Booker T. Washington: “If you are not doing this, you are going backward, you are going in the wrong direction.”

As soon as it was learned that he was not an American Negro, all the signs of indignation disappeared.

From any point of view, I had rather be what I am, a member of the Negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any other race.

The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.

When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which…