remain in that city before taking another
train for Boston. My invitation to speak in Atlanta stipulated that
I was to confine my address to five minutes. The question, then, was
whether or not I could put enough into a five-minute address to make it
worth while for me to make such a trip.

I knew that the audience would be largely composed of the most
influential class of white men and women, and that it would be a
rare opportunity for me to let them know what we were trying to do at
Tuskegee, as well as to speak to them about the relations of the races.
So I decided to make the trip. I spoke for five minutes to an audience
of two thousand people, composed mostly of Southern and Northern whites.
What I said seemed to be received with favour and enthusiasm. The
Atlanta papers of the next day commented in friendly terms on my
address, and a good deal was said about it in different parts of the
country. I felt that I had in some degree accomplished my object--that
of getting a hearing from the dominant class of the South.

The demands made upon me for public addresses continued to increase,
coming in about equal numbers from my own people and from Northern
whites. I gave as much time to these addresses as I could spare from the
immediate work at Tuskegee. Most of the addresses in the North were
made for the direct purpose of getting funds with which to support the
school. Those delivered before the coloured people had for their
main object the impressing upon them the importance of industrial and
technical education in addition to academic and religious training.

I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
called National. I refer to the address which I delivered at the opening
of the Atlanta Cotton states and International Exposition, at Atlanta,
Ga., September 18, 1895.

So much has been said and written about this incident, and so many
questions have been asked me concerning the address, that perhaps I may
be excused for taking up the matter with some detail. The five-minute
address in Atlanta, which I came from Boston to deliver, was possibly
the prime cause for an opportunity being given me to make the second
address there. In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from
prominent citizens in Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from
that