The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.4, page 197, July 1896, U. of Illinois Press

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J ULY · I 8 9 6 grown to the point where ~ can sympathize with the southern white man as much as I can sympathize with the northern. white man. To me ''A maIl's a man for a' that.'' I believe, as a race, we strengthen ourselves at every point in extending this symmetry, for no race can go on cherishing hatred and ill-will toward another race without being lowered and degraded in all of those elements that go to perpetuate a strong, growing, and generous manhood and womanhood. I propose, in other words, that no race or individual shall drag me down by making me hate him. This problem will work itself out in the South in proportion as the negro's skill and intelligence and character can produce something the white man wants or that the white man respects; hence the value of industrial education. One race respects another in proportion as it contributes to the markets of the world. When you consider that question closely, one white man don't care a great deal about another white man unless he has got something that he wants in the way of culture, or influence, or property, or sometimes a daughter. The black man who has a mortgage on a dozen white men's houses will have no trouble in his intercourse with the white men. The black man who spends $~o,ooo a year in freight charges with one of the southern railroads can select his own seat in the railroad coach? or else a Pullman palace car will be put on for his special accommodation. When the black man develops to the point where by reason of his knowledge and improved skiD.in agriculture he cart produce forty bushels of corn alongside of the white man producing but twenty in the same kind of soil, then the white man will come to the black man to learn. They will sit down and talk about it, and ~ believe the black man will be a good friend to the white man. When the black man has $50,000 to loan, he will never want for friends and borrowers among his white neighbors. It is meet, it is right that all the privileges guaranteed to us by the constitution be sacredly guarded; but it is vastly more important that we be prepared as a race for the exercise of these privileges. Those who suffered and fell on the field of battle performed their duty faithfully and well. But a duty remains for you and me. The mere fiat of law could not make a dependent man an independent man; could not make an ignorant father an intelligent father; could not make one race respect another. These results will come to the i97