Booker T. Washington

After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day’s work was done.

I know coloured men who, through the encouragement, help, and advice of Southern white people, have accumulated thousands of dollars’ worth of property, but who, at the same time, would never think of going to those same persons for advice…

I am often asked to express myself more freely than I do upon the political condition and the political future of my race.

It has thus come about that the school is taking a more direct and helpful hold on life in the South than anywhere else in the country.

We are going to train you so that when you get to that place, if you fail in it, the failure will not be our fault.

The whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with full justice to each other.

We are trying to turn out men and women who are able to do something that the world wants done, that the world needs to have done.

Just in proportion as an individual is able to do that, he is of value to the world.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle…

As the Negro becomes economically independent, he becomes a responsible part of the Southern life; and the whites so recognize him.

Show me a man who is himself wealthy, and who is gentle and polite to the ignorant about him, and to the poor people about him, and I will show you every time a true gentleman.

Just in proportion as we learn to execute something, to put our education into tangible form--as we have been doing during the last few days--in just the same proportion will we find ourselves of value as individuals and as a race.