The Story of My Life and Work

by Booker T. Washington

GIRLS AT TUSKEGEE ENGAGED AT FLORICULTURE.

the ownership of property, industrial and business development, rather than mere political agitation.

“The highest test of civilization of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate. A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up. Surely no people ever had a greater chance to exhibit the highest Christian fortitude and magnanimity than is now presented to the people of Louisiana. It requires little wisdom or statesmanship to repress, to crush out, to retard the hopes and aspirations of a people, but the highest and most profound statesmanship is shown in guiding and stimulating a people so that every fibre in the body, mind and soul shall be made to contribute in the highest degree to the usefulness and nobility of the State. It is along this line that I pray God the thoughts and activities of your Convention be guided.”

This letter was sent out through the Associated Press widely through the country. The leading papers of New Orleans as well as many parts of the South indorsed my position editorially. The law that was finally passed by the Convention, while not as bad as when first presented to the Convention, was not by any means the law that should have been enacted. In June of the same year I delivered the annual address before the Regents of the University of New York, at Albany, and was the guest while in that city of the Hon. Mr. McElroy, brother-in-law to the late President Chester A. Arthur. It was the original plan to have this address in the Senate Chamber, but the audience was so large that the plan was changed, and the meeting was held in one of the large churches in the city.

CHAPTER XV.
CUBAN EDUCATION AND THE CHICAGO PEACE JUBILEE ADDRESS.

Immediately after the close of the Spanish-American war the Tuskegee Institute started a movement to bring a number of Cuban and Porto Rican students to Tuskegee, for the purpose of receiving training. The idea was pretty generally endorsed, and within a reasonably short time enough funds were donated by individuals throughout the country to provide for the education of ten students from Cuba and Porto Rico. These students are now at Tuskegee taking the regular courses of training and are making a creditable record. It is the plan to have them return to their island homes and give their people the benefit of their education.

Perhaps no single agency has been more potent during the last ten years in assisting the Negro to better his condition than the John F. Slater Fund, to which I have already referred. The trustees of this fund are among the most successful and generous business men in the country, and they are using the fund very largely as a means of pointing the proper direction of the education of the Negro. During 1898 the Slater Fund trustees made an appropriation which was to be used in enabling Mrs. Washington and myself to go into all of the Southern cities and deliver lectures to our people, especially in the large cities, speaking to them plainly about their present material, financial, physical, educational and moral needs, and trying to point out a way by which they could improve. We spent a portion of the summer of 1898 in going into cities in North and South Carolina. Meetings were held in Greensboro, Wilmington, Columbia and Charleston, and everywhere we spoke the houses were packed full. We spoke four or five times in Charleston, and the audience rooms were crowded at every meeting with representatives of both races. We have the satisfaction of feeling that these meetings accomplished a great deal of good, and everywhere we were overwhelmed with thanks from the people for our words. The newspapers gave us all the space we desired and helped not only through their news columns, but were generous in their editorial mention.

When the Spanish-American war closed there was great rejoicing throughout the country and many cities vied with each other in their effort to celebrate the return of peace on a scale that would command the attention of the whole country. The city of Chicago, however, seemed to have been the most successful in these celebrations. Chicago was fortunate in securing the President of the United States, together with nearly all the members of his cabinet and various foreign ministers and other important officials. This gave the celebration in Chicago a national importance such as attached to the celebration of no other city which held one.