"As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your
children, watching by the sick bed of your mothers and fathers, and
often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the
future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no
foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in
defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and
religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both
races one. 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."
- Booker T. Washington
(an excerpt from his
address delivered at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition)
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