Atlanta Exposition Speech

“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.”

Washington opens his essay with these sentences. By stating the size of the Black population, he appeals to his listener’s reason (logos) to prove his second sentence, which is his thesis statement: if one-third of the population remains economically disenfranchised, the whole population will suffer.

“Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at 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 attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.”

Washington seeks to mollify white Southerners alarmed by the political ascendency of Black men and women during Reconstruction. By treating their political aspirations as the result of ignorance and inexperience, he suggests that Black Southerners learned that economic development must precede political influence.

“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 in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.”

Washington introduces the metaphor of a lost ship to argue that Black Southerners should seek resources and relationships in their immediate contexts. Their white neighbors can offer them more opportunities than they would find elsewhere. He urges them to cultivate “manly” relationships—meaning that the two parties respect each other as equals.