advocating self-help in the face of prejudice and segregation. When he delivered his famous Atlanta Exposition Address, advocating black progress through hard work, he drew deeply on his personal experience and his philosophy.
Outline:
1. Introduction: Atlanta Exposition, the fairgrounds, “Negro Building,” “Jim Crow” section of the auditorium, Rufus Brown Bullock, Charles A. Collier, Booker T. Washington, scattered applause among the whites, “of the progress they have made as freemen,” Mrs. Joseph Thompson.
2. Booker T. Washington’s in Slavery and Emancipation: property of James Borroughs, Virginia, Jane Ferguson, did not know who his father was, cook for the estate, log cabin with a dirt floor, slave’s clothes as a burden, “Mars Billy,” sentimental kinship between slave and owner, blacks’ desire for freedom, slave songs and freedom, visitor representing the U.S. government, Emancipation Proclamation, without chains, life would be glorious, plan for themselves, “deep down in their hearts,”“strange and peculiar attachment to ‘Old Marster’ and ‘Old Missus,” “whispered conversations” with their former masters, changing their names.
3. Growing up Free: Washington Ferguson, Malden-West Virginia, local salt furnaces and coal mines, yearned for an education, " getting into paradise,” Malden school, “a whole race trying to go to school,” houseboy, Mrs. Viola Ruffner, vision of civilized life, “a wild goose chase,” journey to Hampton Institute, sleeping outside the inn, Richmond, board sidewalk, a job on the docks, arrival at Hampton Institute, coeducational, a Union army barracks, working as a janitor, rigorous physical and intellectual labor, secondary school level, philanthropic northern educators, racial stereotypes, Miss Mary F. Mackie, Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, northern idealist, hard work, liberal intelligence, and moral rectitude, “Like a father,” commencement exercises (1875), a “lecture” on slave music, soloist John Jones.
4. The Challenge of Reconstruction: racial animosity, ending slavery as first step only, extensive program to assist blacks in achieving equality with whites, Freedman’s Bureau, encouraging blacks to vote and to seek public office, reforms fragile and incomplete, “forty acres and a mule,” political reform, Reconstruction, local control returned to southern whites, political exile, grandfather clauses and literacy tests, backward whites and the vote, teaching in Malden, build men and women of good character, racial tensions, "hand, head and heart," day school, night school, reading room, debating society, a program for Indians, “The Plucky Class,” hard work and self-help.
5. Tuskegee Institute: Tuskegee-Alabama, month traveling by mule, prospective students, studying the local people, sleeping on floors, needs for improvement, Latin and Greek versus agriculture or mechanics, old shanty, $60 organ, $2 buggy rides, importance of self-help, building a campus from an old plantation, “a slow and natural process of growth,” students to build the school, seeking donations, “order out of chaos,” “love of work for its own sake,” the brickyard, recently illegal to educate a black in Alabama, Tuskegee among the best-known African American colleges in the nation, reputation as orator.
6. Atlanta Exposition Address: first major trade fair in the South since the Civil War, theme of black progress and interracial cooperation, Washington feels as if he is "on his way to the gallows,” uncomfortable in the spotlight, “a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization,” the Speech, whites to look to blacks rather than to foreign immigrants for southern prosperity, “the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen,” injustice to blacks damage the whole society, “The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed,” blacks do not expect to achieve social equality, "there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem,” each had much to offer the other, seek the new industrial labor force among native blacks, “as separate as the fingers,”“Cast down your bucket where you are,” “sixteen million hands,” “sensed” his audience, captured the crowd.
7. The Aftermath: “The address was a revelation," Washington’s formula for interracial harmony, criticism and enduring segregation, Governor William C. Oates, "a white man’s country," Washington’s “imperturbably good nature,” perhaps too conciliatory, W. E. B . Du Bois, Niagara Movement, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “the lion’s mouth,” the mythology of the Old South, Gone with the Wind, “patient and faithful” slaves, reality of hardships racial prejudice, lynch mobs, working within the historical situation, encouraged blacks to live the fullest lives possible within the current barriers.
(This outline is not a “substitute” for reading the chapter, but it may help you review the story and understand it better.)
