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 heading 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
neighbour, 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 [sic] 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 of 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 [sic] 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, 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 defence 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 defence 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 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 education 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 [sic]. 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 exercises 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, this, [sic] coupled with our material
prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new
earth.