What was atlanta compromise

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Praising the South for some of the opportunities it had given Blacks since emancipation, Washington asked whites to trust Blacks and provide them with opportunities so that both races could advance in industry and agriculture.

This shared responsibility came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise. The speech was greeted by thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Due partially to his conditional acceptance of racial subordination, Washington served as an advisor to U.

Washington was able to help Roosevelt and Taft select Black candidates for nominal, traditionally Black political positions. Washington also advised rich industrialists on how best to direct their money to support Black education in the South and, in so doing, largely controlled the funding of most Black southern schools. But Washington had his critics, none more aggressive than another leading Black educator and scholar of his day— W. Du Bois. In he accepted an appointment to the faculty of Atlanta University later Clark Atlanta University and moved to Atlanta.

Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission. Du Bois believed that Blacks should launch legal and scholarly attacks on racism and discrimination without hesitation, and he called for education of the most talented Blacks to lead this struggle. Yet there was another side to Washington. Although outwardly conciliatory, he secretly financed and encouraged lawsuits to block attempts to disfranchise and segregate African Americans. Since his death in , historians have discovered voluminous private correspondence that shows that Washington's apparent conservatism was only part of his strategy for uplifting his race.

Even in death, as in life, Washington continues to engender great debates as to his true legacy. He was a founder of Tuskegee Institute, building it into one of the premiere universities for African Americans at a time when few alternatives were available, and he raised considerable funds for hundreds of other schools in the South for blacks. Yet, his 'Atlanta Compromise' speech stressed the need for blacks to accept the status quo and focus on manual labor as a way to economic development.

In contrast, Du Bois believed that the "object of all true education is not to make men carpenters; it is to make carpenters men.

Washington's position that "the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly," stands in stark contradiction to his covert support of legal challenges to discrimination. It is difficult to calculate the negative impact that flowed from Washington's unwillingness to speak out publically against lynching and other acts of violence against blacks at the time — even with his extraordinary access to presidents and other prominent whites in the nation.

These two giants — Washington and Du Bois — underscore the fact that there was not a single linear path to achieving racial equality in the nation. 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. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

Source: Louis R. Harlan, ed. Washington Papers , Vol. See Also: W. DuBois Critiques Booker T.