The Atlanta Compromise

Burnt Grits

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a story about the Great Betrayal, otherwise known as the Compromise Of 1877. To refresh your memory, it was known as the Great Betrayal because it removed federal troops protecting southern blacks after the confederate traitors waged war on the United States to keep 4 million human beings in bondage for pure greed and sexual exploitation. Look.. I cook my grits right and we all know it wasn’t only about the money. Most all African Americans have some white folks in their bloodlines. Now, I’m not talking about since they made it legal for us to be together in 1967 with the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme in Loving v. Virginia. I’m not talking about it took 102 years after the Civil War before they recognized that love was not a construct of or the exclusive province of the white, but was a condition of humanity… and I’m not talking about how with deliberate intention the Supreme Court finally struck down Virginia’s KKK inspired Racial Integrity Act of 1924. No, I’m talking about way back in “dem” cotton pickin days… and when on Sunday all they had to eat was three diced up Alabama pig lips… when in the dark of the night the massa would sneak down to that cabin on da left… it was right there… right there… when he would bring em some fried chicken and biscuits from Popeyes…

Okay, I really need to stop that… but some of ya’ll needed to stop too… I’m still feeling some kinda way about that chicken “samish” thing. Anywho yeah… it was about money first and pleasure later. Right after Marse Lee surrendered at Appomattox, ( Marse Lee was a nickname for Robert Lee, commanding traitor of the rebel army), right after that surrender in April of 1865, the period known as the Reconstruction began. It lasted 12 years from 1865 to 1877. African Americans made great strides in business and politics during this era. Most of the African American politicians you read about before the 20th century came from this time period between 1865 and 1877. The first black U.S senator was Hiram Revels was elected in 1870 just a scant five years after the war. He was given a standing ovation when he was seated. All that was wiped out with the Compromise of 1877. After the last federal troops left, Jim Crow became the law of the Deep South.

Have Some More Potato Salad…

Booker T Washington was among the last of African American leaders who had also been a slave. Frederick Douglass was another leader who had been a slave, along with some other lesser known leaders, like Hiram Revel and Edward Brooke of Massachusetts who was the first African American Senator to be voted in by popular vote. The “Old Bay” state was a magnet for escaped slaves lucky enough to get there. Frederick Douglass and William LLoyd Garrison were just a few of the many, many effective abolitionist living there. Now before I continue, I just want to say a few words about William LLoyd Garrison. He can come to my barbecue and eat as much ribs and potato salad as he wants… “Go ahead Will.. take a couple plates home…” Now I know this is a pro black news website… but just because I am pro-black, it doesn’t mean I am anti-white. A great deal of the progress we have made has been because white brothers and sisters have been standing with us side by side against the vicious racist, often at the peril of their own lives. William LLoyd Garrison’s name should be right there beside people like John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Angelina Gremke, Viola Liuzzo, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the latter two being killed in Mississippi with James Chaney during the 1964 Civil Right Movement and a whole lotta other white folks that put their skin in the game.

Anywho, Garrison was against slavery before it was fashionable. Before that people were still being killed for being “nigg@r lovers,” even up north where the anti- slavery movement was still in its infancy. As early as 1831 Garrison published a newspaper called the Liberator demanding that the slave be set freed and I’ma tell you right now, they almost got to him more than once. On one of the more serious occurrences, they dragged him out of his office and just like when Osama Bin Laden said he was determined to attack America.. them hard racist was determined to stretch that neck as far as it could go on the makeshift gallows they had erected in the middle of the street just hours earlier. If it wasn’t for the intervention of two other nameless white men who wrestled him from the mob to safety, black history as we now know it would have been forever changed. Why? Because later it would be it William LLoyd Garrison who found Frederick Douglass working on the docks shovelling coal when he asked him to speak before members of the Anti Slavery Society, the largest abolitionist group in America. Garrison wanted them to hear the truth from someone who had actually experienced the abomination that was slavery. Douglass was so well received that Garrison asked him to stay on with him and to speak at venues all across the country… Well the rest is history… “William, would you like some more chicken… I’m not taking no for an answer.. here go a piece of cornbread wid dat…”

Who Those People?

