The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, page 308, Sept. 1886, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers tact with BTW, a relationship that became more of a rivalry as they competed for favors and funds from the Alabama legislature and northern philanthropists. In ~ 887 Councill attracted wide attention when he complained to the Interstate Commerce Commission of harsh treatment on an Alabama railroad, an action that prompted his superiors to relieve him of his duties as president of Alabama A & M for one year. The experience may have helped alter his position on the proper role for a black man to play in the South, for after that he advocated accommodation and acceptance of second-class citizenship to the point that one historian has spoken of his ''unctuous sycophancy,'' and that prompted BTW to characterize him as ''simply toadying to white people.'' (Meter, Negro Thought in America, `880`9~5, 77, loo.) Under his leadership the school at Huntsville became second only to Tuskegee in size among Alabama Negro industrial schools. According to Horace Mann Bond, Councill ''was plainly an adroit and shrewd student of the foibles and prejudices of his white contemporaries, and bent his educational and public career to take best advantage of the susceptibilities of his masters.'' (Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, cop.) Councill combined his accommodationist position with an advocacy of racial solidarity and self-help and support for the redemption of Africa, even aiding Bishop Turner's emigrationist movement. An A.M.E. minister and learned enough in the law to be admitted to practice before the Alabama Supreme Court, Councill published widely in newspapers and journals and wrote an early history of Negroes, Lamp of Wisdom, or Race History Illuminated (~898). 2 Robert L. Langston entered the preparatory class in 1883 and returned for the 1884-85 school year. 3 Presumably a newsletter published by the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College. A Speech before the Unitarian National Conferences Saratoga, New York, Sept. 2 ~ ~ 8'86 OUR OPPORTUNITY THROUGH THE SOUTH The opportunities in the South are so many and varied that it is difficult to attempt to point out the direction in which most good can be done. But on one point all will readily agree: there is no lack of opportunities to give and all will agree too that there is help that helps and help that does not help. When our good Unitarian friends take it for granted that every one hailing from the South clothed in a black skin or in a white skin claiming Northern charity by virtue of his being a Negro or being connected with some Negro educational or religious enterprise, presents an opportunity through which to aid the South they help in a way that does not help. Now I claim that we are entitled to nothing either good or bad because we are black men. We deserve 308