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Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

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Title: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

Author: Booker T. Washington


        
Release date: October 1, 2000 [eBook #2376]
                Most recently updated: September 9, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UP FROM SLAVERY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY


By Booker T. Washington




This volume is dedicated to my Wife
MRS. MARGARET JAMES WASHINGTON
And to my Brother
MR. JOHN H. WASHINGTON
Whose patience, fidelity, and hard work have gone far
to make the work at Tuskegee successful.




CONTENTS

 Preface
 Introduction
 UP FROM SLAVERY
 Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves
 Chapter II. Boyhood Days
 Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education
 Chapter IV. Helping Others
 Chapter V. The Reconstruction Period
 Chapter VI. Black Race And Red Race
 Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee
 Chapter VIII. Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House
 Chapter IX. Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights
 Chapter X. A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw
 Chapter XI. Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them
 Chapter XII. Raising Money
 Chapter XIII. Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech
 Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address
 Chapter XV. The Secret Of Success In Public Speaking
 Chapter XVI. Europe
 Chapter XVII. Last Words




UP FROM SLAVERY:




Preface


This volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with
incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the
Outlook. While they were appearing in that magazine I was constantly
surprised at the number of requests which came to me from all parts of
the country, asking that the articles be permanently preserved in book
form. I am most grateful to the Outlook for permission to gratify these
requests.

I have tried to tell a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt
at embellishment. My regret is that what I have attempted to do has
been done so imperfectly. The greater part of my time and strength is
required for the executive work connected with the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, and in securing the money necessary for the
support of the institution. Much of what I have said has been written
on board trains, or at hotels or railroad stations while I have been
waiting for trains, or during the moments that I could spare from my
work while at Tuskegee. Without the painstaking and generous assistance
of Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher I could not have succeeded in any
satisfactory degree.




Introduction


The details of Mr. Washington’s early life, as frankly set down in “Up
from Slavery,” do not give quite a whole view of his education. He had
the training that a coloured youth receives at Hampton, which, indeed,
the autobiography does explain. But the reader does not get his
intellectual pedigree, for Mr. Washington himself, perhaps, does not as
clearly understand it as another man might. The truth is he had a
training during the most impressionable period of his life that was
very extraordinary, such a training as few men of his generation have
had. To see its full meaning one must start in the Hawaiian Islands
half a century or more ago.* There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of
missionary parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an
American college. Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that
the undertaking implied, he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark
Hopkins was president. Williams College had many good things for youth
in that day, as it has in this, but the greatest was the strong
personality of its famous president. Every student does not profit by a
great teacher; but perhaps no young man ever came under the influence
of Dr. Hopkins, whose whole nature was so ripe for profit by such an
experience as young Armstrong. He lived in the family of President
Hopkins, and thus had a training that was wholly out of the common; and
this training had much to do with the development of his own strong
character, whose originality and force we are only beginning to
appreciate.

   * For this interesting view of Mr. Washington’s education, I am
   indebted to Robert C. Ogden, Esq., Chairman of the Board of Trustees
   of Hampton Institute and the intimate friend of General Armstrong
   during the whole period of his educational work.

In turn, Samuel Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, took up
his work as a trainer of youth. He had very raw material, and doubtless
most of his pupils failed to get the greatest lessons from him; but, as
he had been a peculiarly receptive pupil of Dr. Hopkins, so Booker
Washington became a peculiarly receptive pupil of his. To the formation
of Mr. Washington’s character, then, went the missionary zeal of New
England, influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern
education, and the wide-reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong
himself. These influences are easily recognizable in Mr. Washington
to-day by men who knew Dr. Hopkins and General Armstrong.

I got the cue to Mr. Washington’s character from a very simple incident
many years ago. I had never seen him, and I knew little about him,
except that he was the head of a school at Tuskegee, Alabama. I had
occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as “The Rev. Booker T.
Washington.” In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as
a clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and
persisted in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a
postscript: “I have no claim to ‘Rev.’” I knew most of the coloured men
who at that time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I
had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher; and
I had not heard of the head of an important coloured school who was not
a preacher. “A new kind of man in the coloured world,” I said to
myself—“a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an
economic one instead of a theological one.” I wrote him an apology for
mistaking him for a preacher.

