The
Charleston News and Courier, for example said "His skin is
colored, but his head is sound, and his heart is in the right
place." Money poured in to finance the Tuskegee Institute.
Overnight Washington was skyrocketed to national fame.
However, there were those who did not appreciate their new
leader's call to conciliation. In view of the growing virulence
of racism and the spread of Jim Crow legislation, they believed
that his refusal to demand their rights was, in fact, a form of
emasculation.
John Hope was one of those who had heard the Atlanta speech and
did not want to accept the compromise. He was a professor at
Roger Williams University in Nashville, Tennessee, and later was
to become president of Atlanta University. The following year,
after carefully considering Washington's speech, he made an
address of his own to his colleagues in Nashville. He bitterly
attacked the compromise and said that he believed it to be
cowardly for a black man to admit that his people were not
striving for equality. If money, education, and honesty would not
bring the black man as much respect as they would to another
American citizen, they were a curse and not a blessing.
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