Letter from W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T. Washington

This handwritten note from African-American activist and spokesman W.E.B. DuBois congratulated his intellectual rival, Booker T. Washington, on the landmark address at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895. The address vaulted Washington into the national spotlight. Here, DuBois congratulates him on his "word fitly spoken"; later, the rival would claim that in the speech Washington relied on "the old attitude of adjustment and submission."