they shall again. Herein the longing
of black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their
experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange
rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view
and make their loving, living, and doing precious to all human hearts.
And to themselves in these the days that try their souls the chance to
soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their finer spirits boon
and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black.

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move
arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women
glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of Evening that swing between
the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle
and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no
scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is
this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you
long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so
afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and
Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

THE FRUITS OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING by Booker T. Washington

The political, educational, social, and economic evolution through which
the South passed during, say, the first fifteen or twenty years after
the close of the civil war furnishes one of the most interesting periods
that any country has passed through.

A large share of the thought and activity of the white South, of the
black South, and of that section of the North especially interested
in my race, was directed during the years of the Reconstruction period
toward politics, or toward matters bearing upon what were termed civil
or social rights. The work of education was rather slow, and covered a
large section of the South; still I think I am justified in saying that
in the public mind the Negro's relation to politics overshadowed nearly
every other interest. The education of the race was conducted quietly,
and attracted comparatively little attention, just as is true at the
present time. The appointment of one Negro postmaster at a third or
fourth rate post office will be given wider publicity through the daily
press than the founding of a school, or some important discovery in
science.

With reference to the black man's political relation to the state and
Federal governments,