Skip directly to:Main content Main navigation

University of Virginia Library

Black-belt diamonds;

gems from the speeches, addresses, and talks to students of Booker T. Washington ...

Washington, Booker T. (1856-1915)

collapse section

I.

Heart of the Race

He must be Counted

The Negro's Mission

The Negro's Home

Obeying the Scriptures

The Negro originally Honest

Basis of Prejudice

Talk versus Action

Mutual Dependence

Education the Only Hope

Ignorance against Intelligence

Eagerness for Knowledge

"One Touch of Nature"

Ballot-Box and Schoolhouse

What the Negro Needs

Responsibility for Slavery

An Equal Chance

Phillips Brooks

Dishonest Voting

The Good Samaritans

Only Two Alternatives

Pagans no Longer

"Cast down your Bucket"

All Fools Alike

Business Opportunity

Our Mother Tongue

Equality of Opportunity

The South as the Field

Advice to White Men

He Learned to Labor

New Industrial Era

What Education Does

Fate of Laggards

Serious Mistakes

The One Drawback

Adaptability Needed

Heritage of Slavery

What Law cannot Do

Correct Education

How Life is Measured

Trained Head and Hand

The Acceptable Thing

The Old Washerwoman

The Fate of the Pauper

Where Profits Appear

What the World Desires

The Lyncher and the Lynched

collapse section

II.

"Honesty the Best Policy"

False Education

Lack of Manufactories

What a Thousand Dollars will Do

The Slave of Duty

Evil of Card-Playing

Dependence upon the North

The Wealth of the South

What is Taught at Tuskegee

The Conqueror's Limitations

What Ignorance Costs

Intrinsic Worth

The Bread and Meat Side

Decrease of Crime

The Pilgrim Fathers

Begun by Lincoln

Work in the Black Belt

Leadership of the Masses

A Refined Family

Sound Mind and Body

Where Resistance Begins

The Great Problem

Most Competent Workman

The Higher Education

Misdirected Effort

His Inheritance

Art and Music in Log-Cabins

The Saddest Sight

How to Unite High and Low

Poverty and Ignorance

The White Neighbor

Disposing of the Negro

How to Fight Prejudice

The Great American Heart

"A Condition, not a Theory"

The Conscientious Worker

Gains against Losses

Christian Heathen

Basis of Success

A Century's Meaning

What Makes Social Mudsills

Self-Confidence

Help Ignorant Ministers

New Wine in Old Bottles

collapse section

III.

The False and the True

Faithful in Small Things

Works for Dishonesty

Never Wore Neckties

Relations with General Armstrong

Bad Associations

The Curse of the Race

"Higher Criticism"

Expecting too Much

Easy to be a Hero

Slavery Degraded Labor

What the Negro may Own

Time the Sovereign Healer

Must be Retrained

What will the Student Do?

Church-Membership

Peculiar Religious Notions

Improved Material Condition

Religion and Worldly Substance

A Useful Citizen

Lessons from a Centennial

Common-Sense Ideas

Self-Respect in Ownership

Preparing to Die

Strength and Weakness

What Tuskegee Students Learn

Lack of Preparation

What we never Reach

The Honest Foundation

"The Faithful Servant"

From Slavery to Freedom

What the Negro can Have

Negro Laborer Crustworthy

The Christ-like Workers

General Armstrong's Personality

"The Wages of Sin"

The Most Patient Race

"Lincoln, the Emancipator"

A Message to Harvard

Upright Character

The Negro and the Mule

Lack of Purpose

A Hard-Working Race

In the Black Belt

Way to Test a Man's Sincerity

The Heroic and Grand

Hold Fast to Opportunities

An Honest Ballot

Sick and Diseased

A Self-Supporting Race

An Ideal Condition

collapse section

IV.

Dying for Others

Educated Leaders

To Conquer Prejudice

Will not Want for Friends

Pippins and Crab-Apples

Higher Education

He Sticks to his Text

Pure and Useful Lives

Seen and Unseen

Dignity of Labor

The Mortgage System

Self-Examination

Superficial and Ornamental

Ill-Will and hatred

How to Use Education

Domestic Economy

Neglecting Opportunity

Don't be too Modest

Afraid of Riches

Civil Rights Bills

Magnifying Evil Doing

Starting from the Bottom

"A Man for a' That"

Demagogues and Despots

Material and Industrial Condition

"The Afro-American"

Practical Religion

Educate the Mothers

Influence of Association

What would Jefferson Davis Think?

