The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 257, 16 July 1884, U. of Illinois Press

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JULY · 1884 men work that they may be able to remain in school, while the miserable unlettered ''brother in white'' would say, ''You can't learn a Digger anything.'' Brains, property, and character for the Negro will settle the question of civil rights. The best course to pursue in regard to the civil rights bill ~ the South is to let it alone; let it alone and it will settle itself. Good school teachers and plenty of money to pay them will be more potent in settling the race question than many civil rights bills and investigating committees. A young colored physicians went into the city of Montgomery, Alabama, a few months ago to practise his profession he was the first to professionally enter the exConfederate capital. When his white brother physicians found out by a six days' examination that he had brains enough to pass a better examination, as one of them said, than many of the whites had passed, they gave him a hearty welcome and offered their services to aid him in consultation or in any other way possible—and they are standing manfully up to their promise. Let there be in a community a Negro who by virtue of his superior knowledge of the chemistry of the soil, his acquaintance with the most improved tools and best breeds of stock, can raise fifty bushels of corn to the acre while his white neighbor only raises thirty; and the white man will come to the black man to learn. Further, they will sit down on the same train, in the same coach and on the same seat, to talk about it. Harmony will come in proportion as the black man gets something that the white man wants, whether it be of brains or of material. Some of the county whites looked at first with disfavor on the establishing of a normal school in Tuskegee. It turned out that there was no brick yard in the county; merchants and farmers wanted to build, but bricks must be brought from a distance or they must wait for one house to burn down before building another. The Normal School with student labor started a brick yard. Several kilns of bricks were burned; the whites came from miles around for bricks. From examining bricks they were led to examine the workings of the school. From the discussion of the brick yard came the discussion of Negro education and thus many of the ''old masters'' have been led to see and become interested in Negro education. In Tuskegee a Negro mechanics manufactures the best tinware, the best harness, the best boots and shoes, and it is common to see his store crowded with white customers from all over the county. His word or note goes as far as that of the whitest man. I repeat for emphasis that any work looking towards the permanent 257