Booker T. Washington: “This was my first experience in finding out what the colour of my skin meant.”

How shall we make the mansion on yon Beacon Street feel and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama cotton-fields or Louisiana sugar-bottoms?

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

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.