Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 159
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minutes ago, as you were singing so fervently our national anthem, 'America,' as
I looked over the sea of earnest, intelligent faces, I wondered how on earth we
could sing that song for a hundred years or more--I wondered how it was
possible to keep a race like yours enslaved while, for years and years, the people
of this nation sang that last line of that song, 'Let freedom ring!!!'" (Prolonged
applause, tumultuous cheering, and the waving of countless handkerchiefs as
Mr. Wanamaker resumed his seat.)
Aside from having the successful colored men and women tell one another and
their less-successful fellows how they had achieved their success at these
sessions of the league, Booker Washington also arranged to have one or more
prominent white men speak. His reason for this, aside from the obvious one of
helping to foster friendly feeling between the races, was, it may safely be
hazarded, to impress upon his people that white people succeed by the
possession and the application of the same qualities which bring success to
colored people. At the Chicago meeting of the league in 1912 Julius Rosenwald
spoke--Julius Rosenwald, the Jewish philanthropist who has done and is doing
so much to help the Negro. It was he who offered $25,000 to any city in the
United States which would raise $75,000 for a Young Men's Christian
Association Building for colored men. It is he also who is helping Tuskegee in
the building of rural schoolhouses as was explained in the third chapter. He is
one of Tuskegee's trustees.
The late Robert C. Ogden, the New York manager of the
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Wanamaker business, addressed the convention of 1905 in New York. He was a
man whom Booker Washington delighted to hold up to his people as an
example of what a man could accomplish through his own unaided efforts. He
had begun his business career at a salary of $5 a week, and from that as his
starting-point he had risen to be the New York head of the greatest department
store business in the country. He was for twenty-five years President of the
Board of Trustees of Hampton, a member of the Tuskegee Board, and the
originator and host of the annual educational pilgrimages which gave leading
Northerners a first hand and intelligent insight into the dire need of education
for the masses of the people both white and black throughout the South. Much
of the educational activity in the South to-day may be traced to the early Ogden
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