I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race; and if our colored fellow citizens do not from your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed. Yours very truly,
Grover Cleveland.
All of it was written with his own hand. From that time until the present, Mr. Cleveland has taken the deepest interest in Tuskegee and has been among my warmest and most helpful friends.
After I returned to Tuskegee I continued to be deluged with letters of congratulation and endorsement of my position. I received all kinds of propositions from lecture bureaus, editors of magazines, etc., to take the lecture platform and write articles. One lecture bureau went as far as to offer me $50,000, or $200 a night, if I would place my services at its disposition for a given period of time. To all these communications I replied that my life work was at Tuskegee, and that wherever I should speak it must be in the interest of my race and the institution at Tuskegee, and that I could not accept any engagements that would seem to place a mere commercial value on my addresses. From that time until the present I have continued to receive liberal offers from lecture bureaus for my services. Only a few weeks ago the following letter came to me, but I have continued to refuse, as I expect to do in the future, to become a professional lecturer at any price:
Central Lyceum Bureau,
Chicago, Ill., November 29, 1897.
Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee, Ala.
My Dear Sir:—“If you will give us exclusive control of your lecture business for next summer and winter, season of 1898-99, I am confident I can make you more money than you have made this season on the platform. Would you consider an offer of say ten thousand dollars and all expenses for one hundred nights. Please let me hear from you and oblige, Yours very truly,
Fred Pelham.”
Soon after receiving the letter quoted above, I received a proposition from a lecture bureau in Boston offering me at the rate of $200 per night for my lectures for as long a time as I would give them my services at this rate, but I declined. Although I refused to become a professional lecturer for personal gain, I did not keep silent, but continued to work and speak in behalf of Tuskegee.
In the fall of 1895 I continued addressing large audiences in the states of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and in the Western states. During my trip to the West I addressed the Hamilton Club and was its guest while in the city of Chicago. The Hamilton Club is one of the largest and most influential political organizations of Republican faith in the West. While in Chicago for the purpose of addressing the Hamilton Club I was invited by Dr. Harper, the president of the University of Chicago, to deliver an address before the students of the University, which I did and was treated with great consideration and kindness by all of the officers of the University.