The first time that I went to Tuskegee I was asked to make an address
to the school on Sunday evening. I sat upon the platform of the large
chapel and looked forth on a thousand coloured faces, and the choir of
a hundred or more behind me sang a familiar religious melody, and the
whole company joined in the chorus with unction. I was the only white
man under the roof, and the scene and the songs made an impression on
me that I shall never forget. Mr. Washington arose and asked them to
sing one after another of the old melodies that I had heard all my
life; but I had never before heard them sung by a thousand voices nor
by the voices of educated Negroes. I had associated them with the Negro
of the past, not with the Negro who was struggling upward. They brought
to my mind the plantation, the cabin, the slave, not the freedman in
quest of education. But on the plantation and in the cabin they had
never been sung as these thousand students sang them. I saw again all
the old plantations that I had ever seen; the whole history of the
Negro ran through my mind; and the inexpressible pathos of his life
found expression in these songs as I had never before felt it.

And the future? These were the ambitious youths of the race, at work
with an earnestness that put to shame the conventional student life of
most educational institutions. Another song rolled up along the
rafters. And as soon as silence came, I found myself in front of this
extraordinary mass of faces, thinking not of them, but of that long and
unhappy chapter in our country’s history which followed the one great
structural mistake of the Fathers of the Republic; thinking of the one
continuous great problem that generations of statesmen had wrangled
over, and a million men fought about, and that had so dwarfed the mass
of English men in the Southern States as to hold them back a hundred
years behind their fellows in every other part of the world—in England,
in Australia, and in the Northern and Western States; I was thinking of
this dark shadow that had oppressed every large-minded statesman from
Jefferson to Lincoln. These thousand young men and women about me were
victims of it. I, too, was an innocent victim of it. The whole Republic
was a victim of that fundamental error of importing Africa into
America. I held firmly to the first article of my faith that the
Republic must stand fast by the principle of a fair ballot; but I
recalled the wretched mess that Reconstruction had made of it; I
recalled the low level of public life in all the “black” States. Every
effort of philanthropy seemed to have miscarried, every effort at
correcting abuses seemed of doubtful value, and the race friction
seemed to become severer. Here was the century-old problem in all its
pathos seated singing before me. Who were the more to be pitied—these
innocent victims of an ancient wrong, or I and men like me, who had
inherited the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and
theories, and was willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do
whatever in God’s name a man might do towards saving the next
generation from such a burden. But I felt the weight of twenty
well-nigh hopeless years of thought and reading and observation; for
the old difficulties remained and new ones had sprung up. Then I saw
clearly that the way out of a century of blunders had been made by this
man who stood beside me and was introducing me to this audience. Before
me was the material he had used. All about me was the indisputable
evidence that he had found the natural line of development. He had
shown the way. Time and patience and encouragement and work would do
the rest.

It was then more clearly than ever before that I understood the
patriotic significance of Mr. Washington’s work. It is this conception
of it and of him that I have ever since carried with me. It is on this
that his claim to our gratitude rests.

To teach the Negro to read, whether English, or Greek, or Hebrew,
butters no parsnips. To make the Negro work, that is what his master
did in one way and hunger has done in another; yet both these left
Southern life where they found it. But to teach the Negro to do skilful
work, as men of all the races that have risen have worked,—responsible
work, which IS education and character; and most of all when Negroes so
teach Negroes to do this that they will teach others with a missionary
zeal that puts all ordinary philanthropic efforts to shame,—this is to
change the whole economic basis of life and the whole character of a
people.

The plan itself is not a new one. It was worked out at Hampton
Institute, but it was done at Hampton by white men. The plan had, in
fact, been many times theoretically laid down by thoughtful students of
Southern life. Handicrafts were taught in the days of slavery on most
well-managed plantations. But Tuskegee is, nevertheless, a brand-new
chapter in the history of the Negro, and in the history of the
knottiest problem we have ever faced. It not only makes “a carpenter of
a man; it makes a man of a carpenter.” In one sense, therefore, it is
of greater value than any other institution for the training of men and
women that we have, from Cambridge to Palo Alto. It is almost the only
one of which it may be said that it points the way to a new epoch in a
large area of our national life.

To work out the plan on paper, or at a distance—that is one thing. For
a white man to work it out—that too, is an easy thing. For a coloured
man to work it out in the South, where, in its constructive period, he
was necessarily misunderstood by his own people as well as by the
whites, and where he had to adjust it at every step to the strained
race relations—that is so very different and more difficult a thing
that the man who did it put the country under lasting obligations to
him.

It was not and is not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys
trades and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done
since the beginning of civilization. But this task had to be done with
the rawest of raw material, done within the civilization of the
dominant race, and so done as not to run across race lines and social
lines that are the strongest forces in the community. It had to be done
for the benefit of the whole community. It had to be done, moreover,
without local help, in the face of the direst poverty, done by begging,
and done in spite of the ignorance of one race and the prejudice of the
other.

