Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that would take you an hour carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place. If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don't waste time. Any time you think you have to waste put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or traveling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject. Read through at least one book every week separate and distinct from your newspapers and journals. It will mean that at the end of one year you will have read fifty-two different subjects. After five years you will have read over two hundred and fifty books. You may be considered then a well read man or a well read woman and there will be a great difference between you and the person who has not read one book. You will be considered intelligent and the other person be considered ignorant. You and that person therefore will be living in two different worlds; one the world of ignorance and the other the world of intelligence. Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.

Your language being English you should study the English language thoroughly. To know the English language thoroughly you ought to be acquainted with Latin, because most of the English words are of Latin origin. It is also advisable that you know the French language because most of the books that you read in English carry Latin and French phrases and words. There is no use reading a page or paragraph of a book or even a sentence without understanding it.

If it has foreign words in it, before you pass over them you should go to the dictionary, if you don't know the meaning and find out the meaning]. Never pass over a word without knowing its meaning. The dictionary and the books on word building which can be secured from book sellers will help you greatly.

I know a boy who was ambitious to learn. He hadn't the opportunity of an early school education because he had to work ten hours a day, but he determined that he would learn and so he took with him to his work place every day a simplified grammar and he would read and memorize passages and the rules of grammar whilst at work.

After one year he was almost an expert in the grammar of his language. He knew the different] parts of speech, he could paraphrase, analyse and construct sentences. He also took with him a pocket dictionary and he would write out twenty-five new words with their meanings every day and study these words and their mords [forms?] and their meaning. After one year he had a speaking vocabulary of more than three thousand words. He continued this for several years and when he became a man he had a vocabulary at his command of over fifteen thousand words. He became an author because he could write in his language by having command of words. What he wrote was his experiences and he recorded his experiences in the best words of his language. He was not able to write properly at the same age and so he took with him to work what is called in school a copying book and he practised the copying of letters until he was able to write a very good hand. He naturally became acquainted with literature and so he continued reading extensively. When he died he was one of the greatest scholars the world ever knew. Apply the story to yourself.

There is nothing in the world that you want that you cannot have so long as it is possible in nature and men have achieved it before. The greatest men and women in the world burn the midnight lamp. That is to say, when their neighbours and household are gone to bed, they are reading, studying and thinking. When they rise in the morning they are always ahead of their neighbours and their household in the thing that they were studying[,] reading and thinking of. A daily repetition of that will carry them daily ahead and above their neighbours and household. Practise this rule. It is wise to study a couple of subjects at a time. As for instance---a little geography, a little psychology, a little ethics, a little theology, a little philosophy, a little mathematics, a little science on which a sound academic education is built. Doing this week after week, month after month, year after year will make you so learned in the liberal arts as to make you ready and fit for your place in the affairs of the world. If you know what others do not know, they will want to hear you. You will then become invaluable in your community and to your country, because men and women will want to hear you and see you everywhere.

As stated before, books are one's best companions. Try to get them and keep them. A method of doing so is every time you have ten cents or twenty five cents or a dollar to spend foolishly, either on your friends or yourself , think how much more useful that ten or twenty five cents or dollar would be invested in a book and so invest it. It may be just the thing you have been looking for to give you a thought by which you may win the heart of the world. The ten cent, twenty five cent or a dollar, therefore, may turn out to be an investment of worth to the extent of a million dollars. Never lend anybody the book that you want. You will never get it back. Never allow anybody to go to your bookshelf in your absence because the very book that you may want most may be taken from the shelf and you may never be able to get one of the kind again.

If you have a library of your own, lock it when you are not at home. Spend most of your spare time in your library. If you have a radio keep it in your own library and use it exhaustively to listen to lectures, recitals, speeches and good music. You can learn a lot from the radio. You can be inspired a lot by good music [lines repeated]. Good music carries the sentiment of harmony and you may think many a good thought out of listening to good music.

Read a chapter from the Bible everyday, Old and New Testaments. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures. You can always quote from the Scriptures. It is the quickest way of winning approval.

