ABSTRACT
Addressing a racially mixed audience at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition in Georgia, on 18 September 1895, Booker T. Washington famously advised his fellow black Americans not to risk the uncertainties of "bettering their condition in a foreign land." Migration to the cities of the North, although not specifically mentioned in the speech, was, by implication, an equally unwise option. African Americans should instead cast down their buckets where they were, "cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man" who was "their next-door neighbor."1
