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 side. There still remains the Caucasian problem. In view of what the Negro has done for this country, in view of what the white man has done for the Negro, will the white man continue and enlarge the work of encouragement to this struggling race? Or will he use the shotgun instead of the Holy Bible; the bloody knife instead of the spelling book? These are problems for Caucasian brains.

I know of no element in noble human character which is not found in the Negro race. Indeed, he has been placed under greater strains of conscience and taxed more severely in honor and integrity than any other race known to history. Did it ever occur to you that the South is even wild in its praises of negro fidelity in the days when it was prostrate in civil strife and its defenseless women and children committed to the care of the black men of the South? Is there a single case of treachery or infidelity recorded against us? Did it ever occur to you that the Northern soldier could always trust his life in the hands of a black man, wherever found? Is there a single case of treachery or infidelity recorded against us by the North? He would defend and feed "old mistress" committed to his charge. He would hide the cattle and food and valuables in the hollows and in the thickets, and then pilot the Northern army by these hidden goods safely through the mountains out of danger. Has ever human nature been so taxed before? No other citizens in this great country have better right to rejoice at her prosperity than the Negro.

The South owes her industrial significance largely to the Negro. King Cotton sits on a throne of gold held aloft by the strong black arms of the Negro and shakes his snowy locks over the commercial world. And our beloved South may yet call upon ebony sinews to beat back the enemies of her peace, prosperity, and happiness, and again stand between starvation, danger, and death, and her defenseless wives and little ones; and the Negro will again manfully, cheerfully, faithfully answer the call.

From this spot must radiate higher hopes, broader ideas, nobler aims to teach, inspire, and exalt Negro muscle, Negro brain, Negro heart—to soften asperities, to generate greater tolerance, and to make the South a "new earth" until the "Fatherhood of God" and the "brotherhood of man" shall bring the "new heaven."

NEGRO BUILDING, TENNESSEE CENTENNIAL. NEGRO BUILDING, TENNESSEE CENTENNIAL.

No people can rise in the world and maintain creditable standing alone with the saw, the hammer, and the plane; as cooks, washerwomen, and nurses; as farmers, bootblacks, hotel boys, and barbers. These are necessary, but there must be strong intellectual giants in the pulpit, at the bar, in the schoolroom, in medicine—as scientists, linguists, artists, inventors—in order that any people may be accorded a creditable standing in the society of races.

Whatever any other people need the Negro needs. We want the Negro to have higher industrial education. He must be taught to smelt iron ore, build locomotives, ships, telescopes, microscopes, steam engines of every class, all kinds of mechanical engineering, farming machinery and appliances, and do all work in glass, brass, gold, and silver. This kind of higher industrial education is the only kind that he needs now and is essential to his salvation. This kind of industrial education is the only kind that can give a people permanent strength.

Teach the Negro boy the sacredness of human life. Teach him that man must be as precious in the sight of man as he is in the sight of God. Teach obedience to law, obedience to legally constituted authority, which alone can give protection to life and property and security to society. Teach him that the human mind can form no loftier ideal than that of the triumph of right through the supremacy of law—that no one who violates the humblest law of the land can be an ideal man. Teach him that the transmission of a disregard for law is the transmission of the spirit of the mob, the spirit of riot, the spirit of hate, the spirit of internecine murder, the overthrow of the state, the birth of chaos and pandemonium. Teach him that men and races grew from within; that man grows by expansion from within; that congressional enactments cannot make us a race. The race must make itself. Teach him that he belongs to a glorious race, which stands before its God with its hands unstained in human blood. Teach him to honor and revere this record, and hand it untarnished down to the remotest posterity. Teach him that it is better to be persecuted than to persecute. Teach that neither race nor color will rule future man, who will be the evolution of the wisdom of all the past ages; but that man, that race, which will furnish the most brains, the most virtue, the most honor, the most truth, the most industry, will stand highest and longest before God and the judgment bar of the future righteous intelligence of the world.

Teach him to love, not to hate. Teach him that the man who hates him on account of his color is far beneath him, but the man who hates his condition and strives to lift him up may be his superior. Teach him that any coward may insult him, may wrong him, may send a bullet crashing through a man's brain, may warm his dagger in a brother's lifeblood, but it takes a strong man to take the weak and unfortunate by the hand and say: "Stand on your feet, my brother, and be a man." Teach him that that man, that race, is superior which does superior things to lift mankind to superior conditions. Teach him that that is the superior man, the superior race, which does most for its country, fights noblest for man, and lives closest to God.