Now the point I especially want to make to-night is this: all of you must bear in mind the fact that you are not only to keep yourselves clean, and pure, and sober, and true, in every respect, but you owe a constant responsibility to yourself to see that you exert a helpful influence on others also.
Washington emphasizes the importance of personal integrity and the responsibility to positively influence others.
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More from Booker T. Washington
He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.
Even to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I underwent when putting on one of these garments.
In this connection I have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely…
I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.