Atlanta Exposition Speech

Washington frequently mentions manliness and manhood, and while he does not define the terms, they suggest important things about the context of his words and their intent. He encourages Black workers to develop “manly” friendships with white men—friendships that will benefit both parties. The fact that these friendships are “manly” suggests that Black workers will engage as equals with their white peers. This interpretation is buttressed by Washington’s idea of the dignity of all useful labor. Work is an equalizer irrespective of an individual’s specific job. Thus, a man’s identity and dignity is essentially synonymous with his contribution to his community’s economic development.

The importance of manly relations to Washington is likely rooted in his experience of slavery and Jim Crow, which often had the effect of psychologically emasculating Black men. Not only were Black men routinely called “boy” by white men (even those younger than them), but they were often unable to protect their families from violence or to assert the autonomy and leadership typically associated with manhood. Having congratulated the organizers of the exposition on their recognition of the “value and manhood” of Black men, Washington assures his Black male listeners that hard work will restore and reinforce their identity as it also provides them with economic independence. Washington’s emphasis on material prosperity thus has a psychological dimension. Economic development will not only raise the stand of living Black Americans, but it will also restore some of the psychic wholeness that Black men lost through oppression.

Washington assures his white listeners that their Black neighbors feel love and loyalty towards them, reminding them of a past during which even enslaved Black people demonstrated devotion to them. Washington’s description in his speech finds an echo in his autobiographical Up from Slavery (1901) in which he insists that slaves in his community felt no “bitterness” towards their white owners and were even willing to die protecting the women who remained behind as their male relatives left to fight the Civil War.

While it might appear that Washington is insufficiently critical of white violence against Black people in the South, he spoke to an audience that had likely absorbed prejudices regarding Black violence against white people. The end of the Civil War saw a dramatic rise in the number of murders of Black men by white mobs, often justified by myths of Black violence against white women. (According to this myth, Black men cannot restrain their desire for white women.) Washington’s emphasis on the devotion and protectiveness of Black people towards white people in the South is probably intended to counter prejudices regarding Black male violence. His emphasis on how much Black people care for their white oppressors (which may seem strange to readers today) served to alleviate white fears regarding Black economic development (Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class, pp. 167-72. New York: Vintage Books, 1981).