The Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture was an event at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1906, to support the education of African Americans in the South. It involved many prominent members of New York society, with speakers including Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, Joseph Hodges Choate, and Robert Curtis Ogden. It was the beginning of a fund raising drive started by Booker T. Washington for the Tuskegee Institute with a goal of making up the annual operating shortfall, plant improvements, and creating an endowment. There were three distinct appeals for the fundraising: adding an annual income of $90,000 a year, creating an endowment of $1,800,000, and installing a heating plant at a cost of $34,000.