The Niagarites held a second conference in August 1906, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's birth, at the West Virginia site of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Reverdy C. Ransom spoke, explaining that Washington's primary goal was to prepare blacks for employment in their current society: "Today, two classes of Negroes, ...are standing at the parting of the ways. The one counsels patient submission to our present humiliations and degradations; ...The other class believe that it should not submit to being humiliated, degraded, and remanded to an inferior place. ...[I]t does not believe in bartering its manhood for the sake of gain."