The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.13, page 497, Jan. 1899, U. of Illinois Press

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ADDE N DA though ~ stand in New York, ~ cannot forbear adding that ~ should be false to the highest interests of my race, false to the South, and false to my whole country, if ~ did not assert, notwithstanding the inexcusable wrong which you and ~ unite in condemning, which has been perpetrated against my race in the South during the last three months, that there are native Southern white men whose hearts beat in just as earnest sympathy for aD that concerns the highest and permanent interest of the negro as is true of any found in any section of our country. Their way may not be the negro's way, their way may not be your way or my way; but since the end they seek is the same end that you and I seek, and that the negro seeks for himself, we should lend those of the Southern whites, whose hearts are right, our aid and sympathy in every honest, manly way, where no sacrifice of principle is involved. This assertion ~ make after an experience of seventeen years in the heart of the South. In the third place it was unfortunate that the wisest and best element of the Southern white people did not at the beginning of our freedom take the negro by the hand, and enter heartily into his preparation for citizenship, and thus convince the negro by indisputable evidence, before his political affections were alienated, that his interest was identical with that of the Southern white man and that he could find no better friend in any State than he was. It has been equally unfortunate that the negro has long retained the idea that any member of his own race who sought in a manly, independent, and unselfish manner to thus encourage the Southerner to enter into active sympathy with the negro must necessarily be a trimmer or traitor to the highest interest of his race. Friends of humanity, raise yourselves above yourselves, above race, above party, above everything, if you can save the highest welfare of ten millions of my people, whose interests are permanently interwoven by decree of God with those of sixty millions of yours, and seek with me a way out of this great race-problem, which hangs over our country, like a shadow of death, by night and by day; find any method of escape save that of patiently, wisely, bravely, manfully bringing the Southern white man and the negro into closer sympathetic and friendly relations through education, industrial, and business development and that touch of high Christian sympathy which makes all the world akin, 497