1. Read and study thoroughly the poem "Tragedy of White Injustice" and apply its sentiment and statements in connection with the historic character and behaviour of the white man. Know it so well as always to be able to be on guard against any professions of the white man in his suggested friendship for the Negro.

The poem exposes the white man's behaviour in history and is intended to suggest distrust of him in every phase of life. Never allow it to get into the hands of a white man if] possible.

2. You can improve your English as you go along by reading critically the books of the language; that is to say, you must pay close attention to the construction of sentences and paragraphs as you see them in the books you read. Imitate the style.

Read with observation. Never read carelessly and recklessly.

3. In reading books written by white authors of whatsoever kind, be aware of the fact that they are [not] written for your particular benefit or for the benefit of your race. They always write from their own point of view and only in the interest of their own race.

Never swallow wholly what the white man writes or says without first critically analyzing it and investigating it. The white man's trick is to deceive other people for his own benefit and profit.

Always be on your guard against him with whatsoever he does or says. Never take chances with him. His school books in the elementary schools, in the high schools, in the colleges and universities are all fixed up to suit his own purposes, to put him on top and keep him on top of other people. Don't trust him. Beware! Beware!

You should study carefully the subject of ethnology. It is the subject that causes races to know the difference between one race and another.

Ethnic relationship is important as it reveals the characteristic of one people as different from another. There is no doubt that each race has different habits and manners of behaviour. You must know them so as to be able to deal with them. There are books on this subject in the library. In your reading and searching for truth always try to get that which is particularly helpful to the Negro. Every thought that strikes you, see how it fits in with the Negro, and to what extent you can use it to his benefit or in his behalf. Your entire obsession must be to see things from the Negro's point of view, remembering always that you are a Negro striving for Negro supremacy in every department of life, so that any truth you see or any facts you gather must be twisted to suit the Negro psychology of things.

The educational system of today hides the truth as far as the Negro is concerned. Therefore, you must searchingly scan everything you read[,] particularly history, to see what you can pick out for the good of the race. As for instance, you will read that the Egyptians were a great people, the Carthagenians, the Libyans, etc., but you will not be told that they were black people or Negroes. You should, therefore, go beyond the mere statement of these events to discover the truth that will be creditable to your race. You would, therefore, in a case like that ask where did the Libyans get their civilization from or the Carthagenians or the Egyptians.

Following that kind of an investigation you will come upon the truth that it was all originally] Negro and subsequently became Negroid. That is to say, subsequent people were mixed with other people's blood, who were no doubt conquered by the Negro. As a fact, the original Egyptians were black men and women, and so the Carthagenians and Libyans, but in the later centuries they became mixed in blood, just as how [now?] the blacks are being mixed in America and the West Indies by the infusion of white blood through the domination of the white man.

Never yield to any statement in history or made by any individual[,] caring not how great, that the Negro was nobody in history. Even if you cannot prove it always claim that the Negro was great. Read everything you can get written by Negroes and their ancestry, going back six thousand years. There are statements in the Bible in the Old and New Testaments to show that black was always an important colour among the races of men. Abraham had company with a black woman, even though he had his wife Sarah, by whom he had Ishmael.

All the original Pharaohs were black. Tutankumen, whose bones and body were dug up not very long ago at Luxor in Egypt, was a black Pharaoh. The sphinx, in Egypt which has stood through the millenniums, has black features. It is evident that as art it was portrayed to teach us of the greatness of men. When you are dealing with Jews let them know that they were once your slaves in Egypt if you have to say so. There is good ground to say that civilization started in Africa and passed from and through Northern Africa into Southern Europe, from which the Greeks and Romans and the People of Asia Minor made good copies. The swarthy colour of the Asiatics and the brunette colour of the South Europeans were due to the fact that the cultured and civilized blacks of Africa mixed their blood with them. Search all history and all literature and the Bible and find facts to support this argument but hold to it with a grip that will never loosen. Things that may not be true can be made if you repeat them long and often enough, therefore, always repeat statements that will give your race a status and an advantage. That is how the white man has built up his system of superiority. He is always telling you he is superior and he has written history and literature to prove it. You must do the same. One of the great backgrounds for your argument which cannot be disputed is that you are older than any other man as a race because you are black. Your argument is that in nature everything by way of age darkens. That you are darker than the rest of men, proves logically, that you are older than the rest of men. Another proof of that is that even among white people they grow darker in skin as they grow older in age in a lifetime.

