n Booker T. Washington, and not
because he so much surpassed the others in eloquence, but because of
what he represented with so much earnestness and faith. And it is
this that all of that small but gallant band of colored men who are
publicly fighting the cause of their race have behind them. Even those
who oppose them know that these men have the eternal principles of
right on their side, and they will be victors even though they should
go down in defeat. Beside them I feel small and selfish. I am an
ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are
men who are making history and a race. I, too, might have taken part
in a work so glorious.

My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am and keeps me
from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little
box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only
tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed
talent, I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen
the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.

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by James Weldon Johnson

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