SERVICE BY THE EDUCATED NEGRO
ADDRESS OF ROSCOE CONKLING BRUCE
OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE AT THE COMMENCEMENT
EXERCISES OF THE M STREET
HIGH SCHOOL METROPOLITAN A. M. E.
CHURCH WASHINGTON, D. C., JUNE 16, 1903
Copyright 1903
C. W. B. Bruce
Tuskegee Institute Steam Print.
SERVICE BY THE EDUCATED NEGRO.
When George William Curtis had received from Harvardher greatest degree, he arose at the Alumni Dinnerand said, “In the old Italian story the nobleman turns outof the hot street crowded with eager faces into the coolnessand silence of his palace. As he looks at the picturesof the long line of ancestors he hears a voice,—or is it hisown heart beating?—which says to him noblesse oblige.The youngest scion of the oldest house is pledged by allthe virtues and honor of his ancestry to a life not unworthyhis lineage.... When I came here I was not a nobleman,but to-day I have been ennobled. The youngest doctor ofthe oldest school, I too, say with the Italian, noblesseoblige. I am pledged by all the honorable traditions ofthe noble family into which I am this day adopted.”... You,my friends, are ennobled by the diploma of a school, richin traditions of high endeavor and actual service. Shallthose traditions fail to enter your hearts, and to quickenyour energies, and to chasten your ambitions? This questionyou are not now competent to answer, and you will notbe competent until you have lived your lives.
Your equipment for the business of life is not contemptible.As workers you have some acquaintance with the naturalresources of our country, and the ways in which theyhave been utilized in the production and distribution ofcommodities through the perfecting of industrial organizationand the applying of science to work. More, importantly,you possess in varying degrees a group of valuable[4]industrial qualities,—that ambition without which work isdrudgery and enlargement of life unsought and unattainable;that habit of earnest endeavor which, established bycontinuous attention to Greek or Latin, mathematics or history,may be utilized in the school room, or on the farm, orin the court room; that habit of self-control which enablesmen to sacrifice vagrant impulse to sober duty; that resourcefulnesswhich discovers better methods of getting workdone; that directing intelligence by which one man caneffectively organize for a given purpose, many materials andmany workers. In addition to the knowledge and the qualitiesI have mentioned, most of you have a settled dispositiontoward some form of self-support appropriate to an exceptionaltraining; while you know that some men must blackother men’s boots, you also know that a boot-black with ahigh school diploma at home means waste—waste of time,waste of money, waste of education. Moreover, you appreciatethe duties and value the privileges of citizenship ina democracy, and most of you have on the whole a seriousintent to do what you reasonably can to promote the generalwelfare. Such is your equipment as citizens. Finally,as human beings, you are able to participate in the int