Dedication--Atlanta University Library. April 30, 1932.

This occasion, and it is quite natural for it to do so, starts in me a
flood of reminiscences, a flood which at the present moment runs so
strong that it threatens to sweep away the main purpose for which I am
standing on this platform. I cannot prevent my thoughts from running
back through the years, far from the central idea that brings this assem-
blage together, back to the time when as a boy I left my home in Jack-
sonville and started for Atlanta University.

Youth is eager; it is the time when the beacon of life runs swiftly ahead,
always beckoning; then it is that we have no time to pause, not even to
take our bearings, not even to note clearly the direction in which we
are hurrying. But as we grow older that same beacon slackens its fever-
ish pace, and life begins to whisper, let us wait here a while. Then we

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may not only look forward, but also glance backward over the road along
which we have come.

I look back at this moment, not with sentimentality, but with reverential
awe to the wisdom, the love, and the sacrifice of my father and mother,
to that combination of virtues and forces in them that put my feet in
the path leading from this school-capped hil in Georgia out into the
wider world.

To me, a most startling thought about life is that the seemingly small,
commonplace, insignificant thing so often changes its whole meaning.

There is an analogy between this thought and the fact that a pebble, at
its source, may change the course of a great river. I sometimes idly
speculate upon what life would be meant for me had I at the start taken

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some other path--and those other paths are almost infinite in number. It
is possible that it might have meant more; it is probable that it might
have meant less. Today I am thankful that it has meant as much as it has.

Many unrolling memory-films are fresh and distinct today. There is so
much that I clearly remember about my days and years as a student in this
university. And with the recollections comes an understanding of the sig-
nificance of those days and years of student life; comes an estimation
of the importance of the impressions, the influences and the forces that
were then at work on me. But the strong temptation to talk about remem-
bered things must be resisted; yet, there is one memory-film that fits
into the present picture.

I remember, so often standing on Atlanta University hill and looking
over at the red mound, still ridged by Confederate ramparts, where More-

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house now stands--and at the long line of flimsy Civil War barracks, where the new, beautiful Spelman now nestles. At that time it would scarcely have entered the mind of a prophet that within a brief period--as time is measured in such affairs--three great schools on these three hilltops would unite and converge at a common center to form the still greater school--the university in fact as well as in name.

under the far-visioned leadership and through the wise experience of President Hope

But the dream was born, and is being rapidly realized. We see, taking tangible form, a great university, in the heart of the South, with doors open to those who are elsewhere denied. A university placing education, training, scholarship, science, art, culture, and all the principles by which life in the highest may be attained, within the possible reach of those who most need them, those to whom they have most been inaccessible. A university that will be a center from which shall radiate forces that

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will help to redeem this entire section from ignorance, superstition, bigotry, unreasoning prejudice and brutal intolerance. A university that will have a distinctive effect on the development of our whole civilization.

to dedicate

We are gathered at the spot which is to be the hub, the heart of that university. We are gathered here to dedicate the symbol of its greatness. For all through the ages, from the brick tablets of Babylonia and Assyria and the papyrus rolls of Egypt down to our marvelously type printed books, the library has been the sign and the evidence of man's intellectual development, of his struggle upward from mere animal existence, of his conquest of the realm of thought and truth and immortal beauty. The library is the treasure-house holding the records of all the spiritual achievements of the human race. And nothing that man possesses is as precious

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and as indispensable as that record. If it were suddenly destroyed, civilization would go out like a candle in the wind; and the race would again and all over have to grope its way through the dark.

It is this record that provides for man the little eminence on which he stands, and allows him to raise his eyes from the ground and turn his gaze toward the sky. It is this record that fans the fires of aspiration and continually gives reassurances of the essential nobility and beauty of humanity.

A mere glance at history shows that the great peoples of the world have been those who have possessed the record, who have made use of it, who have stood upon the eminence it provides. They have been the torchbearers of civilization. A closer examination of history shows that the still

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greater peoples have been those who have helped to write the record.

These have not only carried forward the torch, they have achieved immortality.

Look back to the region of the Mediterranean when it was the theater of the world. Think of how many races and peoples lived around its shores. Think how many of these must have wrought well in commerce and war; must have made conquest over weaker neighbors, and enjoyed material prosperity; and today they are dead. So dead that, as far as the world at present is concerned, it would have been as well if they had never existed. Not even are their names remembered. Dead because they wrote no part of the record.

Now think of the people who lived on that little tongue, and those small islands jutting out between the Ionian and Aegean seas. They are alive today and an active influence in the world. They still remain the chief

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single source of our intellectual ideas and our ideas of beauty. They do not live through their descendants, but through the record they wrote.

And think, too, of that other people, who lived on the barren strip of land at the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean; insignificant in numbers and power, suffering persecution, oppression and captivity; and yet, the sublime record of their prophets and poets constitute the main spiritual current in our whole western world.

And so, we dedicate this library--this library of the Greater Atlanta University. We dedicate it to the use of those for whom it has been more specifically provided. We dedicate it in the hope that they will not only make the greatest and best use of it, but will through it be inspired to

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make their contribution to the written record. And we dedicate it not
only to them; we dedicate it to the South. We ourselves shall shut its
doors in no man's face. All who would may enter--every seeker after
knowledge, every seeker after light, every seeker after beauty, every
seeker after truth.

We dedicate it to understanding--to the great fellowship of enlightened
minds. We dedicate it to humanity.