Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/121

 CHAPTER XII

LEADING HIS PEOPLE

following Washington's great speech in Atlanta in 1895, there came the statement from all parts of the country, "Here is the new leader of the negro race." During the last years of slavery, and the Civil War, and on for years after the war, Frederick Douglass, as has been said, was the acknowledged leader of the negro in the United States. Douglass had died in the early part of the year 1895. It seemed that this man Washington had been raised up to take his place. The Atlanta speech continued to be a topic of discussion throughout the country, and coupled with this discussion was invariably the statement that here was the new leader of the race.

Washington says that he was at a great loss to know what people meant when they referred to him as the leader of his people. Of course, this leadership was not a thing that he had sought. The people thrust this duty upon him, and of course no man has a right to shun or dodge responsibility that is thus bestowed.

He was not in doubt long as to what it meant to be a leader. One of the first things that 105