No man living had a harder task, and a task that called for more wisdom
to do it right. The true measure of Mr. Washington’s success is, then,
not his teaching the pupils of Tuskegee, nor even gaining the support
of philanthropic persons at a distance, but this—that every Southern
white man of character and of wisdom has been won to a cordial
recognition of the value of the work, even men who held and still hold
to the conviction that a mere book education for the Southern blacks
under present conditions is a positive evil. This is a demonstration of
the efficiency of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea that stands like the
demonstration of the value of democratic institutions themselves—a
demonstration made so clear in spite of the greatest odds that it is no
longer open to argument.

Consider the change that has come in twenty years in the discussion of
the Negro problem. Two or three decades ago social philosophers and
statisticians and well-meaning philanthropists were still talking and
writing about the deportation of the Negroes, or about their settlement
within some restricted area, or about their settling in all parts of
the Union, or about their decline through their neglect of their
children, or about their rapid multiplication till they should expel
the whites from the South—of every sort of nonsense under heaven. All
this has given place to the simple plan of an indefinite extension
among the neglected classes of both races of the Hampton-Tuskegee
system of training. The “problem” in one sense has disappeared. The
future will have for the South swift or slow development of its masses
and of its soil in proportion to the swift or slow development of this
kind of training. This change of view is a true measure of Mr.
Washington’s work.

The literature of the Negro in America is colossal, from political
oratory through abolitionism to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Cotton is
King”—a vast mass of books which many men have read to the waste of
good years (and I among them); but the only books that I have read a
second time or ever care again to read in the whole list (most of them
by tiresome and unbalanced “reformers”) are “Uncle Remus” and “Up from
Slavery”; for these are the great literature of the subject. One has
all the best of the past, the other foreshadows a better future; and
the men who wrote them are the only men who have written of the subject
with that perfect frankness and perfect knowledge and perfect poise
whose other name is genius.

Mr. Washington has won a world-wide fame at an early age. His story of
his own life already has the distinction of translation into more
languages, I think, than any other American book; and I suppose that he
has as large a personal acquaintance among men of influence as any
private citizen now living.

His own teaching at Tuskegee is unique. He lectures to his advanced
students on the art of right living, not out of text-books, but
straight out of life. Then he sends them into the country to visit
Negro families. Such a student will come back with a minute report of
the way in which the family that he has seen lives, what their earnings
are, what they do well and what they do ill; and he will explain how
they might live better. He constructs a definite plan for the
betterment of that particular family out of the resources that they
have. Such a student, if he be bright, will profit more by an
experience like this than he could profit by all the books on sociology
and economics that ever were written. I talked with a boy at Tuskegee
who had made such a study as this, and I could not keep from
contrasting his knowledge and enthusiasm with what I heard in a class
room at a Negro university in one of the Southern cities, which is
conducted on the idea that a college course will save the soul. Here
the class was reciting a lesson from an abstruse text-book on
economics, reciting it by rote, with so obvious a failure to assimilate
it that the waste of labour was pitiful.

I asked Mr. Washington years ago what he regarded as the most important
result of his work, and he replied:

“I do not know which to put first, the effect of Tuskegee’s work on the
Negro, or the effect on the attitude of the white man to the Negro.”

The race divergence under the system of miseducation was fast getting
wider. Under the influence of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea the races are
coming into a closer sympathy and into an honourable and helpful
relation. As the Negro becomes economically independent, he becomes a
responsible part of the Southern life; and the whites so recognize him.
And this must be so from the nature of things. There is nothing
artificial about it. It is development in a perfectly natural way. And
the Southern whites not only so recognize it, but they are imitating it
in the teaching of the neglected masses of their own race. It has thus
come about that the school is taking a more direct and helpful hold on
life in the South than anywhere else in the country. Education is not a
thing apart from life—not a “system,” nor a philosophy; it is direct
teaching how to live and how to work.

To say that Mr. Washington has won the gratitude of all thoughtful
Southern white men, is to say that he has worked with the highest
practical wisdom at a large constructive task; for no plan for the
up-building of the freedman could succeed that ran counter to Southern
opinion. To win the support of Southern opinion and to shape it was a
necessary part of the task; and in this he has so well succeeded that
the South has a sincere and high regard for him. He once said to me
that he recalled the day, and remembered it thankfully, when he grew
large enough to regard a Southern white man as he regarded a Northern
one. It is well for our common country that the day is come when he and
his work are regarded as highly in the South as in any other part of
the Union. I think that no man of our generation has a more noteworthy
achievement to his credit than this; and it is an achievement of moral
earnestness of the strong character of a man who has done a great
national service.

