Whole
communities are fast being revolutionized through the
instrumentality of these men and women.
Ten years ago I organized at Tuskegee the first Negro Conference.
This is an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight
or nine hundred representative men and women of the race, who
come to spend a day in finding out what the actual industrial,
mental, and moral conditions of the people are, and in forming
plans for improvement. Out from this central Negro Conference at
Tuskegee have grown numerous state an local conferences which are
doing the same kind of work. As a result of the influence of
these gatherings, one delegate reported at the last annual
meeting that ten families in his community had bought and paid
for homes. On the day following the annual Negro Conference,
there is the "Workers' Conference." This is composed of officers
and teachers who are engaged in educational work in the larger
institutions in the South. The Negro Conference furnishes a rare
opportunity for these workers to study the real condition of the
rank and file of the people.
In the summer of 1900, with the assistance of such prominent
coloured men as Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, who has always upheld my
hands in every effort, I organized the National Negro Business
League, which held its first meeting in Boston, and brought
together for the first time a large number of the coloured men
who are engaged in various lines of trade or business in
different parts of the United States.
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