The Atlanta Exposition Address Analysis

In his “The Atlanta Exposition Address”, Booker T. Washington delivered to his audience two metaphors to explain his belief of how African-Americans should live their lives in white America. The first metaphor is about a ship lost in the sea and their need of water. In this metaphor, Washington describes how every time the ship asked for water, a vessel would tell them “cast down your bucket where you are”. When the ship finally cast down their bucket, they got it full of fresh and sparkling water from the Amazon. With this metaphor, Washington attempts to get African-Americans to ‘cast down their buckets where they are’ and realize that they are living in white America-- where they are foreigners and cannot expect to better their condition …show more content…
Booker T. Washington”, W.E.B. Du Bois writes that “the time has come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings or Mr. Washington’s career” (695). The mistake that Du Bois refers to is Washington’s beliefs of how African-Americans should live their lives. Du Bois believed that African-Americans should aspire to get an education since that is the most powerful tool one can have. Washington, on the other hand, believed that African-Americans should use their labor skills and remain separated from Whites. According to Du Bois, Washington’s doctrine “has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs” (702). This illustrates that Washington’s views have made the necessities of African-Americans such as, higher education, political power, and civil rights be forgotten by the whites. It also blames African-Americans for it, when in reality the blame needs to go to the nation. Du Bois believes that African-Americans cannot “survive only through submission”, instead they need to shed light on their issues. Du Bois states, “Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys” (700). According to Du Bois, not addressing these issues will only limit African-Americans since then they would not have a right to vote, would not have civil equity, and would not have education proper to their