“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress...which will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important...that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is...more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory...is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.”


Booker T. Washington

September 18, 1895


This speech is representative of what attitude in the earliest years of the Civil Rights Movement?


A) Patience and compromise is the best method.

B) Blacks must first be given the right to vote.

C) Civil rights must be swiftly taken from whites.

D) There is little h