These criticisms
continued for several weeks, until I finally received a letter from
the editor of the _Age-Herald_, published in Birmingham, Ala., asking
me if I would say just what I meant by this part of the address. I
replied to him in a letter which seemed to satisfy my critics. In
this letter I said that I had made it a rule never to say before a
Northern audience anything that I would not say before an audience in
the South. I said that I did not think it was necessary for me to go
into extended explanations; if my seventeen years of work in the heart
of the South had not been explanation enough, I did not see how words
could explain. I said that I made the same plea that I had made in my
address at Atlanta, for the blotting out of race prejudice in
"commercial and civil relations." I said that what is termed social
recognition was a question which I never discussed, and then I quoted
from my Atlanta address what I had said there in regard to that
subject.
In meeting crowds of people at public gatherings, there is one
type of individual that I dread. I mean the crank. I have become so
accustomed to these people now that I can pick them out at a distance
when I see them elbowing their way up to me. The average crank has a
long beard, poorly cared for, a lean, narrow face, and wears a black
coat.
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