If the one individual were to live for six thousand years he would surely be not white. If he were born white he would be as dark as the darkest man. Therefore, the old argument that the black man is black because as man he is older than the other man is good. Use it everywhere you go to defeat the white man in his belief that you sprung from something else. Use the argument that the white man is white because most of the time when the black man was great in Africa and had succeeded in running him across the Mediterranean into South Europe he had to hide himself in caves where there was very little light and air. He was almost covered up for most of the time in darkness. In natural creation the child in the womb of the mother is almost white even though it be a black child and it is almost born white and doesn't change colour until it comes in contact with light and air.

Living in caves for so many centuries the white man, therefore, became colourless and the length of time always made it so that he was born naturally white. You must interpret anthropology to suit yourself. The thing for you to do is to refute every pertinent statement of the white man which tends to degrade you and to elevate him. Turn the tables on him and search for all reasons in the world you can find to justify it. That is how new thoughts are given out by creation. Never yield to the statement of your inferiority.

In reading Christian literature and accepting the doctrine of Jesus Christ lay special claim to your association with Jesus and the Son of God. Show that whilst the white and yellow worlds, that is to say---the worlds of Europe and Asia Minor persecuted and crucified Jesus the Son of God, it was the black race through Simon the black Cyrenian who befriended the Son of God and took up the Cross and bore it alongside of Him up to the heights of Calvary. The Roman Catholics, therefore, have no rightful claim to the Cross nor is any other professing Christian before the Negro. The Cross is the property of the Negro in his religion, because it was he who bore it.

Never admit that Jesus Christ was a white man, otherwise he could not be the Son of God and God to redeem all mankind. Jesus Christ had the blood of all races in his veins, and tracing the Jewish race back to Abraham and to Moses, from which Jesus sprang through the line of Jesse, you will find Negro blood everywhere, so Jesus had much of Negro blood in him.

Read the genealogical tree of Jesus in the Bible and you will learn from where he sprang. It is a fact that the white man has borrowed his civilization from other peoples. The first civilization was the Negro's---black people. The second civilization was the brown people---Indians, the third civilization was the yellow people, Chinese or Mongols; the last civilization up to today is the white man and all civilization goes back to the black man in the Nile Valley of Africa. In your reading, therefore, search for all these facts. Never stop reading and never stop until you find the proof of them.

You must pay great attention to sociology. Get the best books on the subject that you can and read them thoroughly. Find out the social relationship among other races so [that you may know how to advise your people in their social behaviour. Never admit that the Negro is more immoral than the white man but try to prove to the contrary. Socially the white man has debauched and debased all other races because of his dominant power. He is responsible for more illegitimacy among races than any other race. He has left bastard children everywhere he has been, therefore, he is not competent to say that he is socially and morally purer than any other race.

The mixed population among Negroes from slavery to the present in certain countries is due to [the white man's immorality. Therefore, if you should hear anyone talking about moral depravity of Negroes and the moral excellence of the whites, draw the above facts to their attention.

When through reading and research you have discovered any new fact helpful to the dignity and prestige, character and accomplishment of the Negro, always make a noise about it. You should keep always with you a note book and fountain pen or indelible pencil and make a note in that book of anything you hear or see that you would like to remember. Keep always at home a larger note book to which you must transfer the thought or experience, so that it will not be lost to your memory. Once at least every three months read over that book and as the book becomes more voluminous with facts, read it over at least once a year.

By the constant reading of these facts they will be planted on your subconscious mind and you will be able to use them without even knowing that you are doing so. By keeping your facts registered and your very important experiences, at the end of a full life you may have a volume of great value such as Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book. Get a copy of this Scrap Book. Ask any publisher in your town to get it for you. It contains invaluable inspiration. Always have a thought. Make it always a beautiful thought. The world is attracted by beauty either in art or in expression. Therefore, try to read, think and speak beautiful things.