In 1895 at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, Booker T. Washington urged Black and white Southerners to build prosperity where they were by relying on local relationships, practical labor, and industrial progress. He argued that one third of the South’s population was Black and that no effort for the region’s material, civil, or moral welfare could succeed while disregarding that population. Using the image of a ship finding fresh water only after obeying the command to cast down its bucket where it was, he called on Black people to seek advancement in the South through agriculture, mechanics, commerce, domestic service, and the professions rather than looking elsewhere, and he emphasized beginning at the bottom of life, dignifying labor, and valuing useful skill over superficial ambition. He also appealed to white Southerners to place their trust in the Black people among them rather than in newcomers from abroad, pointing to their long labor in fields, forests, railroads, cities, and mines and urging education of head, hand, and heart. He said the future welfare of both races was bound together in industry, business, civil life, and religion, that they could be separate in social matters yet united in essential mutual progress, and that the South’s security depended on the fullest development of Black intelligence and usefulness. He maintained that legal privileges were important, but that preparation through work, skill, and economic contribution was more immediately valuable, and he warned that Black people would become either a major force for the South’s intelligence, progress, and prosperity or a weight holding it back.