Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
was in an uproar of enthusiasm—handkerchiefs were waved, canes were
flourished, hats were tossed in the air. The fairest women of Georgia
stood up and cheered. It was as if the orator had bewitched them.
And when he held his dusky hand high above his head, with the fingers
stretched wide apart, and said to the white people of the South on
behalf of his race, “In all things that are purely social we can be as
separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to
mutual progress,” the great wave of sound dashed itself against the
walls, and the whole audience was on its feet in a delirium of
applause, and I thought at that moment of the night when Henry Grady
stood among the curling wreaths of tobacco-smoke in Delmonico’s
banquet-hall and said, “I am a Cavalier among Roundheads.”
I have heard the great orators of many countries, but not even
Gladstone himself could have pleased a cause with most consummate power
than did this angular Negro, standing in a nimbus of sunshine,
surrounded by the men who once fought to keep his race in bondage. The
roar might swell ever so high, but the expression of his earnest face
never changed.
A ragged, ebony giant, squatted on the floor in one of the aisles,
watched the orator with burning eyes and tremulous face until the
supreme burst of applause came, and then the tears ran down his face.
Most of the Negroes in the audience were crying, perhaps without
knowing just why.
At the close of the speech Governor Bullock rushed across the stage and
seized the orator’s hand. Another shout greeted this demonstration, and
for a few minutes the two men stood facing each other, hand in hand.
So far as I could spare the time from the immediate work at Tuskegee,
after my Atlanta address, I accepted some of the invitations to speak
in public which came to me, especially those that would take me into
territory where I thought it would pay to plead the cause of my race,
but I always did this with the understanding that I was to be free to
talk about my life-work and the needs of my people. I also had it
understood that I was not to speak in the capacity of a professional
lecturer, or for mere commercial gain.
In my efforts on the public platform I never have been able to
understand why people come to hear me speak. This question I never can
rid myself of. Time and time again, as I have stood in the street in
front of a building and have seen men and women passing in large
numbers into the audience room where I was to speak, I have felt
ashamed that I should be the cause of people—as it seemed to me—wasting
a valuable hour of their time. Some years ago I was to deliver an
address before a literary society in Madison, Wis. An hour before the
time set for me to speak, a fierce snow-storm began, and continued for
several hours. I made up my mind that there would be no audience, and
that I should not have to speak, but, as a matter of duty, I went to
the church, and found it packed with people. The surprise gave me a
shock that I did not recover from during the whole evening.
People often ask me if I feel nervous before speaking, or else they
suggest that, since I speak often, they suppose that I get used to it.
In answer to this question I have to say that I always suffer intensely
from nervousness before speaking. More than once, just before I was to
make an important address, this nervous strain has been so great that I
have resolved never again to speak in public. I not only feel nervous
before speaking, but after I have finished I usually feel a sense of
regret, because it seems to me as if I had left out of my address the
main thing and the best thing that I had meant to say.
There is a great compensation, though, for this preliminary nervous
suffering, that comes to me after I have been speaking for about ten
minutes, and have come to feel that I have really mastered my audience,
and that we have gotten into full and complete sympathy with each
other. It seems to me that there is rarely such a combination of mental
and physical delight in any effort as that which comes to a public
speaker when he feels that he has a great audience completely within
his control. There is a thread of sympathy and oneness that connects a
public speaker with his audience, that is just as strong as though it
was something tangible and visible. If in an audience of a thousand
people there is one person who is not in sympathy with my views, or is
inclined to be doubtful, cold, or critical, I can pick him out. When I
have found him I usually go straight at him, and it is a great
satisfaction to watch the process of his thawing out. I find that the
most effective medicine for such individuals is administered at first
in the form of a story, although I never tell an anecdote simply for
the sake of telling one. That kind of thing, I think, is empty and
hollow, and an audience soon finds it out.
I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice
when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that
one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced
that he has a message to deliver. When one feels, from the bottom of
his feet to the top of his head, that he has something to say that is
going to help some individual or some cause, then let him say it; and
in delivering his message I do not believe that many of the artificial
rules of elocution can, under such circumstances, help him very much.
Although there are certain things, such as pauses, breathing, and pitch
of voice, that are very important, none of these can take the place of
soul in an address. When I have an address to deliver, I like to forget
all about the rules for the proper use of the English language, and all
about rhetoric and that sort of thing, and I like to make the audience
forget all about these things, too.