Walter H. Page.




UP FROM SLAVERY




Chapter I.
A Slave Among Slaves


I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am
not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any
rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As
nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads
post-office called Hale’s Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not
know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall
are of the plantation and the slave quarters—the latter being the part
of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my
owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
others. I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.

Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even
later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the
tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
mother’s side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while
being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in
securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the
history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a
half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery not very much
attention was given to family history and family records—that is, black
family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of a
purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. Her addition to the
slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new
horse or cow. Of my father I know even less than of my mother. I do not
even know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that he was a
white man who lived on one of the near-by plantations. Whoever he was,
I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in
any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He
was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the
Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time.

The cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the
kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The
cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which
let in the light, and also the cold, chilly air of winter. There was a
door to the cabin—that is, something that was called a door—but the
uncertain hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to
say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very
uncomfortable one. In addition to these openings there was, in the
lower right-hand corner of the room, the “cat-hole,”—a contrivance
which almost every mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the
ante-bellum period. The “cat-hole” was a square opening, about seven by
eight inches, provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and
out of the house at will during the night. In the case of our
particular cabin I could never understand the necessity for this
convenience, since there were at least a half-dozen other places in the
cabin that would have accommodated the cats. There was no wooden floor
in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the centre of
the earthen floor there was a large, deep opening covered with boards,
which was used as a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the
winter. An impression of this potato-hole is very distinctly engraved
upon my memory, because I recall that during the process of putting the
potatoes in or taking them out I would often come into possession of
one or two, which I roasted and thoroughly enjoyed. There was no
cooking-stove on our plantation, and all the cooking for the whites and
slaves my mother had to do over an open fireplace, mostly in pots and
“skillets.” While the poorly built cabin caused us to suffer with cold
in the winter, the heat from the open fireplace in summer was equally
trying.

The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin, were
not very different from those of thousands of other slaves. My mother,
of course, had little time in which to give attention to the training
of her children during the day. She snatched a few moments for our care
in the early morning before her work began, and at night after the
day’s work was done. One of my earliest recollections is that of my
mother cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her children for
the purpose of feeding them. How or where she got it I do not know. I
presume, however, it was procured from our owner’s farm. Some people
may call this theft. If such a thing were to happen now, I should
condemn it as theft myself. But taking place at the time it did, and
for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my
mother was guilty of thieving. She was simply a victim of the system of
slavery. I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family
was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Three
children—John, my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself—had a
pallet on the dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a
bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.

I was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and
pastimes that I engaged in during my youth. Until that question was
asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life
that was devoted to play. From the time that I can remember anything,
almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour;
though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for
sports. During the period that I spent in slavery I was not large
enough to be of much service, still I was occupied most of the time in
cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going
to the mill to which I used to take the corn, once a week, to be
ground. The mill was about three miles from the plantation. This work I
always dreaded. The heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the back
of the horse, and the corn divided about evenly on each side; but in
some way, almost without exception, on these trips, the corn would so
shift as to become unbalanced and would fall off the horse, and often I
would fall with it. As I was not strong enough to reload the corn upon
the horse, I would have to wait, sometimes for many hours, till a
chance passer-by came along who would help me out of my trouble. The
hours while waiting for some one were usually spent in crying. The time
consumed in this way made me late in reaching the mill, and by the time
I got my corn ground and reached home it would be far into the night.
The road was a lonely one, and often led through dense forests. I was
always frightened. The woods were said to be full of soldiers who had
deserted from the army, and I had been told that the first thing a
deserter did to a Negro boy when he found him alone was to cut off his
ears. Besides, when I was late in getting home I knew I would always
get a severe scolding or a flogging.

I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys
and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being
discussed, was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my
mother kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln
and his armies might be successful, and that one day she and her
children might be free. In this connection I have never been able to
understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as
were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able
to keep themselves so accurately and completely informed about the
great National questions that were agitating the country. From the time
that Garrison, Lovejoy, and others began to agitate for freedom, the
slaves throughout the South kept in close touch with the progress of
the movement. Though I was a mere child during the preparation for the
Civil War and during the war itself, I now recall the many
late-at-night whispered discussions that I heard my mother and the
other slaves on the plantation indulge in. These discussions showed
that they understood the situation, and that they kept themselves
informed of events by what was termed the “grape-vine” telegraph.

