A Rhetorical Analysis Of Booker T. Washington's Speech

On September 18, 1895, an African-American leader and spokesman Booker T. Washington stood before a primarily white participant at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. His Atlanta Compromise speech was one of the greatest, most famous and influential speeches in American history (Harlan and Booker, 1987). Even though the planners of the exposition concerned that public sentiment was not ready for such a high-level segment, they decided that welcoming a black speaker would influence Northern guests with the signal of racial advancement in the South. Washington calmed his listeners’ worries about presumptuous blacks by appealing that his race would gratify itself with living by the makings of their hands. The speech placed
Washington's speaking also called for whites to take obligation for refining social and economic associations between the black and the whites. Washington guaranteed his audience that he would inspire blacks to become skillful in mechanics, commerce, agriculture, and domestic service he also promised to encourage them to glorify common labour (Perdue, 2011). Washington's speech answered the Negro problem which was the query of what to do about the horrible social and economic circumstances of blacks and the affiliation between blacks and whites in the economically fluctuating
He summarized his idea of race relations suitable for the times by stating that both the black and whites could be as unconnected as the fingers, but be one as the hand in everything relevant to related progress. He also guaranteed that, for blacks to remain peaceful and socially distinct from whites, the white community required to accept obligation for improving the social and economic welfares of all Americans irrespective of skin