Excerpt from Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, 1901

First published in 1901, Booker T. Washington’s autobiography was a best seller and was translated into more than a dozen languages.

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.  I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large number of Northern whites, as well as a great many men and women of my own race.

Source: Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. p. 4 (Document 5.2.1)