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Mr. Booker T. Washington h:'96 delivered a forcible address in the Living Room of the Union last evening, which clearly illustrated the conditions in the South today and showed the marvelous advance of the negro, as a result of education, since the proclamation of freedom forty years ago. The speaker was introduced by President Eliot, who emphasized the importance of young men getting a clear conception of what Mr. Washington rose from.
After a brief sketch of his life, vividly portraying the difficulties which he had to surmount, from the day when he was a slave boy to the time when he was a slave boy to the time when he graduated from the Hampton Institute, he outlined the growth and progress of the Tuskegee Institute. The institute, he outlined the growth and progress of the Tuskegee institute. The institute began with a membership of one teacher and thirty students. The school-house was a shanty of small dimensions. Now there are 156 teachers and 1500 men and women coming from 36 states and eight foreign countries. About 80 buildings are operated at an expense of $200,000, and, except in four cases, all the buildings were erected and completed by the students themselves. Of the 6,000 alumni a large proportion are now engaged in promoting education throughout the South.
Preliminary to the study of books, Mr. Washington emphasized the importance of bringing the negro down to earth by manual labor. As a result of education the ideas of the negro have greatly changed. Instead of regarding manual labor as degrading, the educated negro now considers it distinctly honorable. There is a great difference between working and being worked--the one means civilization, the other servitude. The same is true with reference to the race as to the individual. Any race which is uneducated is apt to yield to the temptation of going from one extreme to another. The Anglo-Saxon race should then not judge the black race too severely, but should compare its progress with that of nations longer civilized. It would then be seen that the rapid advance of the negroes has been almost unprecedented.
The negro must learn to honor manual labor, for this is merely the foundation of higher civilization. Crime is committed only by vagrants and by the ignorant. In order to better conditions in the South and to diminish racial feeling, the leaders of the blacks must gain self-control and must not become embittered, for such men lose a large percentage of their power to accomplish good. It is not by racial hatred that the great problem which confronts us today is to be solved, it is by co-operation between the two races.
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