Works of Booker T. Washington - Booker T. Washington [0]
The Future of the American Negro
Heroes in Black Skins
The Negro Problem (also W.E. Burghardt DuBois, Charles W. Chesnutt, Wilford H. Smith, H.T. Kealing, Paul Laurence Dunbar, T. Thomas Fortune)
Up from Slavery: an Autobiography
Addresses in Memory of Carl Schurz
Atlanta Compromise address by African-American leader Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. Given to a predominantly White audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, the speech has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history.
Appendix:
Booker T. Washington Biography
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Addresses in Memory of Carl Schurz
Address of Dr. Booker T. Washington
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Booker T. Washington Biography
THE details of the life and deeds of the late Honorable Carl Schurz are so well known as to call for no recital here. The most and least that can be done at this time is to emphasize the lessons to be gleaned from his life and call attention to the service rendered by him to the Indian and Negro races. My first acquaintance with Carl Schurz was gained when I was a student at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. He came to Hampton when Secretary of the Interior under President Hayes, to inspect the work of General Armstrong in the education of the Indians and to note the progress of the Negro students. During that visit his striking personality, which combined deep moral earnestness with strength of intellect, left in my mind an impression which has always remained with me, and which was deepened as I came to know Mr. Schurz better in later years. The impression made upon a poor student of another race - not long out of slavery - by the words and presence of this great soul, is something which I cannot easily describe. As he spoke to the Negro and Indian students on the day of his visit to Hampton, there was a note of deep sincerity and sympathy, which, with his frankness and insight into the real condition and needs of the two races, made us at once feel that a great and extraordinary man was speaking to us. He had a heart overflowing with sympathy for the two most unfavored races in America, because he himself had known what it meant to be oppressed and to struggle towards freedom against great odds. It is easier, however, from many points of view, to sympathize with a people or a race that has had an unfortunate start in life than it is to be frank and at the same time just - to say the word and do the thing which will permanently help, regardless for the moment of whether words or acts please or displease. As Mr. Schurz stood before the Hampton students, it was plain that he was a man who had been able to lift himself out of the poisoned atmosphere of racial as well as sectional prejudice. It was easy to see that here was a man who wanted to see absolute justice done to the Indian, the Negro, and to the Southern white man.
At the time when Mr. Schurz entered President Hayes's cabinet, it was a popular doctrine that "the only good Indian was the dead Indian." The belief had gained pretty general acceptance that the Indian was incapable of receiving a higher civilization. More than that, the Indian was being plundered of his lands, his rations, and was being used as the tool in a large degree to further the ends of unscrupulous schemers. It was easier to shoot an Indian than to civilize him. It has been easier to fight for freedom than work for the freedman. Easier to kick or down him than to lift him up. It was a period also when the Negro race was being plundered and deceived in reference to its vote. Not only this, when Mr. Schurz entered the Hayes cabinet, the Negro was being in a large degree used as the tool of demagogues, and at the same time many influences were at work to alienate the black and white races at the South, regardless of the permanent effect on either. Against all this Mr. Schurz threw the weight of his great name and forceful personality. Few men in