Booker T. Washington: “I knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race.”

By it a race must rise or fall, succeed or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little.

Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in high moral characters are remarkable.

This problem Harvard University is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by bringing the masses up.

If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people and the bringing about of better relations between your race and mine, I assure you from this day it will mean doubly more.