CHAPTER XIII
TWO THOUSAND MILES FOR A FIVE-MINUTE SPEECH
Soon after the opening of our boarding department, quite a number of
students who evidently were worthy, but who were so poor that they did not
have any money to pay even the small charges at the school, began applying
for admission. This class was composed of both men and women. It was a great
trial to refuse admission to these applicants, and in 1884 we established a
night-school to accommodate a few of them.
The night-school was organized on a plan similar to the one which I had
helped to establish at Hampton. At first it was composed of about a dozen
students. They were admitted to the night-school only when they had no money
with which to pay any part of their board in the regular day-school. It was
further required that they must work for ten hours during the day at some
trade or industry, and study academic branches for two hours during the
evening. This was the requirement for the first one or two years of their
stay. They were to be paid something above the cost of their board, with the
understanding that all of their earnings, except a very small part, were to
be reserved in the school’s treasury, to be used for paying their board in
the regular day-school after they had entered that department. The
night-school, started in this manner, has grown until there are at present
four hundred and fifty-seven students enrolled in it alone.
There could hardly be a more severe test of a student’s worth than this
branch of the Institute’s work. It is largely because it furnishes such a
good opportunity to test the backbone of a student that I place such high
value upon our night school. Any one who is willing to work ten hours a day
at the brick-yard, or in the laundry, through one or two years, in order
that he or she may have the privilege of studying academic branches for two
hours in the evening, has enough bottom to warrant being further educated.
After the student has left the night-school he enters the day-school, where
he takes academic branches four days in a week, and works at his trade two
days.
Besides this he usually works at his trade during the three summer months.
As a rule, after a student has succeeded in going through the night-school
test, he finds a way to finish the regular course in industrial and academic
training. No student, no matter how much money he may be able to command, is
permitted to go through school without doing manual labor. In fact, the
industrial work is now as popular as the academic branches. Some of the most
successful men and women who have graduated from the institution obtained
their start in the night school.
While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the work at
Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the religious and
spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational, but it is
thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the students is not
neglected. Our preaching service, prayer-meetings, Sunday school, Christian
Endeavor Society, Young Men’s Christian Association, and various
missionary organizations, testify to this.
In 1885, Miss Olivia Davidson, to whom I have already referred as being
largely responsible for the success of the school during its early history,
and I were married. During our married life she continued to divide her time
and strength between our home and the work for the school. She not only
continued to work in the school at Tuskegee, but also kept up her habit of
going North to secure funds. In 1889 she died, after four years of happy
married life and eight years of hard and happy work for the school. She
literally wore herself out in her never ceasing efforts in behalf of the
work that she so dearly loved. During our married life there were born to us
two bright, beautiful boys, Booker Taliaferro and Ernest Davidson. The older
of these, Booker, has already mastered the brick maker's trade at Tuskegee.
I have often been asked how I began the practice of public speaking. In
answer I would say that I never planned to give any large part of my life to
speaking in public. I have always had more of an ambition to do things than
merely to talk about doing them. It seems that when I went North with
General Armstrong to speak at the series of public meetings to which I have
referred, the President of the National Educational Association, the Hon.
Thomas W. Bicknell, was present at one of those meetings and heard me speak.
A few days afterward he sent me an invitation to deliver an address at the
next meeting of the Educational Association. This meeting was to be held in
Madison, Wis. I accepted the invitation. This was, in a sense, the beginning
of my public-speaking career.
On the evening that I spoke before the Association there must have been not
far from four thousand persons present. Without my knowing it, there were a
large number of people present from Alabama, and some from the town of
Tuskegee. These white people afterward frankly told me that they went to
this meeting expecting to hear the South roundly abused, but were pleasantly
surprised to find that there was no word of abuse in my address. On the
contrary, the South was given credit for all the praiseworthy things that it
had done. A white lady who was teacher in a college in Tuskegee wrote back
to the local paper that she was gratified, as well as surprised, to note the
credit which I gave the white people of Tuskegee for their help in getting
the school started. This address at Madison was the first that I had
delivered that in any large measure dealt with the general problem of the
races. Those who heard it seemed to be pleased with what I said and with the
general position that I took.
When I first came to Tuskegee, I determined that I would make it my home,
that I would take as much pride in the right actions of the people of the
town as any white man could do, and that I would, at the same time, deplore
the wrongdoing of the people as much as any white man. I determined never to
say anything in a public address in the North that I would not be willing to
say in the South. I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an
individual by abusinghim, and that this is more often accomplished by giving
credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention
alone to all the evil done.
