Booker T. Washington：Up from Slavery, Excerpt 5

I got the cue to Mr. Washington’s character from a very simple incident many years ago. I had never seen him, and I knew little about him, except that he was the head of a school at Tuskegee, Alabama. I had occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as “The Rev. Booker T. Washington.” In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as a clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and persisted in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a postscript: “I have no claim to ‘Rev.’” I knew most of the coloured men who at that time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher; and I had not heard of the head of an important coloured school who was not a preacher. “A new kind of man in the coloured world,” I said to myself—“a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an economic one instead of a theological one.” I wrote him an apology for mistaking him for a preacher.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2376
Locator：Excerpt 5 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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