During the campaign when Lincoln was first a candidate for the
Presidency, the slaves on our far-off plantation, miles from any
railroad or large city or daily newspaper, knew what the issues
involved were. When war was begun between the North and the South,
every slave on our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues
were discussed, the primal one was that of slavery. Even the most
ignorant members of my race on the remote plantations felt in their
hearts, with a certainty that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of
the slaves would be the one great result of the war, if the Northern
armies conquered. Every success of the Federal armies and every defeat
of the Confederate forces was watched with the keenest and most intense
interest. Often the slaves got knowledge of the results of great
battles before the white people received it. This news was usually
gotten from the coloured man who was sent to the post-office for the
mail. In our case the post-office was about three miles from the
plantation, and the mail came once or twice a week. The man who was
sent to the office would linger about the place long enough to get the
drift of the conversation from the group of white people who naturally
congregated there, after receiving their mail, to discuss the latest
news. The mail-carrier on his way back to our master’s house would as
naturally retail the news that he had secured among the slaves, and in
this way they often heard of important events before the white people
at the “big house,” as the master’s house was called.

I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and
God’s blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized
manner. On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were
gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a
piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at
one time and some potatoes at another. Sometimes a portion of our
family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would
eat from a tin plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the
hands with which to hold the food. When I had grown to sufficient size,
I was required to go to the “big house” at meal-times to fan the flies
from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a
pulley. Naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned
upon the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good deal of
it. I remember that at one time I saw two of my young mistresses and
some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard. At that time those
cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable
things that I had ever seen; and I then and there resolved that, if I
ever got free, the height of my ambition would be reached if I could
get to the point where I could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way
that I saw those ladies doing.

Of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many cases,
often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. I think the
slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites, because the usual
diet for slaves was corn bread and pork, and these could be raised on
the plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar, and other articles which the
whites had been accustomed to use could not be raised on the
plantation, and the conditions brought about by the war frequently made
it impossible to secure these things. The whites were often in great
straits. Parched corn was used for coffee, and a kind of black molasses
was used instead of sugar. Many times nothing was used to sweeten the
so-called tea and coffee.

The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They
had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch
thick, were of wood. When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
to the natural pressure of the foot. In wearing them one presented an
exceedingly awkward appearance. The most trying ordeal that I was
forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax
shirt. In the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use
flax as part of the clothing for the slaves. That part of the flax from
which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which of course was
the cheapest and roughest part. I can scarcely imagine any torture,
except, perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that caused
by putting on a new flax shirt for the first time. It is almost equal
to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more
chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pin-points, in contact with his
flesh. Even to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I
underwent when putting on one of these garments. The fact that my flesh
was soft and tender added to the pain. But I had no choice. I had to
wear the flax shirt or none; and had it been left to me to choose, I
should have chosen to wear no covering. In connection with the flax
shirt, my brother John, who is several years older than I am, performed
one of the most generous acts that I ever heard of one slave relative
doing for another. On several occasions when I was being forced to wear
a new flax shirt, he generously agreed to put it on in my stead and
wear it for several days, till it was “broken in.” Until I had grown to
be quite a youth this single garment was all that I wore.

One may get the idea, from what I have said, that there was bitter
feeling toward the white people on the part of my race, because of the
fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war which
would result in keeping the Negro in slavery if the South was
successful. In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true,
and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the
South where the Negro was treated with anything like decency. During
the Civil War one of my young masters was killed, and two were severely
wounded. I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves
when they heard of the death of “Mars’ Billy.” It was no sham sorrow,
but real. Some of the slaves had nursed “Mars’ Billy”; others had
played with him when he was a child. “Mars’ Billy” had begged for mercy
in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them.
The sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the “big
house.” When the two young masters were brought home wounded, the
sympathy of the slaves was shown in many ways. They were just as
anxious to assist in the nursing as the family relatives of the
wounded. Some of the slaves would even beg for the privilege of sitting
up at night to nurse their wounded masters. This tenderness and
sympathy on the part of those held in bondage was a result of their
kindly and generous nature. In order to defend and protect the women
and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went
to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives. The slave who was
selected to sleep in the “big house” during the absence of the males
was considered to have the place of honour. Any one attempting to harm
“young Mistress” or “old Mistress” during the night would have had to
cross the dead body of the slave to do so. I do not know how many have
noticed it, but I think that it will be found to be true that there are
few instances, either in slavery or freedom, in which a member of my
race has been known to betray a specific trust.

As a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of
bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are
many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and
mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the
war. I know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for
years been supplied with money by their former slaves to keep them from
suffering. I have known of still other cases in which the former slaves
have assisted in the education of the descendants of their former
owners. I know of a case on a large plantation in the South in which a
young white man, the son of the former owner of the estate, has become
so reduced in purse and self-control by reason of drink that he is a
pitiable creature; and yet, notwithstanding the poverty of the coloured
people themselves on this plantation, they have for years supplied this
young white man with the necessities of life. One sends him a little
coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. Nothing that the
coloured people possess is too good for the son of “old Mars’ Tom,” who
will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place
who knew directly or indirectly of “old Mars’ Tom.”

