Booker T. Washington

More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and…

Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the state in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to…

I found that while among them there was a large element of substantial, worthy citizens, there was also a superficiality about the life of a large class that greatly alarmed me.

I saw young coloured men who were not earning more than four dollars a week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on Sunday to ride up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in, in order that they might try to convince the world that they were worth…

The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the Federal officials to create one for them.

In a word, while their wants have been increased, their ability to supply their wants had not been increased in the same degree.

Too often, it seems to me, in missionary and educational work among underdeveloped races, people yield to the temptation of doing that which was done a hundred years before, or is being done in other communities a thousand miles away.

The temptation often is to run each individual through a certain educational mould, regardless of the condition of the subject or the end to be accomplished.

I found that they were about like any other human beings; that they responded to kind treatment and resented ill-treatment.

When the difficulty of learning the English language was subtracted, I found that in the matter of learning trades and in mastering academic studies there was little difference between the coloured and Indian students.

My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.

Another thing that is becoming more apparent each year in the development of education in the South is the influence of General Armstrong’s idea of education; and this not upon the blacks alone, but upon the whites also.