The next
thing was to decide upon the person who was thus to represent the
Negro race. After the question had been canvassed for several days,
the directors voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the
opening-day addresses, and in a few days after that I received the
official invitation.
The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of
responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my
position to appreciate. What were my feelings when this invitation
came to me? I remembered that I had been a slave; that my early years
had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that
I had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility
as this. It was only a few years before that time that any white man
in the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily
possible that some of my former owners might be present to hear me
speak.
I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of
the Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the
same platform with white Southern men and women on any important
National occasion. I was asked now to speak to an audience composed
of the wealth and culture of the white South, the representatives of
my former masters.
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