"[Don't] Cast Down Your Buckets"

In late October, we read and discussed Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" speech. As we saw in class, the speech was and still is not  by everyone. In fact, people, like myself and Zaria, firmly disagree with the "compromise" Washington wants black people to make in his speech.

In what is regarded as "one of the most important and influential speeches in American history", Washington argues that the American negro and America are comparable to a sailor and lost ship at sea. When the ship and its crew are lost at sea and dying of thirst, they are told to cast down their buckets where they are. Once they do this, the sailors realize that the sea water is fresh, sparkling water. 

Following this analogy, Washington is saying that the American negro is dying of thirst. No, not an actual thirst for water, but the metaphorical thirst for freedom and civil rights. The issue is that the negro is being told to "cast down your buckets where you are". In theory, that sounds like great advice. Washington attempts to persuade black people that they should cast down their buckets into “agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions”. This message to the American negro, in that current moment, culminates with them being told that they should “learn to dignify and glorify common labour” and “no race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem”. By this point, this speech is empowering black people and recognizing the reality of what it means to be oppressed. He points out how black people are not privileged and will always start from the bottom thus requiring them to work harder to reach the top one day. Up until this point, I wholeheartedly agree with Washington. However, that changes when he addresses “those of the white race” who are listening to him.

When addressing his white audience, Washington starts making huge concessions to reach a compromise. I don’t use the word ‘concession’ lightly either. One could even argue that Washington is using his influence to set his people back rather than progress toward changes for the betterment of black people. The first concession is asking white people to “cast down their buckets” among the eight million negroes in the South. This time though, he is asking for white people to provide aid to black people – to provide field work and farm land for black people. And how does Washington justify this? By explaining how good of a slave black people were. Are you serious? He argues for assistance by saying his people were really good at being a white man’s property and handling his work?! This is ridiculous, but it doesn’t end there.

Washington affirms his previous argument by stating “as we have proved our loyalty to you in the past”, he offers the following promises:

-         “We shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach”

-         “[We shall] be ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in your defense”

-         “[We shall] interlac[e] our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours”

However, he does provide a catch-all phrase to these promises by adding “in a way that shall make the interests of both races one” and “we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential” that suggests these concessions are in fact compromises. But the only thing being compromised is the national effort for civil rights and equality.

The issue with these promises is that they sound like the formation of a codependency between the races, when it is a one-sided dependency. Black people, as Washington would have it, would rely upon white people for jobs working the land. Black people would be the best people to work for white people, since they were outstanding at being enslaved. Black people would be willing to lay down the lives for the people who provide them work (I would say boss, but the word in this context is synonymous with master). These “compromises” don’t empower black people to be independent and embrace realities, they cripple them.

Most of these black people were born into or raised in slavery. They may have certain things that they can call their own, such as their songs or religious practices, but most, if not all, of what made up a black person was created by white men, So when Washington seeks to interlace the aforementioned parts of black life with white life, he is going back to way black people were in slavery. A slave’s religion was interlaced with their master’s faith. A slave’s commercial and industrial life was founded upon their master’s. Most of all, a slave’s life was far from being a civil life. Despite this clear evidence of what this interlacing of the two races will lead to, Washington still concedes it to white people.

I recognize that Booker T. Washington was arguing what he thought was best for black people, but I don’t think these concessions were the best way of pursuing equality. In fact, Washington does not even touch on black people pursuing equality or progressing toward a future that is better than their current post-slavery moment. He is persuading black people to work within the confines of Jim Crow, to embrace the mentality of separate but equal, and to rely upon the people who enslaved them for work. Washington’s speech is important and very influential, but for all of the wrong reasons.

Source: Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 3, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 583–587.