Instrument and End

Have a Purpose in Life

The Mortgage Evil

Common-Sense View

Condition of Misery

The Producer and Consumer

Science of Scrubbing

Equality of Opportunity

Iron Law of progress

But They were so Engaged

Greater "Parliament of Man"

The Negro can Afford It

Question for Students

A Corrupt Ballot

From Fourteen to Eight Million

What Ignorance Craves

Special Invitation

The Quality of Sacrifice

Spread Sunshine

What the North can Do

"By this Sign we Conquer"

The Hand and its Fingers

It Can't be Done

collapse section

V.

What the Negro is Doing

Remedy for Lynching

Commercial Slavery

"The Poor Whites"

From Foundation to Turret

These should be Reached

Tuskegee as a Missionary

Uses of Education

Practice and Teaching

Cancer at the Heart

Country Schools

Scientific Education

Standing Ground

Knows he is Down

No Progress without Friction

The Higher Virtues

Loyalty to Labor

Tested by Patience

Right will Conquer

Work for the Ministry

Can the White Man Accept?

Unreasonable Whims

"A Light Set upon a Hill"

"Injury to One, Injury to All"

Successful and Unsuccessful

Engine and Grammar

Light Penetrating

Which is the more Costly?

Make no Excuses

Treating Him as a Man

The Educated White Man

Living on Skimmed Milk

What the World Expects

Universal Brotherhood

Chickens from Miscellaneous Sources

This Man Half Free

Passing of the Whitewasher

Bootblacking as an Art

Wrongs of a Race

His Sainted Mother

The Crucial Test

Weakness Changed to Power

collapse section

VI.

The Pure and the Chaste

The Little Green Ballot

Hunger and Politics

From Sentiment to Business

The Fault-Finder

Great Need it is

In Freedom's Holy Cause

Pre-eminence of the South

Evidence of Growth

Easier of Two Difficulties

Ham always on Hand

Idealizing Life

The New Emancipation

A Self-Evident Truth

His Christian Love

Wisdom of Stupidity

A Two-Edged Sword

Stand up for the Right

Narrows and Degrades

Angels and Devils in Parties

The North's Debt

"An Eye for an Eye"

How Success is Achieved

Doing Right Unseen

Mental Strength the Basis

"Barbers" and "Tonsorial Artists"

Not Easily Forgotten

Right to Earn and Spend

Ownership of the Soil

Difficult Tasks

Virtue in the Log-Cabin

Growth of an Idea

Not at all Possible

"Love thy Neighbor"

Freed the North and South

The Common Highway

Dignifying Labor

Where the Negro Disappears

Scientific Education

The Great Benefactor

Poor Whites of the South

The Negro's Salvation

What we shall Do

collapse section

VII.

Physical and Moral Courage

Hurts Whites more than Blacks

Lowering the Standard

Easy to Tear down

"Time and Tide Wait for no Man"

"You must do Something"

"Lives of Great Men all Remind us"

From Dairy to Congress

Good School-Teachers and Money

From One Slavery to Another

"We Know our Rights"

Treasures of Nature

"Excuses instead of Service"

Genius of Success

Self-Measurement

Singleness of Purpose

Implements of the Trade

Reaching the Lowest

World Respects Self-Confidence

Faulty Education

Child Father to the Man

Supreme Unselfishness

Influence of Negro Minister

Head and Hand Education

What Institutions should Teach

Elements of Power

Safety in Employment

Sowing and Reaping

Present Conditions

Leap from Slavery to Freedom

Fitness as the Test

The Highest Civilization

"What Happened?"

A National Evil

"Worth Makes the Man"

Fruits of his Labors

The Negro's Rights

Why the South is Bound to a Body of Death

Social Equality

Right Thing to be Done

What would Mother Say?

Lifting up our Fellows

The White South's Needs

Industrial Education

Competing with the World

Unostentatious Charity

The Negro's Guiding Star

collapse section

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

What Education Does

We teach the Negro that labor is not degrading.
This education multiplies his wants,

11

and we try to keep pace with his widening
desires by giving him the skill to satisfy them.

The Rise of the Negro.