The Atlanta Compromise, considered the definitive statement of what Washington termed the “accommodationist” strategy of Black response to southern racial tensions, is widely regarded as one of the most significant speeches in American history.
Two years earlier, Washington spoke in Atlanta during the international meeting of Christian Workers. That audience, comprising northern and southern whites, responded favorably to his speech, in which he advocated vocational-industrial education for Blacks as a means of improving southern race relations.
In the spring of 1895, Washington traveled to Washington, D.C., with a delegation of mostly white Georgians to solicit support from Congress for an exposition on social and economic advances in the South. Washington pointed out to a congressional committee that since emancipation, Blacks and whites made advancements in race relations that should be highlighted in an exposition, and he urged federal support for the event, to be held in Atlanta. This speech, along with his 1893 address to the Christian Workers, prompted the exposition’s board of directors to ask Washington to speak at its opening exercises.