At the turn of the century in 1895 Atlanta Georgia held what we might now call the World Fair. The actual first World Fair was held in Hyde Park in London in 1851. The American answer to the wildly successful Hyde Park World’s Fair was held in 1853 in New York City and was called the Industry of All Nations. Officially there are no more World Fairs. The last one in the United States was in 1984 in New Orleans. Anywho, the 1895 affair in Atlanta was called the Cotton States and International Exposition. Now you know me, I always somehow get off the subject, but for a time when I thought about the World’s Fair, I use to mistakenly identify it with the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Go tell. Anyway that bombing happened in 1996. I guess I’m getting long in the tooth… By the way, that saying originated from when how horses get older, their gums recede from their teeth. It’s how horse trainers tell how old horses are. Slave buyers used to also check their victims teeth for signs of abused or poor health. Missing or cracked teeth meant that buck could have a terrible attitude and had to be physically dealt with, else he might rise up and kick somebody’s azz. The massa don’t need no bad tempered bucks. Checking the teeth could also show if the victim had sores, cavities, or bad breath, all potential signs of poor health. Finally sticking your filthy dirty fingers down somebody’s mouth while they were standing there half naked could also reveal if you had one of them folks whose elevator was stuck between floors… “Don’t push me cause I close to the edge….I’m trying not to lose my head…. It’s like a jungle sometimes… makes me wonder why I keep from going under…” You can’t blame them.. but innee whoooo, I’m off the subject again..

The 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition affair was really a group of southern racist meeting in the cradle of the former confederacy, Atlanta, Georgia. It was billed as southern states reaching out to South America to expand trade and introduce them to American know-how. Now I don’t know about you, but the last time Europeans wanted to reach out and expand trade, 4 million people ended up in chains. If you didn’t know, you better ask somebody. One of the first thing you heard besides massa don’t hit me no more, was John Philip Sousa’s “King Cotton”, which he composed and dedicated to the people of Georgia… well not all the people. King Cotton had been the slogan which southern secessionists used in furtherance of their diabolical plan to keep humans in bondage and keep making that dough. The premise was that as long as the slave states stuck together they need not fear the North. Cotton was vital to the American and World economy. There were a few innovations which made this possible. In Europe the invention of the spinning jenny, a machine which made thread and the power loom, which turned the thread into cloth, made clothes affordable and cheap for the masses. But the cotton revolution still was missing its most important piece. So until then all the massa saw was…

“I got a $800 porch monkey picking 100 pounds of cotton a day, which cost me $300 for a ton of seeds of which I can get about 4500 pounds of cotton. I can get 15 cents for a pound… my bales are 400 lbs.. so lets see… that’s $60… Wait a damn cotton picking minute!!! Jethro go flog that nig@@r over der!! Jethro: Why massa, he ain’t done nuthin… Massa: He done went ova der by dat tree and peed… ain’t no cotton ova der!! Jethro: Yes massa. Massa: And when you finished dat, flog yourself!! You know I don’t take to no back sass!! Jethro: Yes massa. Massa: Now where was I… oh yes..

As you can see can see from the above illustration cotton wasn’t king yet.. It was a very labor intensive crop. It had to be picked and then cleaned. By cleaning I mean all them little seeds had to be hand pick from the cotton boll which had anywhere from twenty five and fifty seed each. It takes approximately 150,000 bolls to make one bale of cotton. Ten bales only made you $600. For it to be profitable your slave would have to pick north of 200 lbs a day plus clean it. That’s where all the beatings and killings came in. It was almost impossible for a slave to do that unless you worked them day and night…so you worked them as long as you could.. and still you wasn’t guaranteed you would break even, much less make a profit. That was until an invention called the cotton gin came on the scene. Where it took one person ten hours to clean a pound of cotton, the cotton gin made it possible to clean fifty pound of cotton a day or about two pounds an hour. Meanwhile back in Europe before the advent of the cotton gin, there were constant shortages of cotton which had a domino effect on their economies. Since they didn’t have enough cotton they didn’t need as many workers. The workers couldn’t afford to eat or pay rents. The farmers didn’t have anybody to buy their products and the landlords didn’t have any tenants. Jobs were scarce and the employers were ruthless. All that changed when because of the cotton gin, America was able to send all the cotton the Europeans wanted. The European and American economies took off as the southern states in America and the Europeans made money hand over foot driven by the slave bondage.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