I have said that there are few instances of a member of my race
betraying a specific trust. One of the best illustrations of this which
I know of is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia whom I met not
long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio. I found that this man
had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the
Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be
permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and
while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labour where
and for whom he pleased. Finding that he could secure better wages in
Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his
master some three hundred dollars. Notwithstanding that the
Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master,
this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where
his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with
interest, in his hands. In talking to me about this, the man told me
that he knew that he did not have to pay the debt, but that he had
given his word to the master, and his word he had never broken. He felt
that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise.

From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the
slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one
who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is
so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long
since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern
white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section
of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and,
besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General
Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic
and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country
to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of
prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must
acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of
slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who
themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American
slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially,
intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal
number of black people in any other portion of the globe. This is so to
such an extent that Negroes in this country, who themselves or whose
forefathers went through the school of slavery, are constantly
returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in
the fatherland. This I say, not to justify slavery—on the other hand, I
condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was
established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a
missionary motive—but to call attention to a fact, and to show how
Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose.
When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes
seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the
future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness
through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.

Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have
entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted
upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white
man did. The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any
means confined to the Negro. This was fully illustrated by the life
upon our own plantation. The whole machinery of slavery was so
constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge
of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both
races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our
place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and
self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and
girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or
special line of productive industry. The girls were not taught to cook,
sew, or to take care of the house. All of this was left to the slaves.
The slaves, of course, had little personal interest in the life of the
plantation, and their ignorance prevented them from learning how to do
things in the most improved and thorough manner. As a result of the
system, fences were out of repair, gates were hanging half off the
hinges, doors creaked, window-panes were out, plastering had fallen but
was not replaced, weeds grew in the yard. As a rule, there was food for
whites and blacks, but inside the house, and on the dining-room table,
there was wanting that delicacy and refinement of touch and finish
which can make a home the most convenient, comfortable, and attractive
place in the world. Withal there was a waste of food and other
materials which was sad. When freedom came, the slaves were almost as
well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of
book-learning and ownership of property. The slave owner and his sons
had mastered no special industry. They unconsciously had imbibed the
feeling that manual labour was not the proper thing for them. On the
other hand, the slaves, in many cases, had mastered some handicraft,
and none were ashamed, and few unwilling, to labour.

Finally the war closed, and the day of freedom came. It was a momentous
and eventful day to all upon our plantation. We had been expecting it.
Freedom was in the air, and had been for months. Deserting soldiers
returning to their homes were to be seen every day. Others who had been
discharged, or whose regiments had been paroled, were constantly
passing near our place. The “grape-vine telegraph” was kept busy night
and day. The news and mutterings of great events were swiftly carried
from one plantation to another. In the fear of “Yankee” invasions, the
silverware and other valuables were taken from the “big house,” buried
in the woods, and guarded by trusted slaves. Woe be to any one who
would have attempted to disturb the buried treasure. The slaves would
give the Yankee soldiers food, drink, clothing—anything but that which
had been specifically intrusted to their care and honour. As the great
day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than
usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night.
Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to
freedom. True, they had sung those same verses before, but they had
been careful to explain that the “freedom” in these songs referred to
the next world, and had no connection with life in this world. Now they
gradually threw off the mask, and were not afraid to let it be known
that the “freedom” in their songs meant freedom of the body in this
world. The night before the eventful day, word was sent to the slave
quarters to the effect that something unusual was going to take place
at the “big house” the next morning. There was little, if any, sleep
that night. All as excitement and expectancy. Early the next morning
word was sent to all the slaves, old and young, to gather at the house.
In company with my mother, brother, and sister, and a large number of
other slaves, I went to the master’s house. All of our master’s family
were either standing or seated on the veranda of the house, where they
could see what was to take place and hear what was said. There was a
feeling of deep interest, or perhaps sadness, on their faces, but not
bitterness. As I now recall the impression they made upon me, they did
not at the moment seem to be sad because of the loss of property, but
rather because of parting with those whom they had reared and who were
in many ways very close to them. The most distinct thing that I now
recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be
a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech
and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I
think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could
go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side,
leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her
cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day
for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would
never live to see.

