“One trouble with the average Negro, said the speaker, was he was always hungry, and it was impossible to make progress along educational, moral or religious lines while in that condition. It was a hard matter to make a Christian out of a hungry man. It had often been contended that the Negro needed no industrial education, because he already knew too well how to work. There never was a greater mistake, and the speaker compared, as an illustration, the white man with his up-to-date cultivator to the ‘one gallused’ Negro with his old plow, patched harness and stiff-jointed mule.
“The speaker was inclined to fear that the Negro race lay too much stress on their grievances and not enough on their opportunities. While many wrongs had been perpetrated on them in the South, still it was recognized by all intelligent colored people that the black man has far better opportunity to rise in his business in the South than in the North. While he might not be permitted to ride in the first-class car in the South, he was not allowed to help build that first-class car in the North. He could sooner conquer Southern prejudice than Northern competition. The speaker found that when it came to business, pure and simple, the black man in the South was put on the same footing with the white man, and here, said he, was the Negro’s great opportunity. The black man could always find a purchaser for his wares among the whites.
“Prof. Washington concluded with an appeal to his race to use the opportunities that are right about them and thus grow independent.
“He has made a lasting impression on the minds of all who heard him. If he continues his wonderful career he will be classed with Douglass as a benefactor to the Negro race.”
The Memphis Commercial-Appeal a few days after this address was delivered contained an editorial concerning it. I quote that in full because it is among the first editorials from a Southern newspaper concerning my addresses and the work at Tuskegee, and also because it shows that the efforts put forth at Tuskegee in behalf of industrial education for the Negro have had the effect of awakening not only the Negroes but even the Southern whites to the necessity of more education of this kind. The editorial is as follows:
“Prof. Booker T. Washington, a short time since, delivered an address before the students of Fisk University, in which he advocated industrial education for the Negro race. The address has received considerable attention and evoked many favorable comments, and the theme is one worthy of far more consideration than it has ever received in the South. Our interest in the matter, however, does not particularly concern its application to the Negro. We are chiefly interested for the Southern whites and the South itself. The South is just about to enter an era of industrial development that will be almost without parallel. Its progress will be all the more rapid because of the long delay that has allowed other fields to be exhausted before the vast wealth of our natural resources began to be developed. The one great drawback to the development of the south has been the lack of skilled and educated labor, and in the great industrial awakening that is upon us the skill to manage and operate our mills and factories and convert our abundant crude material into finished products, must come from the North, unless something is done to educate our own people in the industrial arts. The opening of the eyes of the world to the vast natural wealth of the South will then simply mean that strangers will come in and dispossess our own people of their vintage and turn to their own account the opportunities we have never learned to employ. We must awake to the fact that we are face to face with a new civilization. The old order changeth giving place to the new. We must adjust ourselves to the changed conditions, or be left behind in the march of progress. We must catch the spirit of modern progress and achievement or be rooted out by those that have. The great men of this generation are not statesmen, lawyers, orators or poets. The richest rewards of intellectual effort go to those who know how to bring the forces of nature to aid the processes of production; in the natural era that is now upon us this will be especially true of the South. The men who have the capacity for taking active and effective part in the development of our resources, for the management of mills and factories, for contributing skilled labor to the fashioning of crude material into finished product, these are the men who will reap the mighty harvest and the men who will possess and rule our country. The same is true of the farm as well as the factory. The crude and unskilled methods of Southern agriculture must give way to more scientific tillage. If our own farmers cannot learn the lesson they must be displaced by those that know it.
“All the Southern States are doing much in the way of educating the people; but without disparaging the value of the learning obtained in our schools, how much of it goes to prepare the young for grappling with the conditions that surround them or will help to make them masters or successful workers in the great field of modern progress? Look at the vast wealth of undeveloped resources that encompasses almost every Southern community. Look at the fertile fields or the worn lands still in bondage to ignorant labor and an ante-bellum agricultural system. Will a knowledge of grammar or of Greek convert our coal, our iron and our timber into wealth, or make our fields bountiful with the harvest? The plain truth is that much of the learning obtained in our schools is wasted erudition. The young are not only not educated with reference to the conditions of the age, but their minds are carefully and systematically trained in other directions. They see no triumphs of intellect except in politics or the ‘learned professions.’ Their imaginations are inflamed by stories of how men from humble beginnings became great statesmen, great orators and great lawyers. The result is that thousands miserably fail because their little book learning has diverted them from occupations in which they might have achieved honorable success and even distinction. These men who might have become machinists become pettifogging lawyers, quack doctors or small-bore politicians. Industrial education is the great need of the South, because industrial skill and educated labor are to be the factors of its future progress, and these are to reap the richest rewards it will have to bestow. If our own children cannot be prepared to take their part in the great work, strangers will reap and enjoy the harvest.”
I wish to add here that there are few instances of a member of my race betraying a specific trust. One of the best illustrations of this which I know of, is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia, whom I met not long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio. I found that this man had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labor where and for whom he pleased. Finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his master some three hundred dollars. Notwithstanding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with interest, in his hands. In talking to me about this, the man told me that he knew he did not have to pay the debt, but he had given his word to his master, and his word he had never broken. He felt that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise.
CHAPTER X.
THE SPEECH AT THE OPENING OF THE COTTON STATES’ EXPOSITION, AND INCIDENTS CONNECTED THEREWITH.
So much has been said and written concerning the address which I delivered at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition in September, 1895, that it may not be out of place for me to explain in some detail how and why I received the invitation to deliver this address.