Those delivered before the coloured people had
for their main object the impressing upon them the importance of
industrial and technical education in addition to academic and
religious training.
I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to
have excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went
further than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense
might be called National. I refer to the address which I delivered at
the opening of the Atlanta Cotton states and International Exposition,
at Atlanta, Ga., September 18, 1895.
So much has been said and written about this incident, and so many
questions have been asked me concerning the address, that perhaps I
may be excused for taking up the matter with some detail. The five-
minute address in Atlanta, which I came from Boston to deliver, was
possibly the prime cause for an opportunity being given me to make the
second address there. In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram
from prominent citizens in Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee
from that city to Washington for the purpose of appearing before a
committee of Congress in the interest of securing Government help for
the Exposition. The committee was composed of about twenty-five of
the most prominent and most influential white men of Georgia.
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