Booker T. Washington

I had associated them with the Negro of the past, not with the Negro who was struggling upward.

No single individual did more toward laying the foundations of the Tuskegee Institute so as to insure the successful work that has been done there than Olivia A.

Some had the feeling that in proportion as the Negro received education, in the same proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the state.

Washington arose and asked them to sing one after another of the old melodies that I had heard all my life; but I had never before heard them sung by a thousand voices nor by the voices of educated Negroes.

We help you that you may help somebody else, and if you do not do this, when you go out from here, then our work here has been in vain.

The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.

I saw more clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had inaugurated at Hampton.

I wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for me to try.

A new kind of man in the coloured world,” I said to myself—“a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one.” I wrote him an apology for mistaking him for a preacher.

I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart.

I recall that one man, who seemed to have been designated by the others to look after my political destiny, came to me on several occasions and said, with a good deal of earnestness: “We wants you to be sure to vote jes’ like we votes.

I tell you, then, that in this interruption of the regular school work you have not lost anything:--you have gained; you have had your minds awakened, your faculties strengthened, and your hands guided.