The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking. When
I entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured
portion of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white
people. I had been told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many
white people were going to be present to hear me speak, simply out of
curiosity, and that others who would be present would be in full
sympathy with me, there was a still larger element of the audience
which would consist of those who were going to be present for the
purpose of hearing me make a fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing
me say some foolish thing so that they could say to the officials who
had invited me to speak, "I told you so!"
One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my
personal friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr. was at the time General
Manager of the Southern Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on
that day. He was so nervous about the kind of reception that I would
have, and the effect that my speech would produce, that he could not
persuade himself to go into the building, but walked back and forth in
the grounds outside until the opening exercises were over.
CHAPTER XIV
THE ATLANTA EXPOSITION ADDRESS
THE Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address
as a representative of the Negro race, as stated in the last chapter,
was opened with a short address from Governor Bullock.
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