Late on an unseasonably hot mid-September afternoon in 1895, Booker T. Washington delivered a short speech to a standing-room-only crowd packed into the auditorium in Atlanta’s Exposition Park during the opening ceremonies of the Cotton States and International Exposition. The address, which ran a little over ten minutes, propelled the previously unknown principal of Tuskegee Institute, a small black college in rural Alabama, into the national spotlight. By almost any measure, it (along with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, 1963 “I Have a Dream” Speech) was one of the most important speeches presented by an African American. The immediate response, both in Atlanta and across the country, was overwhelmingly positive, but over time both Washington and his address have been sharply criticized, especially by other African American intellectuals and leaders. These critics termed the Atlanta address the “Atlanta Compromise” and made Washington a symbol of accommodation and acquiescence to southern racism, segregation, and the political disenfranchisement of African Americans. Throughout much of the twentieth century Washington and his famous (or infamous) address were a defi ning element in the African American political debate