for all time to farm
life--to the production of the best and the most sweet potatoes--but
that, if he succeeded in this line of industry, he could lay the
foundations upon which his children and grand-children could grow to
higher and more important things in life.

Such, in brief, were some of the views I advocated in this first address
dealing with the broad question of the relations of the two races, and
since that time I have not found any reason for changing my views on any
important point.

In my early life I used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any one
who spoke in bitter terms against the Negro, or who advocated measures
that tended to oppress the black man or take from him opportunities
for growth in the most complete manner. Now, whenever I hear any
one advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of
another, I pity the individual who would do this. I know that the one
who makes this mistake does so because of his own lack of opportunity
for the highest kind of growth. I pity him because I know that he is
trying to stop the progress of the world, and because I know that in
time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make him
ashamed of his weak and narrow position. One might as well try to stop
the progress of a mighty railroad train by throwing his body across the
track, as to try to stop the growth of the world in the direction
of giving mankind more intelligence, more culture, more skill, more
liberty, and in the direction of extending more sympathy and more
brotherly kindness.

The address which I delivered at Madison, before the National
Educational Association, gave me a rather wide introduction in the
North, and soon after that opportunities began offering themselves for
me to address audiences there.

I was anxious, however, that the way might also be opened for me to
speak directly to a representative Southern white audience. A partial
opportunity of this kind, one that seemed to me might serve as an
entering wedge, presented itself in 1893, when the international meeting
of Christian Workers was held at Atlanta, Ga. When this invitation came
to me, I had engagements in Boston that seemed to make it impossible for
me to speak in Atlanta. Still, after looking over my list of dates and
places carefully, I found that I could take a train from Boston that
would get me into Atlanta about thirty minutes before my address was to
be delivered, and that I could