38. The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON MONUMENT,

before the main entrance of Booker T. Washington High School, SW. corner Hunter and C Sts., SW., is a vigorously executed bronze group showing the renowned Negro educator lifting a veil from the eyes of a laborer, who is seated on an anvil with a plow at his side. On the marble base is inscribed, He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people, and pointed the way to progress through education and industry," and Washington's own words delivered in Atlanta, "We shall prosper in proportion as we learn dignity and glorify labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life." This memorial, a replica of a monument designed by Charles Keck of New York and now standing on the campus of Tuskegee Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama, was erected in 1925 through contributions of white and Negro citizens and of students and teachers of the Booker T. Washington High School.

Booker T. Washington devoted his life to building Tuskegee Institute, where he served as principal for 34 years, but so great was his contribution to the general betterment of the Negro race that he exerted a vital influence on widespread educational enterprises. In the spring of 1895 be was invited to accompany a group of Atlanta citizens to the National Capital in order to secure a subsidy from the Congressional Committee on Appropriations for the Cotton States and International Exposition, which was to be opened in Atlanta the following September. Making his plea after the white speakers had been heard, Washington spoke eloquently in praise of the exposition as a means of improving interracial relations. The appropriation was made.

Washington was the only Negro invited to speak at the opening of the exposition. In Atlanta he and his family were met at the station by a group of Negro citizens, and on the following day he marched in the parade to the exposition grounds at the present Piedmont Park. There Rufus Bullock, who had been governor of Georgia during Reconstruction, introduced him to a varied audience of Northerners and Southerners, white people and Negroes. An arresting and dignified figure, the tall, tawny-skinned educator then made an address so stirring that the audience was aroused to wild acclamation. Washington, refusing generous offers for professional lectures, remained in Atlanta about a month longer as judge of awards for educational exhibits, then quietly returned to his duties at Tuskegee.

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