From 1895 until his death in 1915, Booker T. Washington, a formerly enslaved man who had built Tuskegee Institute in Alabama into a major center of industrial training for African American youths, was the country’s dominant Black leader. In a speech made in Atlanta in 1895, Washington called on both African Americans and whites to “cast down your bucket where you are.” He urged whites to employ the masses of Black laborers. He called on African Americans to cease agitating for political and social rights and to concentrate instead on working to improve their economic conditions. Washington felt that excessive ...(100 of 8311 words)