The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.4, page 288, May 1897, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers committee whose untiring energy has made this memorial possible, to the family who gave their only boy that we might have life more- abundantly, that message would be, ''Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain, that up from the depth of ignorance and poverty, we are coming, and if we come through oppression out of the struggle, we are gaining strength. By the way of the school, the well cultivated field, the skilled hand, the Christian home, we are coming up; that we propose to invite all who will to step up and occupy this position with us. Tell them that we are learning that standing ground for the race, as for the individual, must be laid in intelligence, industry, thrift and property, not as an end, but as a means to the highest privileges; that we are learning that neither the conqueror's bullet nor that of law, could make an ignorant voter an intelligent voter, could make a dependent man an independent man, could give one citizen respect for another, a bank account, nor a foot of land, nor an enlightened fireside. Tell them that, as grateful as we are to artist and patriotism for placing the figures of Shaw and his comrades in physical form of beauty and magnificence, that after all, the real monument, the greater monument, is being slowly but safely builded among the lowly in the South, in the struggles and sacrifices of a race to justify all that has been done and suffered for it.'' One of the wishes that lay nearest Col. Shaw's heart was, that his black troops might be permitted to fight by the side of white soldiers. Have we not lived to see that wish realized, and will it not be more so in the future? Not at Wagner, not with rifle arid bayonet, but on the field of peace, in the battle of industry, In the struggle for good government, In the lifting up of the lowest to the fullest opportunities. In this we shall fight by the side of white men, North and South. And if this be true, as under God's guidance it will, that old flag, that emblem of progress and security, which brave Sergeant Carney never permitted to fall on the ground, will still be borne aloft by Southern soldier and Northern soldier, and in a more potent and higher sense, we shall all realize that ''The sIave's chain and the master's alike are broken; The one curse of the race held both in tether; They are rising, all are rising The black and the white together.'' PD Con. 955 BTW Papers DLG. The speech also appeared in the Tuskegee Student, :~ (July 1897), I, 4. 288