"cast down their buckets where they were," by making friends with their white neighbors in every manly way, by training themselves where they were in agriculture, in mechanics, in commerce, instead of trying to better their condition by immigration. And, finally, to the white Southern people, he appealed to "cast down their buckets where they were," by using and training the negroes whom they knew rather than seeking to import laborers whom they did not know.[1]
Frederick Douglass had died only a few months before this great speech was made. At once from all parts of the country came the statement, "Here is the man who will take the place of Douglass as leader of the negro race." And from that time on, Booker Washington was the accepted leader of his people in this country.
He was immediately called upon to speak in all parts of the country. He was offered big sums of money to lecture. One speaker's bureau offered him fifty thousand dollars a year. He refused all these offers of money, saying that he must give his time to Tuskegee and to the interests of his people, rather than try to make money for himself.
Another of his great speeches was made at Cambridge, Mass., in 1896. Harvard University, the oldest and most famous university in America, conferred the honorary degree of master of arts upon Mr. Washington in 1896. This was the
- ↑ "Up from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington, p. 219.
