ipl-logo

Summary Of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address

860 Words4 Pages

Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Exposition Address
In his Atlanta Exposition Address, Booker T. Washington stressed that his listeners “cast down your bucket where you are.” Booker T. Washington was one of the most prominent African-American leaders in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He believed in vocational education and personal self improvement. Acquiring economic power through patient industry was his principle concern. Booker T. Washington’s phrase “cast down your bucket where you are” was a good piece of advice.
What Booker T. Washington meant by the phrase “cast down your bucket where you are” was to not seek another place to go or another thing to make you better rather use what you have and where you are to help you succeed. In his …show more content…

This was not a good piece of advice that Booker T. Washington gave especially with the hostility after the Civil War but Washington believes that it will be alright for African-Americans to cast down their buckets because “...people have tilled your fields, cleared your forests, built your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth” (Washington, paragraph 4). Washington is saying to cast down their bucket and thrive where all the fields have been tilled, where the railroads and cities are, and where the forests have been cleared to help the country continue to thrive. Washington also says, “casting down your bucket among my people … you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories” (Washington, paragraph 4). Washington is telling his fellow African-Americans that someday, they will have their own land and will have people running their factories for them. They just need to cast down their buckets and wait for that day to come because Washington believed that African-Americans and whites would be equal, it would just take some

Open Document