Atlanta Compromise, classic statement on race relations articulated by Booker T. Washington, a leading Black educator in the United States in the late 19th century. In a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895, Washington asserted that vocational education, which gave African Americans an opportunity for economic security, was more valuable to them than social advantages, higher education, or political office. In one sentence he summarized his concept of race relations appropriate for the times: “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” In return for African Americans’ remaining peaceful and socially separate from whites, the white community needed to accept responsibility for improving the social and economic conditions of all Americans, regardless of skin colour, Washington argued. This notion of shared responsibilities is what came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise.
