, you will find that they will buy your surplus
land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your
factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the
past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient,
faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen....
so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a
devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if
need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial,
civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the
interests of both races one."

He summed up his plea for racial cooperation with the second pictorial
image. He told the audience that "In all things that are purely social we
can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress." This proposal brought forth thunderous
applause. He went on to say that the wisest in his race were aware that
fighting for social equality was folly. The ex-slave, he believed, must
first struggle and prepare himself for the assumption of his rights,
which were privileges to be earned. While he did believe that his people
would receive their full rights at some future date, he insisted that
"The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth
infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an
opera-house." Economic opportunity was far more important than either
social equality or political rights. He closed the speech by praising the
Exposition for the effect it would have in bringing fresh material
prosperity to the South, and added:

"... yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good,
that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional
differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to
administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to
the mandates of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will
bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth."

When he finished, the audience applauded wildly. Governor Bullock rushed
across the platform and shook his hand. The next day he was greeted and
praised enthusiastically on the Atlanta streets. President Cleveland,
after having read the speech, wrote Washington and thanked him for what
he had said. The following year Harvard University granted him an
honorary Master's degree. The pres