While pursuing this policy I have not failed, at the proper time and in the
proper manner, to call attention, in no uncertain terms, to the wrongs which
any part of the South has been guilty of. I have found that there is a large
element in the South that is quick to respond to straightforward, honest
criticism of any wrong policy. As a rule, the place to criticize the South,
when criticism is necessary, is in the South- not in Boston. A Boston man
who came to Alabama to criticize Boston would not effect so much good, I
think, as one who had his word of criticism to say in Boston.
In this address at Madison I took the ground that the policy to be pursued
with reference to the races was, by every honorable means, to bring them
together and to encourage the cultivation of friendly relations, instead of
doing that which would embitter. I further contended that, in relation to
his vote, the Negro should more and more consider the interests of the
community in which he lived, rather than seek alone to please some one who
lived a thousand miles away from him and from his interests.
In this address I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely
upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through his
skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the
community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his
presence. I said that any individual who learned to do something better than
anybody else- learned to do a
common thing in an uncommon manner- had solved his problem, regardless of
the color of his skin, and that in proportion as the Negro learned to
produce what other people wanted and must have, in the same proportion would
he be respected.
I spoke of an instance where one of our graduates had produced two hundred
and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes from an acre of ground, in a
community where the average production had been only forty-nine bushels to
the acre. He had been able to do this by reason of his knowledge of the
chemistry of the soil and by his knowledge of improved methods of
agriculture. The white farmers in the neighborhood respected him, and came
to him for ideas regarding the raising of sweet potatoes. These white
farmers honored and respected him because he, by his skill and knowledge,
had added something to the wealth and the comfort of the community in which
he lived. I explained that my theory of education for the Negro would not,
for example, confine him for all time to farm life- to the production of the
best and the most sweet potatoes- but that, if he succeeded in this line of
industry, he could lay the foundations upon which his children and
grandchildren could grow to higher and more important things in life.
Such, in brief, were some of the views I advocated in this first address
dealing with the broad question of the relations of the two races, and since
that time I have not found any reason for changing my views on any important
point.
In my early life I used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any one who
spoke in bitter terms against the Negro, or who advocated measures that
tendedto oppress the black man or take from him opportunities for growth in
the most complete manner. Now, whenever I hear any one advocating measures
that are meant to curtail the development of another, I pity the individual
who would do this. I know that the one who makes this mistake does so
because of his own lack of opportunity for the highest kind of growth. I
pity him because I know that he is trying to stop the progress of the world,
and because I know that in time the development and the ceaseless advance of
humanity will make him ashamed of his weak and narrow position. One might as
well try to stop the progress of a mighty railroad train by throwing his
body across the track, as to try to stop the growth of the world in the
direction of giving mankind more intelligence, more culture, more skill,
more liberty, and in the direction of extending more sympathy and more
brotherly kindness.
The address which I delivered at Madison, before the National Educational
Association, gave me a rather wide introduction in the North, and soon after
that opportunities began offering themselves for me to address audiences
there.
I was anxious, however, that the way might also be opened for me to speak
directly to a representative Southern white audience. A partial opportunity
of this kind, one that seemed to me might serve as an entering wedge,
presented itself in 1893, when the international meeting of Christian
Workers was held at Atlanta, Ga. When this invitation came to me, I had
engagements in Boston that seemed to make it impossible for me to speak in
Atlanta. Still, after looking over my list of dates and places carefully, I
found that I could take a train from Boston that would get me into Atlanta
about thirty minutes before my address was to be delivered, and that I could
remain in that city about sixty minutes before taking another train for
Boston. My invitation to speak in Atlanta stipulated that I was to confine
my address to five minutes. The question, then, was whether or not I could
put enough into a five-minute address to make it worth while for me to make
such a trip.
I knew that the audience would be largely composed of the most influential
class of white men and women, and that it would be a rare opportunity for me
to let them know what we were trying to do at Tuskegee, as well as to speak
to them about the relations of the races. So I decided to make the trip. I
spoke for five minutes to an audience of two thousand people, composed
mostly of Southern and Northern whites. What I said seemed to be received
with favor and enthusiasm. The Atlanta papers of the next day commented in
friendly terms on my address, and a good deal was said about it in different
parts of the country. I felt that I had in some degree accomplished my
object- that of getting a hearing from the dominant class of the South.