For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild
scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of bitterness. In fact,
there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. The wild
rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people lasted but for
a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their
cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility
of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and
plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of
them. It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve
years out into the world to provide for himself. In a few hours the
great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for
centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. These were
the questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education,
citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches. Was it any
wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling
of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters? To some it seemed
that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more
serious thing than they had expected to find it. Some of the slaves
were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. They had
no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among
strange people, even if they had been sure where to find a new place of
abode. To this class the problem seemed especially hard. Besides, deep
down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to
“old Marster” and “old Missus,” and to their children, which they found
it hard to think of breaking off. With these they had spent in some
cases nearly a half-century, and it was no light thing to think of
parting. Gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves
began to wander from the slave quarters back to the “big house” to have
a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future.




Chapter II.
Boyhood Days


After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which
practically all the people on our place were agreed, and I found that
this was generally true throughout the South: that they must change
their names, and that they must leave the old plantation for at least a
few days or weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they
were free.

In some way a feeling got among the coloured people that it was far
from proper for them to bear the surname of their former owners, and a
great many of them took other surnames. This was one of the first signs
of freedom. When they were slaves, a coloured person was simply called
“John” or “Susan.” There was seldom occasion for more than the use of
the one name. If “John” or “Susan” belonged to a white man by the name
of “Hatcher,” sometimes he was called “John Hatcher,” or as often
“Hatcher’s John.” But there was a feeling that “John Hatcher” or
“Hatcher’s John” was not the proper title by which to denote a freeman;
and so in many cases “John Hatcher” was changed to “John S. Lincoln” or
“John S. Sherman,” the initial “S” standing for no name, it being
simply a part of what the coloured man proudly called his “entitles.”

As I have stated, most of the coloured people left the old plantation
for a short while at least, so as to be sure, it seemed, that they
could leave and try their freedom on to see how it felt. After they had
remained away for a while, many of the older slaves, especially,
returned to their old homes and made some kind of contract with their
former owners by which they remained on the estate.

My mother’s husband, who was the stepfather of my brother John and
myself, did not belong to the same owners as did my mother. In fact, he
seldom came to our plantation. I remember seeing him there perhaps once
a year, that being about Christmas time. In some way, during the war,
by running away and following the Federal soldiers, it seems, he found
his way into the new state of West Virginia. As soon as freedom was
declared, he sent for my mother to come to the Kanawha Valley, in West
Virginia. At that time a journey from Virginia over the mountains to
West Virginia was rather a tedious and in some cases a painful
undertaking. What little clothing and few household goods we had were
placed in a cart, but the children walked the greater portion of the
distance, which was several hundred miles.

I do not think any of us ever had been very far from the plantation,
and the taking of a long journey into another state was quite an event.
The parting from our former owners and the members of our own race on
the plantation was a serious occasion. From the time of our parting
till their death we kept up a correspondence with the older members of
the family, and in later years we have kept in touch with those who
were the younger members. We were several weeks making the trip, and
most of the time we slept in the open air and did our cooking over a
log fire out-of-doors. One night I recall that we camped near an
abandoned log cabin, and my mother decided to build a fire in that for
cooking, and afterward to make a “pallet” on the floor for our
sleeping. Just as the fire had gotten well started a large black snake
fully a yard and a half long dropped down the chimney and ran out on
the floor. Of course we at once abandoned that cabin. Finally we
reached our destination—a little town called Malden, which is about
five miles from Charleston, the present capital of the state.

At that time salt-mining was the great industry in that part of West
Virginia, and the little town of Malden was right in the midst of the
salt-furnaces. My stepfather had already secured a job at a
salt-furnace, and he had also secured a little cabin for us to live in.
Our new house was no better than the one we had left on the old
plantation in Virginia. In fact, in one respect it was worse.
Notwithstanding the poor condition of our plantation cabin, we were at
all times sure of pure air. Our new home was in the midst of a cluster
of cabins crowded closely together, and as there were no sanitary
regulations, the filth about the cabins was often intolerable. Some of
our neighbours were coloured people, and some were the poorest and most
ignorant and degraded white people. It was a motley mixture. Drinking,
gambling, quarrels, fights, and shockingly immoral practices were
frequent. All who lived in the little town were in one way or another
connected with the salt business. Though I was a mere child, my
stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces. Often
I began work as early as four o’clock in the morning.

The first thing I ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while
working in this salt-furnace. Each salt-packer had his barrels marked
with a certain number. The number allotted to my stepfather was “18.”
At the close of the day’s work the boss of the packers would come
around and put “18” on each of our barrels, and I soon learned to
recognize that figure wherever I saw it, and after a while got to the
point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any
other figures or letters.