In 1962 “Do You Hear What I Hear” was written by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne. It was a plea for peace at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. After being approached by a music producer to do a Christmas song, the pair at first turned the offer down, citing the commercialism of Christmas. They later accepted and since then the song has sold tens of millions of copies and has been sung by hundreds of artist. So why would I bring up a 1962 Christmas song when I am talking about the 1895 Atlanta Compromise? Well do tell…

Okay so let’s set this up.. Your name is Colonel Beauregard Fatwiteazz. You along with your rebel buds are sitting in the audience ready at any minute to pull out your pistols and start firing if that boy says anything about nig@rs and white folks being equal. You take your cotton handkerchief out and wipe your brow because air conditioning wouldn’t be invented until 1902, another seven years later. You think it’s really starting to get ripe in here as you and your boys start looking at each other trying to figure out who skipped the bath that morning. You kinda wish that silk was King and cotton was a Duke or something. It’s got to be over 100 degrees in here and with everybody wearing cotton, you feel like you getting ready to faint. Your boy Daniel’s sees you sliding down in the seat, he grabs you by the collar and hands you a flask filled with “Hot Bama’, a southern whiskey he had his ignorant nigra assistant make for the trip down here. You take a swig, jump up and fire off a couple of rounds. By god boy, that’s the best whiskey I ever tasted!! Jack pats you on the back and looks curiously at the flask… Suddenly the crowd goes silent except for a few gunshots and the occasional “I ain’t listening to no nigg@rs!!” After a few moments Booker T Washington and another white man come out on stage. The white man sit in a chair behind him. He is wearing a sheriff badge. If Washington says the wrong thing and is shot in the back, there will be an immediate investigation…(wink, wink!!) Washington walks up to the lectern and begins…

Booker T. Washington Atlanta Compromise – September 18, 1895

“Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens:

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. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

“

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. 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.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal,“Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. 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.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

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.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded 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. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed—blessing him that gives and him that takes. There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:

The laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed;

And close as sin and suffering joined We march to fate abreast…

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third [of] its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug stores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. 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.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.”

Do you hear what I hear? That’s right, the Atlanta Compromise was a pact promulgated by Washington and other African American leaders to Southern white leaders. In essence the unwritten pact said that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination, that they would receive free basic education but that said education would be limited to vocational or industrial training. No degrees and that their education would be paid for by northern white charities. Now believe this or not blacks in the south honored this compromise even after 1906 when riots broke out in Atlanta. Gradually as more blacks moved from the compromise after Washington’s death in 1915, they embraced civil rights activism. It would culminate with the Civil Rights Movement in the 50’s and 60’s.

Walking In My Shoes

Finally it’s easy to opine after the fact, especially when you are writing about it 120 years later. It is my opinion that the Atlanta Compromise was an error in judgement by Booker T Washington. I am saying this to say we weren’t there getting brutalized and killed daily under harsh unyielding racism. It could be said that the compromise was a leader’s solution to saving lives and trying to move our people up on the economic scale. Whatever the reason he made this pact, it cannot overshadow the great things he did for our people. This is just a small part of his story…

* Nathan “Nearest” Green (c. 1820 – ?), incorrectly spelled “Nearis” in an 1880 census, was a black head stiller, commonly referred to now as a master distiller. Born into slavery and emancipated after the Civil War, he is known as the master distiller who taught distilling techniques to Jack Daniel, founder of the Jack Daniel Tennessee whiskey distillery. Green was hired as the first master distiller for Jack Daniel Distillery, but not until after his death was he recognized as the first. During his time he was not given the proper titles on the account he was a black man and he was the first African-American master distiller on record in the United States. – Wikipedia

Reprint: ©Hill1News 2020