Against this background of widespread racial discrimination and segregation, Booker T. Washington became one of the era’s most influential Black leaders. He argued that Black people should advance themselves through learning skills such as farming and carpentry, rather than look to legal and political means to advance as a group. “We shall not agitate for political or social equality,” Washington declared in 1895, in a speech known as the Atlanta Compromise. “Living separately, yet working together, both races will