The demands made upon me for public addresses continued to increase, coming
in about equal numbers from my own people and from Northern whites. I gave
as much time to these addresses as I could spare from the immediate work at
Tuskegee. Most of the addresses in the North were made for the direct
purpose of getting funds with which to support the school. Those delivered
before the colored people had for their main object the impressing upon them
of the importance of industrial and technical education in addition to
academic and religious training.
I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further than
anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be called
National. I refer to the address which I delivered at the opening of the
Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, at Atlanta, Ga.,
September 18, 1895.
So much has been said and written about this incident, and so many questions
have been asked me concerning the address, that perhaps I may be excused for
taking up the matter with some detail. The five-minute address in Atlanta,
which I came from Boston to deliver, was possibly the prime cause for an
opportunity being given me to make the second address there. In the spring
of 1895 I received a telegram from prominent citizens in Atlanta asking me
to accompany a committee from that city to Washington for the purpose of
appearing before a committee of Congress in the interest of securing
Government help for the Exposition. The committee was composed of about
twenty-five of the most prominent and most influential white men of Georgia.
All the members of this committee were white men except Bishop Grant, Bishop
Gaines, and myself. The mayor and several other city and state officials
spoke before the committee. They were followed by the two colored bishops.
My name was the last on the list of speakers. I had never before appeared
before such a committee, nor had I ever delivered any address in the capital
of the Nation. I had many misgivings as to what I ought to say, and as to
the impression that my address would make. While I cannot recall in detail
what I said, I remember that I tried to impress upon the committee, with all
the earnestness and plainness of any language that I could command, that if
Congress wanted to do something which would assist in ridding the South of
the race question and making friends between the two races, it should, in
every proper way, encourage the material and intellectual growth of both
races. I said that the Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for
both races to show what advance they had made since freedom, and would at
the same time afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress.
I tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be deprived by
unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone would not save him,
and that back of the ballot he must have property, industry, skill, economy,
intelligence, and character, and that no race without these elements could
permanently succeed. I said that in granting the appropriation Congress
could do something that would prove to be of real and lasting value to both
races, and that it was the first great opportunity of the kind that had been
presented since the close of the Civil War.
I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close of my
address to receive the hearty congratulations of the Georgia committee and
of the members of Congress who were present. The committee was unanimous in
making a favorable report, and in a few days the bill passed Congress. With
the passing of this bill the success of the Atlanta Exposition was assured.
Soon after this trip to Washington the directors of the Exposition decided
that it would be a fitting recognition of the colored race to erect a large
and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to showing the
progress of the Negro since freedom. It was further decided to have the
building designed and erected wholly by Negro mechanics. This plan was
carried out. In design, beauty, and general finish the Negro Building was
equal to the others on the grounds.
After it was decided to have a separate Negro exhibit, the question arose as
to who should take charge of it. The officials of the Exposition were
anxious that I should assume this responsibility, but I declined to do so,
on the plea that the work at Tuskegee at that time demanded my time and
strength. Largely at my suggestion, Mr. I. Garland Penn, of Lynchburg, Va.,
was selected to be at the head of the Negro department. I gave him all the
aid that I could. The Negro exhibit, as a whole, was large and creditable.
The two exhibits in this department which attracted the greatest amount of
attention were those from the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute.
The people who seemed to be the most surprised, as well as pleased, at what
they saw in the Negro Building were the Southern white people.
As the day for the opening of the Exposition drew near, the Board of
Directors began preparing the program for the opening exercises. In the
discussion from day to day of the various features of this program, the
question came up as to the advisability of putting a member of the Negro
race on for one of the opening addresses, since the Negroes had been asked
to take such a prominent part in the Exposition. It was argued, further,
that such recognition would mark the good feeling prevailing between the two
races. Of course there were those who were opposed to any such recognition
of the rights of the Negro, but the Board of Directors, composed of men who
represented the best and most progressive element in the South, had their
way, and voted to invite a black man to speak on the opening day. The next
thing was to decide upon the person who was thus to represent the Negro
race. After the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors
voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening day addresses, and
in a few days after that I received the official invitation.
The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of responsibility
that it would be hard for any one not placed in my position to appreciate.
What were my feelings when this invitation came to me? I remembered that I
had been a slave; that my early years had been spent in the lowest depths of
poverty and ignorance, and that I had had little opportunity to prepare me
for such a responsibility as this. It was only a few years before that time
that any white man in the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and
it was easily possible that some of my former owners might be present to
hear me speak.
