Up From Slavery: an autobiographyDeals partly with the establishment of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. |
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Alabama American Armstrong asked Atlanta Atlanta Exposition audience began Booker Boston bricks building cabin called citizens clothing coal-mine coloured degree earnest effort Exposition fact feeling felt Fort Wagner friends gave girls give Governor Hampton Institute hard heard honour hundred individual industrial interest invitation J. L. M. Curry kind knew labour ladies large number learned lesson live Malden master meeting Miss Davidson months morning mother nearly Negro never night night-school opportunity persons plantation Porter Hall President race recall received Robert Gould Shaw Ruffner Samuel Chapman Armstrong secure seemed slavery slaves soon South Southern white Spanish-American war speak taught teach teachers thing tion town of Tuskegee trying Tuskegee Institute vote wanted Washington weeks West Virginia whole women young
Popular passages
Page 221 - In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
Page 39 - I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
Page 219 - Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.
Page 220 - Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life...
Page 40 - I have heard members of any race claiming rights and privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. I have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race...
Page 220 - Cast down your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions of negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of...
Page 127 - Since this was true, we wanted to be careful not to education our students out of sympathy with agricultural life, so that they would be attracted from the country to the cities, and yield to the temptation of trying to live by their wits. We wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the...
Page 220 - No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities. To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are.
Page 221 - As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.
Page 217 - When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from the coloured people. As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them.