“Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.”

— Booker T. Washington

"The Problems of the Colored Race in the South," lecture, Hamilton Club, Chicago (10 December 1895) http://web.archive.org/20071031084051/www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.4/html/93.html <br class="br">Context: Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.<br>We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.<br>Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.

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Booker T. Washington48

African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor 1856–1915

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