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.
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