The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.1, page 335, Up from Slavery, 1901, U. of Illinois Press

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Up from Slavery I 9 O I whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of the Tuskegee school and my race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a mere commercial value upon my services. Some days after its delivery I sent a copy of my address to the President of the United States, the Hon. Grover Cleveland. ~ received from him the following autograph reply: Booker T. Washington, Esq.: Gray Gables Buzzard's Bay, Mass., October 6, 1895 My Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered at the Atlanta Exposition. 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 coloured 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 Later I met Mr. Cleveland, for the first time, when, as President, he visited the Atlanta Exposition. At the request of myself and others he consented to spend an hour in the Negro Building, for the purpose of inspecting the Negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him. As soon as I met Mr. Cleveland I became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged honesty. I have met him many times since then, both at public functions and at his private residence in Princeton, and the more I see of him the more I admire him. When he visited the Negro Building in Atlanta he seemed to give himself up wholly, for that hour, to the coloured people. He seemed to be as careful to shake hands with some old coloured ''auntie'' clad partially in rags, and to take as much pleasure in doing so, as if he were greeting some millionnaire. Many of the coloured people took advantage of the occasion to get him to write his name in a book or on a slip of paper. He was as careful and patient in doing this as if he were putting his signature to some great state document. Mr. Cleveland has not only shown his friendship for me in many personal ways, but has always consented to do anything I have asked 335