I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the Negro
that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same platform with
white Southern men and women on any important National occasion. I was asked
now to speak to an audience composed of the wealth and culture of the white
South, the representatives of my former masters. I knew, too, that while the
greater part
of my audience would be composed of Southern people, yet there would be
present a large number of Northern whites, as well as a great many men and
women of my own race.
I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of my
heart to be true and right. When the invitation came to me, there was not
one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to what I should omit.
In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a tribute to me. They
knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in a large degree, the
success of the Exposition. I was also painfully conscious of the fact that,
while I must be true to my own race in my utterances, I had it in my power
to make such an ill-timed address as would result in preventing any similar
invitation being extended to a black man again for years to come. I was
equally determined to be true to the North, as well as to the best element
of the white South, in what I had to say.
The papers, North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming
speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more and
more widespread. Not a few of the Southern white papers were unfriendly to
the idea of my speaking. From my own race I received many suggestions as to
what I ought to say. I prepared myself as best I could for the address, but
as the eighteenth of September drew nearer, the heavier my heart became, and
the more I feared that my effort would prove a failure and a disappointment.
The invitation had come at a time when I was very busy with my school work,
as it was the beginning of our school year. After preparing my address, I
went through it, as I usually do with all those utterances which I consider
particularly important, with Mrs. Washington, and she approved of what I
intended to say. On the sixteenth of September, the day before I was to
start for Atlanta, so many of the Tuskegee teachers expressed a desire to
hear my address that I consented to read it to them in a body. When I had
done so, and had heard their criticisms and comments, I felt somewhat
relieved, since they seemed to think well of what I had to say.
On the morning of September 17, together with Mrs. Washington and my three
children, I started for Atlanta. I felt a good deal as I suppose a man feels
when he is on his way to the gallows. In passing through the town of
Tuskegee I met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the country. In
a jesting manner this man said: “Washington, you have spoken before the
Northern white people, the Negroes in the South, and to us country white
people in the South; but in Atlanta, to-morrow, you will have before you the
Northern whites, the Southern whites, and the Negroes all together. I am
afraid that you have got yourself into a tight place.” This farmer
diagnosed the situation correctly, but his frank words did not add anything
to my comfort.
In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both colored and white
people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with perfect
freedom, in my hearing, what was going to take place the next day. We were
met by a committee in Atlanta. Almost the first thing that I heard when I
got off the train in that city was an expression something like this, from
an old colored man near
by: “Dat’s de man of my race what’s gwine to make a speech at de
Exposition tomorrow. I’se sho’ gwine to hear him.” Atlanta was
literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts of this country,
and with representatives of foreign governments, as well as with military
and civic organizations. The afternoon papers had forecasts of the next day’s
proceedings in flaring headlines. All this tended to add to my burden. I did
not sleep much that night. The next morning, before day, I went carefully
over what I intended to say. I also kneeled down and asked God’s blessing
upon my effort.
Right here, perhaps, I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before
an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon what I
want to say.
I always make it a rule to make especial preparation for each separate
address. No two audiences are exactly alike. It is my aim to reach and talk
to the heart of each individual audience, taking it into my confidence very
much as I would a person. When I am speaking to an audience, I care little
for how what I am saying is going to sound in the newspapers, or to another
audience, or to an individual. At the time, the audience before me absorbs
all my sympathy, thought, and energy.
Early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in the
procession which was to march to the Exposition grounds. In this procession
were prominent colored citizens in carriages, as well as several Negro
military organizations. I noted that the Exposition officials seemed to go
out of their way to see
that all of the colored people in the procession were properly placed and
properly treated. The procession was about three hours in reaching the
Exposition grounds, and during all of this time the sun was shining down
upon us disagreeably hot. When we reached the grounds, the heat, together
with my nervous anxiety, made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse,
and to feel that my address was not going to be a success. When I entered
the audience-room, I found it packed with humanity from bottom to top, and
there were thousands outside who could not get in.
The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking. When I entered
the room, there were vigorous cheers from the colored portion of the
audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people. I had been told,
while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people were going to be
present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity and that others who would
be present would be in full sympathy with me, there was a still larger
element of the audience which would consist of those who were going to be
present for the purpose of hearing me make a fool of myself, or, at least,
of hearing me say some foolish thing, so that they could say to the
officials who had invited me to speak, “I told you so!” One of the
trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal friend, Mr.
William H. Baldwin, Jr., was at one time General Manager of the Southern
Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on that day. He was so nervous about
the kind of reception that I would have, and the effect that my speech would
produce,
that he could not persuade himself to go into the building, but walked back
and forth in the grounds outside until the opening exercises were over.