Portland Observer Section II Thursday, February 23, 1978 Page 15
This was also the period of the
Atlanta ('omjromise which was
to set the pattern for acceptable
Black/white relationships over
the next several decades. Its
author was Booker T. Washing
ton, then a relatively obscure
principal of a relatively obscure
Black training school, Tuskegee
Institute. With a single speech
delivered on September 18, 1895
at the Cotton State's Exposition
in Atlanta, Georgia, he was cata
pulted into national and interna
tional prominence as the annoint-
ed leader of his people. Putting
aside, at least te.nporarily, any
quest for social and political
equality for the Black man,
Washington told white America
what it wanted to hear and was
prepared to accept.
He told his Black bretheren to
“cast down your buckets where
you are” and cultivate friendly
relations with southern white
other groups gave financial sup
port to the press; religious orga
nizations entered the world of
the press to advance their views;
Blacks qualified to vote provided
an audience for politically-spon
sored publications, and the in
fluence an editor was able to
exert attracted people to the
field. To these arguments should
be added the fact that Blacks
were beginning to move from the
South to northern urban centers
where they were concentrated in
racially homogenous communi
ties capable of supporting Black
publications.
The increase in the number of
Black papers coincided, however,
with a decline in militant atti
tudes among those in the Black
press. It was as if after years of
fighting so relentlessly for the
end of slavery, the Black press
was not taking time to catch its
breath before plunging ahead
into the brave new world it
helped to create and which seem
ed promised by the victory of the
North over the South and the
coming Reconstruction. In com
menting on this period, the his
torian, Lerone Bennett, Jr., has
written:
"After the Civil War, the in
fluence of the Negro press dimi
nished. There were, to be sure,
vigorous Negro editors like T.
Thomas Fortune and Calvin
Chase, but the press, as a whole,
was not as militant as the N orth
Star and other periodicals of the
abolitionist era.”
Whatever hopes there were
for the brave new world, faded
under the harshness and perva
siveness of the racism the South
turned loose on Blacks after the
North, in the compromise of
1877, removed the Federal pre
sence from the South. Former
slavemasters were again free to
do unto Blacks as they willed.
Given the reality of America at
that time
the brutality of the
South and the cold indifference of
the North - this perhaps was not
the best of times for militancy.
One editor who tried and failed
was Ida B. Wells, a teacher and
publisher of the Mem.»his Free
S,»eech. In 1892 she saw her
printing plant wrecked because
she had published an article that
suggested white capitalists had
inspired the murder of three
Black businessmen.
She was
forced to flee the city to save her
life,
men. “Let us work to earn their
respect,” he urged, for “the
wisest among my race under
stand that the agitation of ques
tions of social equality is the
extreme folly.” And then the
promise to Blacks and whites:
“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."
Thus the die was cast. Blacks
were being told to put their
dreams of political and social
equality on the shelf. White
America was elated. Washington
had found the solution for the
nation's race relations and for the
next twenty years he would
occupy a position of power and
influence that was almost unas
sailable.
“The Boston Riot”
In the meantime, racial lines
hardened. Lynchings continued
as the Black man was pushed
further and further down the
ladder. Not every Black agreed
that Washington’s road was the
right one to follow and jn Boston,
a young man who graduated
from Harvard the same year that
Washington made his Atlanta
speech, was beginning to feel the
first stirring of a consuming
passion that would come to domi
nate his life. He was William
Monroe Trotter, one of the most
neglected and least understood
figures in the Black press. Born
and reared in comfortable cir
cumstances, Trotter, a Bos
tonian, was the first Black elect
ed to Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard
and graduated magna cum laude
from that school. For several
years after his graduation the
brilliant Trotter seemed to drift
but finally on November 9, 1901
he began his life's work, the
editorship of The Guardian in
Boston.
We salute the contributions
of Black People
in the building of the nation
N.E. Broadway A N.E. 1st
Lynn Kirby Ford
288-5211