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 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
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 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 labour 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 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 [of] 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.
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 he 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. |