Washington, Booker T. “Atlanta Compromise Speech, 1895.”

"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."
What was controversial about this speech delivered by Washington?
1. He called for the government to force the South to end segregation laws.
2. He called for all African Americans to leave the sharecropping fields and go to the cities in the North.
3. He called for a gradual approach to African American civil rights, calling for accommodation and self-improvement.
4. He condemned previous efforts of African American leaders as accommodating and not to the benefit of African Americans.