s the United States entered the 20th century, African Americans faced a new and challenging landscape. A mere thirty-five years after the abolition of slavery, the majority of African Americans had learned to read and hundreds were heading to colleges and universities to continue their studies. The 1900 Paris Exposition created by W.E.B. DuBois showcased the gains that African Americans had made since emancipation.
However, many of the freedoms gained during the era of reconstruction were beginning to disappear. It became more and more difficult for African Americans to vote; the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling made segregation the law of the land; and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia tried to reverse the successes of African Americans, sometimes using violence and lynching to strike fear in the African American community.
Many contributed to the debates on how best to secure and advance the rights of African Americans, but one of the major contributors was the educator Booker T. Washington. Washington, the leader of Tuskegee Institute, stated his views in a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1895.
Booker T. Washington c1917.
This is from the website https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2011/07/booker-t-washington-and-the-atlanta-compromise/ and I do have the rights to it.
