“President’s Office.
“Dear Mr. Washington:—
“Would it be agreeable to you to be one of the Judges of Award in the Department of Education at Atlanta? If so, I shall be glad to place your name upon the list.
Yours very truly,
D. C. Gilman.
“A line by telegraph will be welcomed.”
I was more surprised to receive this invitation to act on the board of jurors than to receive the invitation to speak at the opening of the Exposition, for it became a part of my duty as one of the jurors not only to pass on the exhibits from Negro schools but those from the white schools as well throughout the country. I accepted this position and spent a month in Atlanta in connection with my duties as one of the jurors. The board was a large one, consisting in all of sixty members, including such well known persons as the following: Dr. D. C. Gilman, of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. I. S. Hopkins, secretary of the jury and president of the Georgia School of Technology; General Henry Abbott, United States engineer; President C. K. Adams, president of the University of Wisconsin; Chancellor of the University of St. Louis; President Charles W. Dabney, of the University of Virginia; Miss Grace Dodge, of New York; Dr. Charles Mohr, an expert in forestry, of Mobile; Mr. Gofford Pinchot, Biltmore, N. C.; Professor Ira Remsen, editor of the American Journal of Chemistry; Professor Eugene A. Smith, state geologist of Alabama; Professor C. P. Vanderford, of the Univerity of Tennessee, and others equally prominent.
When the section of jurors on education met for organization Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, the Southern author, who was a member of the board, made a motion that I be made secretary of the section on education. This motion was carried without a dissenting vote. Nearly half of the board of jurors were Southern men. We were quite intimately associated together for a month, and during this time our association was most pleasant and cordial in every respect. In performing my duty in connection with the inspection of the exhibits from the various white institutions, in each instance I was treated with the greatest respect. At the close of our labors a large photograph of the group of jurors was taken. We parted from each other with the greatest regret.
In making up their awards the board of jurors awarded but three gold medals to institutions of learning, and the Tuskegee school got one of the three. As I was a member of the board I insisted that Tuskegee should not be permitted to compete for a medal, but I was overruled in this, and the medal given, regardless of my protests. The exhibit which the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute made, except that from the Hampton Institute, was the largest and most comprehensive in the Negro Building.
Without referring to the many newspaper comments, it will be wisest to let the newspaper war correspondent, who was at that time in Atlanta as a representative of the New York World, relate the impression my speech seemed to make. He wrote the following for the World:
“Mrs. Thompson, head of the Women’s Department, had scarcely taken her seat, when all eyes were turned on a tall, tawny Negro sitting in the front row on the platform. It was Prof. Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee (Ala.) Normal and Industrial Institute, who must rank from this time forth as the foremost man of his race in America. Gilmore’s band played the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ and the audience cheered. The tune was changed to ‘Dixie,’ and the audience roared with shrill ki-yi’s. Again the music changed to ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and the clamor lessened.