Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/629

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TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE AND ITS PRESIDENT.
609

as she could be heard, she cried in a strangely thrilling voice, which echoed through the dusky room: "How can you waste the one day of the year for us in such foolishness, when the life of a race is in jeopardy? Get to work! We must learn first to help, ourselves, if we want God to help us!"

Negro Conference in Session in Tuskegee Institute Church.

Hardly had this woman finished speaking when it was seen that another woman had risen and was waiting for a chance to make herself heard. I think I never saw a more pitiful figure. Very black, old, with a gaunt form on which a shabby dress hung loosely, her face was that of a person for whom life had been so hard that hope was for her a word unknown. Two or three men in the audi-