Nothing has happened since Henry Grady's immortal speech before
the New England society in New York that indicates so profoundly
the spirit of the New South, except, perhaps, the opening of the
Exposition itself.
When Professor Booker T. Washington, Principal of an
industrial school for coloured people in Tuskegee, Ala. stood on
the platform of the Auditorium, with the sun shining over the
heads of his auditors into his eyes, and with his whole face lit
up with the fire of prophecy, Clark Howell, the successor of Henry
Grady, said to me, "That man's speech is the beginning of a moral
revolution in America."
It is the first time that a Negro has made a speech in the
South on any important occasion before an audience composed of
white men and women. It electrified the audience, and the
response was as if it had come from the throat of a whirlwind.
Mrs. Thompson had hardly taken her seat when all eyes were
turned on a tall tawny Negro sitting in the front row of the
platform. It was Professor Booker T. Washington, President of the
Tuskegee (Alabama) Normal and Industrial Institute, who must rank
from this time forth as the foremost man of his race in America.
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