“Then she said, ‘It is my pride, friends, my pleasure, nay, my honor—without further words, allow me to present this distinguished guest, our honoreeeee—the Honorable Dr. So-and-So-and-So.’ I did not hear his name for the applause.

“Well, sir! That old man got up and he did not smile. It looked like he cast a wicked eye right on me, and he did like a snake charmer to Joyce, because nobody could move our heads. He did not even clear his throat before he said, ‘You think you are honoring me, ladies and gentlemen of the Athenyannie Arts Club, when you invited me here tonight? You are not honoring me a damn bit! I said, not a bit.’

“You could have heard a pin drop. Mens glued to their seats. Joyce, too.

“‘The way you could have honored me if you had wanted to, ladies and gentlemen, all these years, would have been to buy a piece of my music and play it, or a book of mine and read it, but you didn’t. Else you could have booed off the screen a few of them Uncle Toms thereon and told the manager of the Hamilton you’d never come back to see another picture in his theater until he put a story of mine in it, or some other decent hardworking Negro. But you didn’t do no such a thing. You didn’t even buy one of my watercolors. You let me starve until I am mighty nigh blue-black in the face—and not a one of you from Sugar Hill to Central Park ever offered me a pig’s foot. Then when The New York Times said I was a genius last month, here you come now giving a banquet for me when I’m old enough to fall over in my grave—if I was able to walk to the edge of it—which I’m not.

“‘Now, to tell you the truth, I don’t want no damned banquet. I don’t want no honoring where you eat as much as me, and enjoy yourselves more, besides making some money for your treasury. If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who’s coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race—give that child some help. Buy what they’re making! Support what they’re doing! Put out some cash—but don’t come giving me, who’s old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me—who’s toothless and can’t eat. You hear me, I ain’t honored!’