Washington was known as a racial accommodationist. He rejected the pursuit of political and social equality with whites in favor of developing vocational skills and a reputation for stability and dependability. In a famous 1895 Atlanta address, Washington urged African Americans to "cast down your buckets where you are," that is, to remain in the Jim Crow South and tolerate racial discrimination rather than make what he considered intemperate calls for equality. "In all things that are purely social," he said, blacks and whites "can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." As the President of Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington developed an extensive network of contacts that gave him influence with white political leaders and philanthropists as well as black businessmen, journalists and college Presidents
In his Utilitarianism Mill answers those who say that his theory is a crass pleasure theory fit only for beasts by noting that though it is a pleasure theory it acknowledges a wide variety of pleasures including those that only humans can experience
