So far as I could spare the time from the immediate work at
Tuskegee, after my Atlanta address, I accepted some of the invitations
to speak in public which came to me, especially those that would take
me into territory where I thought it would pay to plead the cause of
my race, but I always did this with the understanding that I was to be
free to talk about my life-work and the needs of my people. I also
had it understood that I was not to speak in the capacity of a
professional lecturer, or for mere commercial gain.
In my efforts on the public platform I never have been able to
understand why people come to hear me speak. This question I never
can rid myself of. Time and time again, as I have stood in the street
in front of a building and have seen men and women passing in large
numbers into the audience room where I was to speak, I have felt
ashamed that I should be the cause of people — as it seemed to me —
wasting a valuable hour of their time. Some years ago I was to
deliver an address before a literary society in Madison, Wis. An hour
before the time set for me to speak, a fierce snow-storm began, and
continued for several hours. I made up my mind that there would be no
audience, and that I should not have to speak, but, as a matter of
duty, I went to the church, and found it packed with people. The
surprise gave me a shock that I did not recover from during the whole
evening.
People often ask me if I feel nervous before speaking, or else
they suggest that, since I speak often, they suppose that I get used
to it. In answer to this question I have to say that I always suffer
intensely from nervousness before speaking. More than once, just
before I was to make an important address, this nervous strain has
been so great that I have resolved never again to speak in public. I
not only feel nervous before speaking, but after I have finished I
usually feel a sense of regret, because it seems to me as if I had
left out of my address the main thing and the best thing that I had
meant to say.
There is a great compensation, though, for this preliminary
nervous suffering, that comes to me after I have been speaking for
about ten minutes, and have come to feel that I have really mastered
my audience, and that we have gotten into full and complete sympathy
with each other. It seems to me that there is rarely such a
combination of mental and physical delight in any effort as that which
comes to a public speaker when he feels that he has a great audience
completely within his control. There is a thread of sympathy and
oneness that connects a public speaker with his audience, that is just
as strong as though it was something tangible and visible. If in an
audience of a thousand people there is one person who is not in
sympathy with my views, or is inclined to be doubtful, cold, or
critical, I can pick him out. When I have found him I usually go
straight at him, and it is a great satisfaction to watch the process
of his thawing out. I find that the most effective medicine for such
individuals is administered at first in the form of a story, although
I never tell an anecdote simply for the sake of telling one. That
kind of thing, I think, is empty and hollow, and an audience soon
finds it out.
I believe that one always does himself and his audience an
injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not
believe that one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels
convinced that he has a message to deliver. When one feels, from the
bottom of his feet to the top of his head, that he has something to
say that is going to help some individual or some cause, then let him
say it; and in delivering his message I do not believe that many of
the artificial rules of elocution can, under such circumstances, help
him very much. Although there are certain things, such as pauses,
breathing, and pitch of voice, that are very important, none of these
can take the place of soul in an address. When I have an address to
deliver, I like to forget all about the rules for the proper use of
the English language, and all about rhetoric and that sort of thing,
and I like to make the audience forget all about these things, too.
Nothing tends to throw me off my balance so quickly, when I am
speaking, as to have some one leave the room. To prevent this, I make
up my mind, as a rule, that I will try to make my address so
interesting, will try to state so many interesting facts one after
another, that no one can leave. The average audience, I have come to
believe, wants facts rather than generalities or sermonizing. Most
people, I think, are able to draw proper conclusions if they are given
the facts in an interesting form on which to base them.
As to the kind of audience that I like best to talk to, I would
put at the top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake,
business men, such, for example, as is found in Boston, New York,
Chicago, and Buffalo. I have found no other audience so quick to see
a point, and so responsive. Within the last few years I have had the
privilege of speaking before most of the leading organizations of this
kind in the large cities of the United States. The best time to get
hold of an organization of business men is after a good dinner,
although I think that one of the worst instruments of torture that was
ever invented is the custom which makes it necessary for a speaker to
sit through a fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the time feeling
sure that his speech is going to prove a dismal failure and
disappointment.
