It would in some measure relieve my embarrassment if I could,
even in a slight degree, feel myself worthy of the great honour
which you do me to-day. Why you have called me from the Black
Belt of the South, from among my humble people, to share in the
honours of this occasion, is not for me to explain; and yet it may
not be inappropriate for me to suggest that it seems to me that
one of the most vital questions that touch our American life is
how to bring the strong, wealthy, and learned into helpful touch
with the poorest, most ignorant, and humblest, and at the same
time make one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence
of the other. 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.
