After the Civil War ended reconstruction was a time for struggle for many of former slaves that were freed after the war. During slavery many of the African Americans that were previously enslaved knew no other skills except farming. Time passed and then came Booker T. Washington who gave a speech on working together to achieve equality. Booker T. Washington in his speech offered many ideas on ways to improve the community of African Americans and White Americans to come together and actually achieve what will be the best for both communities economically and socially. In this quote from his speech, Washington states that in order to achieve equality and for African Americans to be able to abide to the whites, whites must not strip the Africans of all their "enjoyment of all the privileges". Also, in order to work towards a better future for a better economy and stable life in America, work and progress cannot be "forced" and that time will be needed to achieve all this. It is then on behalf of almost all former African slaves that Washington speaks on behalf of that, African Americans will not mind working for white …show more content…
Just like how we discussed in seminar many earlier on in the semester, on how many people at the time during reconstruction questioned "What is freedom?", Washington brings forth a possible answer to this question since the Civil War was not only fighting for the "freedom" of blacks but at the same time it was a fight for equality amongst difference in racial inequality in America. Thus the "answer" that Washington delivers in his speech would work since "equality" takes a long time to achieve and even then only certain areas in our society today has been able to achieve this and at the same time many places still hasn't been able to achieve this goal of