The Great Railroad Tycoon Gives You Two Dollars

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P. Huntington the great railroad man gave me two dollars for our school The last time I saw him which was a few months before he died, he gave me fifty thousand dollars toward our endowment fund Between these two gifts there were others of generous proportions which came every year from both mr. and mrs. Huntington Some people say that it was Tuskegee's good luck that brought us to this gift of fifty thousand dollars. No It was not luck It was hard work Nothing ever comes to me that is worth having except as a result of hard work When mr. Huntington gave me the first two dollars. I did not blame him for not giving me more But made up my mind

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915)^[1] was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite.^[2] Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.