ions of statesmen had wrangled
over, and a million men fought about, and that had so dwarfed the mass
of English men in the Southern States as to hold them back a hundred
years behind their fellows in every other part of the world--in England,
in Australia, and in the Northern and Western States; I was thinking of
this dark shadow that had oppressed every large-minded statesman from
Jefferson to Lincoln. These thousand young men and women about me were
victims of it. I, too, was an innocent victim of it. The whole Republic
was a victim of that fundamental error of importing Africa into America.
I held firmly to the first article of my faith that the Republic
must stand fast by the principle of a fair ballot; but I recalled the
wretched mess that Reconstruction had made of it; I recalled the
low level of public life in all the "black" States. Every effort of
philanthropy seemed to have miscarried, every effort at correcting
abuses seemed of doubtful value, and the race friction seemed to become
severer. Here was the century-old problem in all its pathos seated
singing before me. Who were the more to be pitied--these innocent
victims of an ancient wrong, or I and men like me, who had inherited
the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and theories, and was
willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do whatever in God's name
a man might do towards saving the next generation from such a burden.
But I felt the weight of twenty well-nigh hopeless years of thought and
reading and observation; for the old difficulties remained and new
ones had sprung up. Then I saw clearly that the way out of a century
of blunders had been made by this man who stood beside me and was
introducing me to this audience. Before me was the material he had used.
All about me was the indisputable evidence that he had found the
natural line of development. He had shown the way. Time and patience and
encouragement and work would do the rest.

It was then more clearly than ever before that I understood the
patriotic significance of Mr. Washington's work. It is this conception
of it and of him that I have ever since carried with me. It is on this
that his claim to our gratitude rests.

To teach the Negro to read, whether English, or Greek, or Hebrew,
butters no parsnips. To make the Negro work, that is what his master did
in one way and hunger has done in another; yet both these left Southern
life where they found it. But to teach the Negro t