On this day in Labor History the year was 1895.
That was the day that Booker T. Washington delivered what came to be known as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech,” which outlined his vision for race relations and black labor in the South.
Washington was the founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a college to train black students for careers in teaching, farming and other trades.
Washington was invited to give an address to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta.
It was the first time that a black man was asked to speak before a black and white Southern audience.
In his speech he urged Southern land owners and business leaders to employ black labor over European immigrants.
He said, “To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I say to my own race, “Cast down your bucket where you are.”
He continued, “Cast it down among those people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, built your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South.”
His speech outlined a plan for gradual black economic advancement.
He declared, “agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly.”
Other black leaders, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois rejected Booker T. Washington’s ideas of gradual advancement.
Instead DuBois fought racial discrimination through the legal system and helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP.
December 29 - The Day Work Was Made Safer
December 28 - Heroes in Space
December 27 - Musicians Fight Back
December 26 - Garment Workers Rise Up
December 25 - Debs Released; Real Gift is His Message
December 24 - A Christmas Eve Beating for Striking Workers
December 23 - The High Cost of Low Wages
December 21 - Red Scare Deportations Begin
December 20 - THE UNION IS DISSOLVED!!!
December 19 - Solidarity Gets the Goods!
December 18 - No More Beer
December 17 - Unraveling Anti-Japanese Hysteria
December 16 - No Justice, No Bagels!
December 15 - Troops Put Down the Mother’s March
December 14 - Another Hard Fought Victory
December 13 - The Beginning of the End of Apartheid
December 12 - We Disaffiliate!
December 11 - Right to Work is a Lie!
December 10 - August Spies is Born
December 9 - The Cordiner Doctrine
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