What was the main point of Booker T. Washington's argument in his 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech?

The purpose of the speech was to convince black people to pursue vocational training, content themselves with segregation, and, in encouraging the former values, placate whites—particularly the philanthropists on whom Washington depended.

Washington had no interest in liberal arts education for African Americans. This put him at odds with educators and intellectuals, particularly W.E.B DuBois who would succeed Washington as a leader of the black community. In the speech, which was delivered at the Cotton...

The purpose of the speech was to convince black people to pursue vocational training, content themselves with segregation, and, in encouraging the former values, placate whites—particularly the philanthropists on whom Washington depended.

Washington had no interest in liberal arts education for African Americans. This put him at odds with educators and intellectuals, particularly W.E.B DuBois who would succeed Washington as a leader of the black community. In the speech, which was delivered at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Washington implored black people to remain in the South—"cast down your buckets where you are"—and to seek work in a new economy that would require workers who were trained in agriculture, as well as in certain new technical skills. However, segregation would make it difficult for them to be hired and, if they were hired, would make it difficult for them to make a decent wage.

He placated whites with his avowal of segregation, arguing that in all things "social" blacks and whites could be as separate as the fingers of a hand. In saying this, Washington acknowledged an interdependency between the races, but insisted that a distinction that should be maintained.

Arguably, Washington's talk of compromise was somewhat self-serving. He had founded the Tuskegee Institute, an agricultural and technical college in Alabama intended to educate young black men in vocational fields. The school owed its existence and its expansion to the white philanthropists who funded it. Washington's accomodationist rhetoric afforded him a prestige and access to resources that other black people, even other leaders, did not have. He was the first black person, for example, who was invited to dine at the White House, during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency.