After the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening-day addresses, and in a few days after that I received the official invitation.
The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of responsibility that it would be hard for any one not placed in my position to appreciate.

What were my feelings when this invitation came to me?
I remembered that I had been a slave; that my early years had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that I had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility as this.

It was only a few years before that time that any white man in the audience might have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily possible that some of my former owners might be present to hear me speak.
I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same platform with white Southern men and women on any important National occasion.

I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the wealth and culture of the white South, the representatives of my former masters.

I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large number of Northern whites, as well as a great many men and women of my own race.
I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of my heart to be true and right.