Booker T. Washington: “I have spoken very plainly about these things, because I believe that they are matters to which as a race we ought to…”

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

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.

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?

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