of his address is herewith
given. But the most enthusiastic parts of his speech and the most
effective with the audience were his extemporaneous effusions that
accompanied the delivery.

[Footnote A: Extract from the speech of W. H. Council delivered at the
laying of the corner stone of the Negro Building of the Tennessee
Centennial, Nashville, Tenn., March 13, 1897.]

[Illustration: PROF. W. H. COUNCIL, NORMAL, ALA.]

_ADDRESS._

These occasions mark the evolution of Southern thought and industry,
and the result of the self-directed energy of the negro. Here on this
spot the world may see the other side of Negro life than "Sam Johnson,
the chicken thief." Here it may see the healthful buds of Negro
handicraft, Negro art, science, literature, invention. Here the world
may see the hitherto giant energies of a mighty people waking into
conscious activity. Here on this spot the nations may place their ears
to the ground and hear the industrious tread of millions of black
feet--hear the beats of millions of noble hearts beneath black skins
and catch the thrill of these on coming millions to be felt in the
industrial and literary world.

Here on this spot the old master who followed Lee's tattered banners
over the snow-covered hills of Virginia down to Appomattox sacrifices
his pro-slavery ideas, and builds a monument to Negro fidelity and
industry; and here the Negro brings the product of his brain and hand
in grateful testimony to the friendly feelings between us. I challenge
the annals of man to present so beautiful a spectacle!

This opportunity given to us to display what we have accomplished in
our three hundred years' struggle from barbarism to industrious
Christian liberty, right here in the Egypt of our bondage, is one of
the bravest acts of the brave and chivalrous people. And I am not slow
to recognize the fact that we received much more from slavery than did
the slaveholder. Only as we recede from Appomattox, and only as the
echoes of Fort Sumter's bloody guns die away in gentle murmurs of the
music of love around the altars of faith and hope, only as memories of
former hates shall have been drowned in the Red Sea of brotherly love,
and the good things which we have done for each other come like angels
into conscious view, will the old master and the old slave know what
helps they have been to each other. We must love. We cannot afford to
hate.

Negro history has solved the Negro problem from the Negro