Up from Slavery: An AutobiographyWashington, Booker T.
History
Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
Washington, Booker T.
African Americans -- Biography; Educators -- United States -- Biography; Tuskegee Institute; Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
Next to a company of business men, I prefer to speak to an audience of
Southern people, of either race, together or taken separately. Their
enthusiasm and responsiveness are a constant delight. The “amens” and
“dat’s de truf” that come spontaneously from the coloured individuals
are calculated to spur any speaker on to his best efforts. I think that
next in order of preference I would place a college audience. It has
been my privilege to deliver addresses at many of our leading colleges
including Harvard, Yale, Williams, Amherst, Fisk University, the
University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley, the University of Michigan,
Trinity College in North Carolina, and many others.
It has been a matter of deep interest to me to note the number of
people who have come to shake hands with me after an address, who say
that this is the first time they have ever called a Negro “Mister.”
When speaking directly in the interests of the Tuskegee Institute, I
usually arrange, some time in advance, a series of meetings in
important centres. This takes me before churches, Sunday-schools,
Christian Endeavour Societies, and men’s and women’s clubs. When doing
this I sometimes speak before as many as four organizations in a single
day.
Three years ago, at the suggestion of Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New
York, and Dr. J.L.M. Curry, the general agent of the fund, the trustees
of the John F. Slater Fund voted a sum of money to be used in paying
the expenses of Mrs. Washington and myself while holding a series of
meetings among the coloured people in the large centres of Negro
population, especially in the large cities of the ex-slaveholding
states. Each year during the last three years we have devoted some
weeks to this work. The plan that we have followed has been for me to
speak in the morning to the ministers, teachers, and professional men.
In the afternoon Mrs. Washington would speak to the women alone, and in
the evening I spoke to a large mass-meeting. In almost every case the
meetings have been attended not only by the coloured people in large
numbers, but by the white people. In Chattanooga, Tenn., for example,
there was present at the mass-meeting an audience of not less than
three thousand persons, and I was informed that eight hundred of these
were white. I have done no work that I really enjoyed more than this,
or that I think has accomplished more good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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