The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.1, page 336, Up from Slavery, 1901, U. of Illinois Press

The page presentation framework of the Booker T. Washington papers is designed to provide researchers worldwide with searchable access to the thousands of pages comprising the fourteen volumes, most of which are out of print. Adapted from the National Academy Press's Open Book framework, this framework allows searching down to the page level, provides sorting of search results chronologically, enables easy navigation across multiple volumes, and allows page-by-page local printing (via PDF) of every page.

[ Top of Page ]

[ Home ]

[ Contact Us ]

[ Help ]

OCRed data provided for searching only.
B O O K E R T . WA S H I N G T O N Autobiographical Writings of him for our school. This he has done, whether it was to make a personal donation or to use his influence in securing the donations of others. Judging from my personal acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland, I do not believe that he is conscious of possessing any colour prejudice. He is too great for that. In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls with the great outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least. I have also found that few things, if any, are capable of making one so blind and narrow as race prejudice. I often say to our students, in the course of my talks to them on Sunday evenings in the chapel, that the longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for and dying for, if need be—is the opportunity of making some one else more happy and more useful. The coloured people and the coloured newspapers at first seemed to be greatly pleased with the character of my Atlanta address, as well as with its reception. But after the first burst of enthusiasm began to die away, and the coloured people began reading the speech in cold type, some of them seemed to feel that they had been hypnotized. They seemed to feel that I had been too liberal in my remarks toward the Southern whites, and that I had not spoken out strongly enough for what they termed the ''rights'' of the race. For a while there was a reaction, so far as a certain element of my own race was concerned, but later these reactionary ones seemed to have been won over to my way of believing and acting. While speaking of changes in public sentiment, I recall that about ten years after the school at Tuskegee was established, I had an experience that I shall never forget. Dr. Lyman Abbott, then the pastor of Plymouth Church, and also editor of the Outlook (then the Christian Union), asked me to write a letter for his paper giving my opinion of the exact condition, mental and moral, of the coloured ministers in the South, as based upon my observations. I wrote the letter, giving the exact facts as I conceived them to be. The picture painted was a rather black one- or, since I am black, shall I say ''white''? It could 336