This Day in Republican History 09/18/05

September 18, 1895 Republican civil rights activist Booker T. Washington tells white audience in Atlanta: “There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all” On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington delivered his famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia. Washington, the founder and president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, was the first African-American man ever to address a racially-mixed Southern audience. He used the occasion to advocate a moderate approach to race relations in the New South: "To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded."