The next
thing was to decide upon the person who was thus to represent the
Negro race. After the question had been canvassed for several
days, the directors voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of
the opening-day addresses, and in a few days after that I
received the official invitation.
The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of
responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my
position to appreciate. What were my feelings when this
invitation came to me? I remembered that I had been a slave; that
my early years had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and
ignorance, and that I had had little opportunity to prepare me
for such a responsibility as this. It was only a few years before
that time that any white man in the audience might have claimed
me as his slave; and it was easily possible that some of my
former owners might be present to hear me speak.
I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history
of the Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak
from the same platform with white Southern men and women on any
important National occasion. I was asked now to speak to an
audience composed of the wealth and culture of the white South,
the representatives of my former masters.
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