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
Booker Washington arose. It was, of course, just the moment for him.
The multitude, shaken out of its usual symphony-concert calm, quivered
with an excitement that was not suppressed. A dozen times it had sprung
to its feet to cheer and wave and hurrah, as one person. When this man
of culture and voice and power, as well as a dark skin, began, and
uttered the names of Stearns and of Andrew, feeling began to mount. You
could see tears glisten in the eyes of soldiers and civilians. When the
orator turned to the coloured soldiers on the platform, to the
colour-bearer of Fort Wagner, who smilingly bore still the flag he had
never lowered even when wounded, and said, “To you, to the scarred and
scattered remnants of the Fifty-fourth, who, with empty sleeve and
wanting leg, have honoured this occasion with your presence, to you,
your commander is not dead. Though Boston erected no monument and
history recorded no story, in you and in the loyal race which you
represent, Robert Gould Shaw would have a monument which time could not
wear away,” then came the climax of the emotion of the day and the
hour. It was Roger Wolcott, as well as the Governor of Massachusetts,
the individual representative of the people’s sympathy as well as the
chief magistrate, who had sprung first to his feet and cried, “Three
cheers to Booker T. Washington!”
Among those on the platform was Sergeant William H. Carney, of New
Bedford, Mass., the brave coloured officer who was the colour-bearer at
Fort Wagner and held the American flag. In spite of the fact that a
large part of his regiment was killed, he escaped, and exclaimed, after
the battle was over, “The old flag never touched the ground.”
This flag Sergeant Carney held in his hands as he sat on the platform,
and when I turned to address the survivors of the coloured regiment who
were present, and referred to Sergeant Carney, he rose, as if by
instinct, and raised the flag. It has been my privilege to witness a
good many satisfactory and rather sensational demonstrations in
connection with some of my public addresses, but in dramatic effect I
have never seen or experienced anything which equalled this. For a
number of minutes the audience seemed to entirely lose control of
itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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