How shall we make the mansion on yon Beacon Street
feel and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in
Alabama cotton-fields or Louisiana sugar-bottoms? This problem
Harvard University is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by
bringing the masses up.
* * * * * * *
If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of
my people and the bringing about of better relations between your
race and mine, I assure you from this day it will mean doubly
more. In the economy of God there is but one standard by which an
individual can succeed -- there is but one for a race. This
country demands that every race shall measure itself by the
American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed or
fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little.
During the next half-century and more, my race must continue
passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be
tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our
power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to
acquire and use skill; in our ability to compete, to succeed in
commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the
appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned
and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all.
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