Atlanta Exposition Speech Persuasive Speech
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens:
One-third 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 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.
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 are overlooking the
necessity of mutual dependence, I would say: Cast down your bucket where you are.
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 have to
answer for, 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.
Cast down your bucket among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity
you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides.
Cast down your bucket among my people, who, without strikes and labor wars, have tilled your
fields, cleared your forests, brought forth your cities, and built your railroads.
Cast down your bucket among my people, and help us to educate and develop ourselves, and we
will help you to develop the South.
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 come to us must be the
result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.