Nothing tends to throw me off my balance so quickly, when I am
speaking, as to have some one leave the room. To prevent this, I make
up my mind, as a rule, that I will try to make my address so
interesting, will try to state so many interesting facts one after
another, that no one can leave. The average audience, I have come to
believe, wants facts rather than generalities or sermonizing. Most
people, I think, are able to draw proper conclusions if they are given
the facts in an interesting form on which to base them.
As to the kind of audience that I like best to talk to, I would put at
the top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake, business
men, such, for example, as is found in Boston, New York, Chicago, and
Buffalo. I have found no other audience so quick to see a point, and so
responsive. Within the last few years I have had the privilege of
speaking before most of the leading organizations of this kind in the
large cities of the United States. The best time to get hold of an
organization of business men is after a good dinner, although I think
that one of the worst instruments of torture that was ever invented is
the custom which makes it necessary for a speaker to sit through a
fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the time feeling sure that his
speech is going to prove a dismal failure and disappointment.
I rarely take part in one of these long dinners that I do not wish that
I could put myself back in the little cabin where I was a slave boy,
and again go through the experience there—one that I shall never
forget—of getting molasses to eat once a week from the “big house.” Our
usual diet on the plantation was corn bread and pork, but on Sunday
morning my mother was permitted to bring down a little molasses from
the “big house” for her three children, and when it was received how I
did wish that every day was Sunday! I would get my tin plate and hold
it up for the sweet morsel, but I would always shut my eyes while the
molasses was being poured out into the plate, with the hope that when I
opened them I would be surprised to see how much I had got. When I
opened my eyes I would tip the plate in one direction and another, so
as to make the molasses spread all over it, in the full belief that
there would be more of it and that it would last longer if spread out
in this way. So strong are my childish impressions of those Sunday
morning feasts that it would be pretty hard for any one to convince me
that there is not more molasses on a plate when it is spread all over
the plate than when it occupies a little corner—if there is a corner in
a plate. At any rate, I have never believed in “cornering” syrup. My
share of the syrup was usually about two tablespoonfuls, and those two
spoonfuls of molasses were much more enjoyable to me than is a
fourteen-course dinner after which I am to speak.
Next to a company of business men, I prefer to speak to an audience of
Southern people, of either race, together or taken separately. Their
enthusiasm and responsiveness are a constant delight. The “amens” and
“dat’s de truf” that come spontaneously from the coloured individuals
are calculated to spur any speaker on to his best efforts. I think that
next in order of preference I would place a college audience. It has
been my privilege to deliver addresses at many of our leading colleges
including Harvard, Yale, Williams, Amherst, Fisk University, the
University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley, the University of Michigan,
Trinity College in North Carolina, and many others.
It has been a matter of deep interest to me to note the number of
people who have come to shake hands with me after an address, who say
that this is the first time they have ever called a Negro “Mister.”
When speaking directly in the interests of the Tuskegee Institute, I
usually arrange, some time in advance, a series of meetings in
important centres. This takes me before churches, Sunday-schools,
Christian Endeavour Societies, and men’s and women’s clubs. When doing
this I sometimes speak before as many as four organizations in a single
day.
Three years ago, at the suggestion of Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New
York, and Dr. J.L.M. Curry, the general agent of the fund, the trustees
of the John F. Slater Fund voted a sum of money to be used in paying
the expenses of Mrs. Washington and myself while holding a series of
meetings among the coloured people in the large centres of Negro
population, especially in the large cities of the ex-slaveholding
states. Each year during the last three years we have devoted some
weeks to this work. The plan that we have followed has been for me to
speak in the morning to the ministers, teachers, and professional men.
In the afternoon Mrs. Washington would speak to the women alone, and in
the evening I spoke to a large mass-meeting. In almost every case the
meetings have been attended not only by the coloured people in large
numbers, but by the white people. In Chattanooga, Tenn., for example,
there was present at the mass-meeting an audience of not less than
three thousand persons, and I was informed that eight hundred of these
were white. I have done no work that I really enjoyed more than this,
or that I think has accomplished more good.
These meetings have given Mrs. Washington and myself an opportunity to
get first-hand, accurate information as to the real condition of the
race, by seeing the people in their homes, their churches, their
Sunday-schools, and their places of work, as well as in the prisons and
dens of crime. These meetings also gave us an opportunity to see the
relations that exist between the races. I never feel so hopeful about
the race as I do after being engaged in a series of these meetings. I
know that on such occasions there is much that comes to the surface
that is superficial and deceptive, but I have had experience enough not
to be deceived by mere signs and fleeting enthusiasms. I have taken