The man who in 1881 almost single-handedly established, developed, and ran what would become known as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, now a prestigious university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, Booker T. Washington, in his personal odyssey, Up From Slavery, tells an interesting story of an incident that occurred when the Honorable Frederick Douglass, a well-known social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman, who after escaping from slavery, became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing, was on a train ride through the state of Pennsylvania. The train conductor forced Mr. Douglass, because of his color, to ride in the baggage-car in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid. Some of the white passengers found out and went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass. One of them said to him: “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner,” Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.” How true this is, and something we oft forget. What people do to others says more about them than it does the person they are doing it to. That applies both to those who do good and those who do bad. Booker Washington goes on to tell another story about the man from whom he chose to take his own last name, George Washington. It seems that General Washington was on the road when he encountered a black man coming from the other direction. The black man politely lifted his hat to General Washington, who lifted his own hat in a return gesture. Some of his white friends who saw the incident criticized Washington for his action. In reply to their criticism George Washington said: “Do you suppose that I am going to permit a poor, uneducated, colored man to be more polite than I am?” Said Booker, “My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals less fortunate than he is.” We all know how to be civil and polite to those who outrank us, but what do people see when we encounter someone that other’s generally regard as not worth anyone’s time or attention? We may not know who is watching. But we can know for sure that God is watching us, but are we sure He is pleased with what He hears and sees?