University of Virginia Library

Advice to White Men

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, I would repeat what I say to my own
race, "Cast down your bucket where you are.
Cast it down among the eight million Negroes,
whose habits you know, whose fidelity you have
tested in days when to have proved treacherous
meant the ruin of your firesides."

Atlanta Speech.