Booker T. Washington: “I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation.”

This country demands that every race shall measure itself by the American standard.

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.

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

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.