Overview: The long ordeal of slavery came to an end in 1865 for four million African Americans. Suddenly the freedom they had longed for during two centuries of bondage was theirs. The world opened before them: they could freely visit loved ones, attend schools, or run for public office. Blacks soon realized, however, that chains other than slavery still held them. Penniless, they could not afford to buy farms; untrained, they could not move into better jobs. During the 1870s and 1880s, they lost many of the privileges they had gained when freed, including the right to vote. Booker T. Washington grew to maturity in years when blacks experienced both the exhilaration of freedom and the humiliation of segregation. He proved in his early life that an ex-slave could prosper by hard work. When in his later years he saw the cords of prejudice tightening around his people, he responded in the best way he knew, advocating self-help in the face of prejudice and segregation. When he delivered his famous Atlanta Exposition Address, advocating black progress through hard work, he drew deeply on his personal experience and his philosophy.
Outline:
1. Introduction: Atlanta Exposition, the fairgrounds, “Negro Building,” “Jim Crow” section of the auditorium, Rufus Brown Bullock, Charles A. Collier, Booker T. Washington, scattered applause among the whites, “of the progress they have made as freemen,” Mrs. Joseph Thompson.
2. Booker T. Washington’s in Slavery and Emancipation: property of James Borroughs, Virginia, Jane Ferguson, did not know who his father was, cook for the estate, log cabin with a dirt floor, slave’s clothes as a burden, “Mars Billy,” sentimental kinship between slave and owner, blacks’ desire for freedom, slave songs and freedom, visitor representing the U.S. government, Emancipation Proclamation, without chains, life would be glorious, plan for themselves, “deep down in their hearts,”“strange and peculiar attachment to ‘Old Marster’ and ‘Old Missus,” “whispered conversations” with their former masters, changing their names.
3. Growing up Free: Washington Ferguson, Malden-West Virginia, local salt furnaces and coal mines, yearned for an education, " getting into paradise,” Malden school, “a whole race trying to go to school,” houseboy, Mrs. Viola Ruffner, vision of civilized life, “a wild goose chase,” journey to Hampton Institute, sleeping outside the inn, Richmond, board sidewalk, a job on the docks, arrival at Hampton Institute, coeducational, a Union army barracks, working as a janitor, rigorous physical and intellectual labor, secondary school level, philanthropic northern educators, racial stereotypes, Miss Mary F. Mackie, Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, northern idealist, hard work, liberal intelligence, and moral rectitude, “Like a father,” commencement exercises (1875), a “lecture” on slave music, soloist John Jones.
4. The Challenge of Reconstruction: racial animosity, ending slavery as first step only, extensive program to assist blacks in achieving equality with whites, Freedman’s Bureau, encouraging blacks to vote and to seek public office, reforms fragile and incomplete, “forty acres and a mule,” political reform, Reconstruction, local control returned to southern whites, political exile, grandfather clauses and literacy tests, backward whites and the vote, teaching in Malden, build men and women of good character, racial tensions, "hand, head and heart," day school, night school, reading room, debating society, a program for Indians, “The Plucky Class,” hard work and self-help.
5. Tuskegee Institute: Tuskegee-Alabama, month traveling by mule, prospective students, studying the local people, sleeping on floors, needs for improvement, Latin and Greek versus agriculture or mechanics, old shanty, $60 organ, $2 buggy rides, importance of self-help, building a campus from an old plantation, “a slow and natural process of growth,” students to build the school, seeking donations, “order out of chaos,” “love of work for its own sake,” the brickyard, recently illegal to educate a black in Alabama, Tuskegee among the best-known African American colleges in the nation, reputation as orator.
6. Atlanta Exposition Address: first major trade fair in the South since the Civil War, theme of black progress and interracial cooperation, Washington feels as if he is "on his way to the gallows,” uncomfortable in the spotlight, “a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization,” the Speech, whites to look to blacks rather than to foreign immigrants for southern prosperity, “the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen,” injustice to blacks damage the whole society, “The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed,” blacks do not expect to achieve social equality, "there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem,” each had much to offer the other, seek the new industrial labor force among native blacks, “as separate as the fingers,”“Cast down your bucket where you are,” “sixteen million hands,” “sensed” his audience, captured the crowd.
7. The Aftermath: “The address was a revelation," Washington’s formula for interracial harmony, criticism and enduring segregation, Governor William C. Oates, "a white man’s country," Washington’s “imperturbably good nature,” perhaps too conciliatory, W. E. B . Du Bois, Niagara Movement, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “the lion’s mouth,” the mythology of the Old South, Gone with the Wind, “patient and faithful” slaves, reality of hardships racial prejudice, lynch mobs, working within the historical situation, encouraged blacks to live the fullest lives possible within the current barriers.