I rarely take part in one of these long dinners that I do not wish
that I could put myself back in the little cabin where I was a slave
boy, and again go through the experience there — one that I shall
never forget — of getting molasses to eat once a week from the "big
house." Our usual diet on the plantation was corn bread and pork, but
on Sunday morning my mother was permitted to bring down a little
molasses from the "big house" for her three children, and when it was
received how I did wish that every day was Sunday! I would get my tin
plate and hold it up for the sweet morsel, but I would always shut my
eyes while the molasses was being poured out into the plate, with the
hope that when I opened them I would be surprised to see how much I
had got. When I opened my eyes I would tip the plate in one direction
and another, so as to make the molasses spread all over it, in the
full belief that there would be more of it and that it would last
longer if spread out in this way. So strong are my childish
impressions of those Sunday morning feasts that it would be pretty
hard for any one to convince me that there is not more molasses on a
plate when it is spread all over the plate than when it occupies a
little corner — if there is a corner in a plate. At any rate, I have
never believed in "cornering" syrup. My share of the syrup was
usually about two tablespoonfuls, and those two spoonfuls of molasses
were much more enjoyable to me than is a fourteen-course dinner after
which I am to speak.
Next to a company of business men, I prefer to speak to an
audience of Southern people, of either race, together or taken
separately. Their enthusiasm and responsiveness are a constant
delight. The "amens" and "dat's de truf" that come spontaneously from
the coloured individuals are calculated to spur any speaker on to his
best efforts. I think that next in order of preference I would place
a college audience. It has been my privilege to deliver addresses at
many of our leading colleges including Harvard, Yale, Williams,
Amherst, Fisk University, the University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley,
the University of Michigan, Trinity College in North Carolina, and
many others.
It has been a matter of deep interest to me to note the number of
people who have come to shake hands with me after an address, who say
that this is the first time they have ever called a Negro "Mister."
When speaking directly in the interests of the Tuskegee Institute,
I usually arrange, some time in advance, a series of meetings in
important centres. This takes me before churches, Sunday-schools,
Christian Endeavour Societies, and men's and women's clubs. When
doing this I sometimes speak before as many as four organizations in a
single day.
Three years ago, at the suggestion of Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New
York, and Dr. J.L.M. Curry, the general agent of the fund, the
trustees of the John F. Slater Fund voted a sum of money to be used in
paying the expenses of Mrs. Washington and myself while holding a
series of meetings among the coloured people in the large centres of
Negro population, especially in the large cities of the ex-slaveholding states. Each year during the last three years we have
devoted some weeks to this work. The plan that we have followed has
been for me to speak in the morning to the ministers, teachers, and
professional men. In the afternoon Mrs. Washington would speak to the
women alone, and in the evening I spoke to a large mass-meeting. In
almost every case the meetings have been attended not only by the
coloured people in large numbers, but by the white people. In
Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, there was present at the mass-meeting
an audience of not less than three thousand persons, and I was
informed that eight hundred of these were white. I have done no work
that I really enjoyed more than this, or that I think has accomplished
more good.
These meetings have given Mrs. Washington and myself an
opportunity to get first-hand, accurate information as to the real
condition of the race, by seeing the people in their homes, their
churches, their Sunday-schools, and their places of work, as well as
in the prisons and dens of crime. These meetings also gave us an
opportunity to see the relations that exist between the races. I
never feel so hopeful about the race as I do after being engaged in a
series of these meetings. I know that on such occasions there is much
that comes to the surface that is superficial and deceptive, but I
have had experience enough not to be deceived by mere signs and
fleeting enthusiasms. I have taken pains to go to the bottom of
things and get facts, in a cold, business-like manner.
I have seen the statement made lately, by one who claims to know
what he is talking about, that, taking the whole Negro race into
account, ninety per cent of the Negro women are not virtuous. There
never was a baser falsehood uttered concerning a race, or a statement
made that was less capable of being proved by actual facts.
No one can come into contact with the race for twenty years, as I
have done in the heart of the South, without being convinced that the
race is constantly making slow but sure progress materially,
educationally, and morally. One might take up the life of the worst
element in New York City, for example, and prove almost anything he
wanted to prove concerning the white man, but all will agree that this
is not a fair test.
Early in the year 1897 I received a letter inviting me to deliver
an address at the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw monument in
Boston. I accepted the invitation. It is not necessary for me, I am
sure, to explain who Robert Gould Shaw was, and what he did. The
monument to his memory stands near the head of the Boston Common,
facing the State House. It is counted to be the most perfect piece of
art of the kind to be found in the country.
The exercises connected with the dedication were held in Music
Hall, in Boston, and the great hall was packed from top to bottom with
one of the most distinguished audiences that ever assembled in the
city. Among those present were more persons representing the famous
old anti-slavery element that it is likely will ever be brought
together in the country again. The late Hon. Roger Wolcott, then
Governor of Massachusetts, was the presiding officer, and on the
platform with him were many other officials and hundreds of
distinguished men. A report of the meeting which appeared in the
Boston Transcript will describe it better than any words of mine
could do: —
