Booker T. Washington gave one of America’s most influential speeches in 1895 at the Cotton States and World Expo. I would paraphrase it this way, “We promise not to try to vote, we will accept an inferior place in society, if the white people will promise to stop killing us.”
No really, that was the gist of his speech
It became known as the Atlanta Compromise and was seen as the settling of the American social order regarding race moving into the 1900’s.
Now mind you this is Booker T. Washington, best selling author, president of the Tuskegee Institute, huge fund raiser for Black education and philanthropy, and he is saying “we” will settle for being subjugated because it would be an improvement.
I’m not sure we of today appreciate how bad it must have been for smart ambitious people to see subjugation as the best viable option.
Whatever the views of the day, and there were other opinions, this compromise was seen as the rule by those in power. It was the foundation for Southern for the next 50-60 years till a bunch of college kids started agitating.
This is a foundational part of American history.
Brohammas 