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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 labor, 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.
"Cast down your
bucket where you are!"
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 labor 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 percent 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 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 extremist 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.
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
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.
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