We have done well, but we can do better. A thousand years shall not erase from the pages of history the part that we have played upon the American stage of action. Do not falter now, my brethren, but rush to the help of the Negro Department with your banners floating in the breeze. We are pronounced an unsolved problem. We are quoted as a vexatious question, and the eyes of the world are upon us. We can solve this problem, we can answer this question, and we can charm the gaze of the world. When? May 1, 1897. Where? In the Negro Building. How? By filling it with suitable exhibits.
We are making history. The historian may neglect us, but there is a hand that is writing upon the wall—not our destruction, neither does it require a Daniel to read it. With the golden pen of time it dips into the crystal fluid of sympathy, and writes us as a nation, making rapid strides
Out of darkness into light,
Out of weakness into might.
It writes us as a nation upon the ocean of time, landing without anchor, oar, or sail. Thirty-three years ago, when we started out from the bonds of slavery with a legacy of poverty and ignorance, the canopy of heaven for our shelter, we were in a miserable, helpless condition. To-day we are a great nation, nearly 10,000,000 strong, with nearly $1,000,000,000 wealth. When the products of our hands are seen in the Tennessee Centennial, our government may be constrained to pay not only the debt of gratitude, but the debt of money that she owes us for the two hundred and forty-four years that we served her. Peradventure, she may be persuaded to protect us better as American citizens, and love us more as her hard-working, earnest, loyal sons and daughters, not of Africa, but of beautiful America, the queen of the world.