Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

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some of the most promising Haitian boys and girls to be sent to schools in the
United States. Here is an opportunity for us to use our influence and power in
giving the Haitians something they have never had, and that is education, real
education. At least 95 per cent. of the people, as I have said, are unlettered and
ignorant so far as books are concerned."
Booker Washington's self-control was never more needed than on an occasion at
Tuskegee described by T. Thomas Fortune, the Negro author and publicist. A
Confederate veteran who had lost an arm fighting for the Confederacy and who
had served for a number of years in Congress was on the program to speak at a
Tuskegee meeting. This Confederate veteran had a great liking for Mr.
Washington and believed in his ideas on the importance of industrial education
for the colored people. Mr. Fortune says:
"John C. Dancy, a colored man, at that time Collector of Customs at
Wilmington, N. C., was to speak first, the Confederate veteran second, and I
was to follow the latter. Mr. Dancy is an unusually bright and eloquent man.
Mr. Dancy paid a glowing tribute to the New England men and women who had
built up the educational interest among the colored people after the war, of
which Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes are lasting monuments. Mr. Dancy had
plenty of applause from the great concourse of countrymen, but his address
made the white speaker furious. When the former Congressman was called upon
to speak he showed plainly that he was agitated out of his
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self-restraint. Without any introductory remarks whatever, he said, as I
remember it:
"'I have written this address for you,' waving it at the audience, 'but I will not
deliver it. I want to give you niggers a few words of plain talk and advice. No
such address as you have just listened to is going to do you any good; it's going
to spoil you. You had better not listen to such speeches. You might just as well
understand that this is a white man's country, as far as the South is concerned,
and we are going to make you keep your place. Understand that. I have nothing
more to say to you.'
"The audience was taken back as much by the bluntness of the remarks as if
they had been doused with cold water. Indignation was everywhere visible on
24.03.2006