Atlanta Compromise Speech

On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington delivered his speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. It became known as the'Atlanta Compromise'. Welcomed by many Southern Whtes; it was highly criticized in many parts of the Black community. An excerpt from the article:

"But Washington had his critics, none more aggressive than another leading Black educator and scholar of his day—W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, a native of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was educated at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the University of Berlin in Germany. In 1897 he accepted an appointment to the faculty of Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University) and moved to Atlanta. Although Du Bois recognized Washington's speech as important, he soon came to see Washington's ideas of gradualism for civil rights as acquiescence to many southerners who wanted to maintain the inferior status of Blacks. In Du Bois's view, "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission. . . . [His] programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races."
Du Bois's upbringing in New England and his exposure to liberal democratic views elicited a very different response to the Negro problem. That different response crystallized with the publication of Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. Du Bois believed that Blacks should launch legal and scholarly attacks on racism and discrimination without hesitation, and he called for education of the most talented Blacks to lead this struggle. The "talented tenth," he believed, should represent the antithesis of gradualism and should seek to free Blacks in the present. The Souls of Black Folk rallied opposition to Washington in Black intellectual circles. Leaders of the Black community were polarized into two camps: the "conservative" supporters of Washington's accomodationism, and the "radical" critics of Washington. Du Bois, harnessing radicals' unhappiness with Washington, founded the Niagara Movement in 1905, which advocated for civil rights for Black people and led to the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)."