led "Is the
Negro Having a Fair Chance?" In it he criticized the fact that more money
was appropriated for the education of whites than of blacks. He also
criticized the convict lease system which had developed in the South. His
dissatisfaction with segregation became clear when he pointed out that
although Jim Crow facilities might be separate they were never equal.
Another article which he had written was published after his death in the
New Republic. In it he described the terrible effects of segregation. He
said that it meant inferior sidewalks, inferior street-lighting, inferior
sewage facilities, and inferior police protection. Such lacks made for
difficult neighborhoods in which to raise families in decency.

If Washington's program was a sellout, as many believed, it is becoming
increasingly clear that he did not intend his compromise as an end in
itself. He believed that it could be the means to a much broader future.
When he spoke before the Congressional comittee early in 1895, he
expressed his opposition to disenfranchisement on a racial basis. His
apparent acceptance of it at Atlanta was only a tactical maneuver. In an
article which he wrote in 1898, he said that he believed that the time
would come when his people would be given all of their rights in the
South. He said that they would receive the privileges due to any citizen
on the basis of ability, character, and material possessions. He was, in
effect, approving disenfranchisement of the poor and ignorant in both
races. When Negroes did receive what was due them as citizens, he said,
it would come from Southern whites as the result of the natural evolution
of mutual trust and acceptance. Artificial external pressure, he
insisted, would not help.

The Atlanta Compromise was to be the means to an end and not an end in
itself. If the ex-slave would start at the bottom, develop manners and
friendliness, Washington believed that he could make his labor
indispensable to white society. Acceptance of segregation was, at that
time, a necessary part of good behavior. If the whites, in turn, opened
the doors of economic opportunity to the ex-slave instead of importing
more European immigrants, Washington said that the nation would have an
English-speaking non-striking labor force. Gradually, individual
Afro-Americans would gain trust, acceptance, and respect. The class line
based on color would be replaced by one based on intelligence and
morality.

Washing