Booker T. Washington - Politics and The Atlanta Compromise

Politics and The Atlanta Compromise

Washington's 1895 Atlanta Exhibition address was viewed as a "revolutionary moment" by both African-Americans and whites across the country. Then W. E. B. Du Bois supported him, but they grew apart as Du Bois sought more action to remedy disenfranchisement and lower education. After their falling out, Du Bois and his supporters referred to Washington's speech as the "Atlanta Compromise" to express their criticism that Washington was too accommodating to white interests.

Washington advocated a "go slow" approach. The effect was that many youths in the South had to accept sacrifices of potential political power, civil rights and higher education. His belief was that African-Americans should "concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South." Washington valued the "industrial" education, as it provided critical skills for the jobs then available to the majority of African-Americans at the time, as most lived in the South, which was overwhelmingly rural and agricultural. He thought these skills that would lay the foundation for the creation of stability that the African-American community required in order to move forward. He believed that in the long term "blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens." His approach advocated for an initial step toward equal rights, rather than full equality under the law. It would be this step that would provide the economic power to back up their demands for equality in the future. This action, over time, would provide the proof to a deeply prejudiced white America that they were not in fact "'naturally' stupid and incompetent."

This stance was contrary to what many blacks from the North envisioned. Du Bois wanted blacks to have the same "classical" liberal arts education as whites did, along with voting rights and civic equality. He believed that an elite he called the Talented Tenth would advance to lead the race to a wider variety of occupations. The source of division between Du Bois and Washington was generated by the differences in how African Americans were treated in the North versus the South. Many in the North felt that they were being 'led', and authoritatively spoken for, by a Southern accommodationist imposed on them primarily by Southern whites." Furthermore, historian Clarence E. Walker said, "Free black people were 'matter out of place'. Their emancipation was an affront to southern white freedom. Booker T. Washington did not understand that his program was perceived as subversive of a natural order in which black people were to remain forever subordinate or unfree." Both men sought to define the best means to improve the conditions of the post-Civil War African-American community through education.

Blacks were solidly Republican in this period. Southern states disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites from 1890–1908 through constitutional amendments and statutes that created barriers to voter registration, and voting such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Southern white Democrats regained power in the state legislatures of the former Confederacy and passed laws establishing racial segregation and other Jim Crow laws. More blacks continued to vote in border and Northern states.

Washington worked and socialized with many white politicians and industry leaders. Much of his expertise was his ability to persuade wealthy whites to donate money to black causes. He argued that the surest way for blacks to gain equal social rights was to demonstrate "industry, thrift, intelligence and property." This was the key to improved conditions for African Americans in the United States. Because they had only recently been emancipated, he believed they could not expect too much at once. Washington said, "I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

Along with Du Bois, he partly organized the "Negro exhibition" at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where photos, taken by his friend Frances Benjamin Johnston, of Hampton Institute's black students were displayed. The exhibition expressed African Americans' positive contributions to American society.

Washington privately contributed substantial funds for legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, such as the case of Giles v. Harris, which went before the United States Supreme Court in 1903.