A Sunday Evening Talk, May 26, 1901

We have come to the close of another school year. Some of you will go out from among us now, not to return. Others will go home for the summer vacation and return at the end of that for the next school year.

As you go out, there is one thing that I especially want to caution you about. Don't go home and feel you are better than the rest of the folks in your neighborhood because you have been away at school. Don't go home and feel ashamed of your parents because you think they don't know as much as you think you know. Don't think that you are too good to help them. It would be better for you not to have any education, than for you to go home and feel ashamed of your parents, or not want to help them.

-- Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute,

to the students just prior to graduation on May 30th