From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I
recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined,
when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life,
I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common
books and newspapers. Soon after we got settled in some manner in our
new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book
for me. How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she
procured an old copy of Webster’s “blue-back” spelling-book, which
contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as “ab,”
“ba,” “ca,” “da.” I began at once to devour this book, and I think that
it was the first one I ever had in my hands. I had learned from
somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I
tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it,—all of course
without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me. At that time
there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could
read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people. In some
way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the
alphabet. In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my
ambition, and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she
could. Though she was totally ignorant, she had high ambitions for her
children, and a large fund of good, hard, common sense, which seemed to
enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything
in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition
from my mother.

In the midst of my struggles and longing for an education, a young
coloured boy who had learned to read in the state of Ohio came to
Malden. As soon as the coloured people found out that he could read, a
newspaper was secured, and at the close of nearly every day’s work this
young man would be surrounded by a group of men and women who were
anxious to hear him read the news contained in the papers. How I used
to envy this man! He seemed to me to be the one young man in all the
world who ought to be satisfied with his attainments.

About this time the question of having some kind of a school opened for
the coloured children in the village began to be discussed by members
of the race. As it would be the first school for Negro children that
had ever been opened in that part of Virginia, it was, of course, to be
a great event, and the discussion excited the wildest interest. The
most perplexing question was where to find a teacher. The young man
from Ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered, but his
age was against him. In the midst of the discussion about a teacher,
another young coloured man from Ohio, who had been a soldier, in some
way found his way into town. It was soon learned that he possessed
considerable education, and he was engaged by the coloured people to
teach their first school. As yet no free schools had been started for
coloured people in that section, hence each family agreed to pay a
certain amount per month, with the understanding that the teacher was
to “board ’round”—that is, spend a day with each family. This was not
bad for the teacher, for each family tried to provide the very best on
the day the teacher was to be its guest. I recall that I looked forward
with an anxious appetite to the “teacher’s day” at our little cabin.

This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the first
time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever
occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few people who
were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of
the intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education.
As I have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were
too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. As fast as
any kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools
filled, but night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older
people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died. With
this end in view men and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old
would often be found in the night-school. Some day-schools were formed
soon after freedom, but the principal book studied in the Sunday-school
was the spelling-book. Day-school, night-school, Sunday-school, were
always crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room.

The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley, however, brought to me
one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced. I had been
working in a salt-furnace for several months, and my stepfather had
discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school
opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This
decision seemed to cloud my every ambition. The disappointment was made
all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was
where I could see the happy children passing to and from school
mornings and afternoons. Despite this disappointment, however, I
determined that I would learn something, anyway. I applied myself with
greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the
“blue-back” speller.

My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to
comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to
learn. After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the
teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day’s work was
done. These night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more
at night than the other children did during the day. My own experiences
in the night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which,
in after years, I had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee. But my boyish
heart was still set upon going to the day-school, and I let no
opportunity slip to push my case. Finally I won, and was permitted to
go to the school in the day for a few months, with the understanding
that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till
nine o’clock, and return immediately after school closed in the
afternoon for at least two more hours of work.

The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to
work till nine o’clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself
in a difficulty. School would always be begun before I reached it, and
sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I yielded
to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn me; but
since it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great faith in the
power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently
gained by holding back a fact. There was a large clock in a little
office in the furnace. This clock, of course, all the hundred or more
workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending
the day’s work. I got the idea that the way for me to reach school on
time was to move the clock hands from half-past eight up to the nine
o’clock mark. This I found myself doing morning after morning, till the
furnace “boss” discovered that something was wrong, and locked the
clock in a case. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply
meant to reach that schoolhouse in time.

When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first
place, I found that all the other children wore hats or caps on their
heads, and I had neither hat nor cap. In fact, I do not remember that
up to the time of going to school I had ever worn any kind of covering
upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else had even
thought anything about the need of covering for my head. But, of
course, when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to feel
quite uncomfortable. As usual, I put the case before my mother, and she
explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a “store hat,”
which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my
race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own, but
that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty. She
accordingly got two pieces of “homespun” (jeans) and sewed them
together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap.

The lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with
me, and I have tried as best as I could to teach it to others. I have
always felt proud, whenever I think of the incident, that my mother had
strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of
seeming to be that which she was not—of trying to impress my
schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a
“store hat” when she was not. I have always felt proud that she refused
to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for.
Since that time I have owned many kinds of caps and hats, but never one
of which I have felt so proud as of the cap made of the two pieces of
cloth sewed together by my mother. I have noted the fact, but without
satisfaction, I need not add, that several of the boys who began their
careers with “store hats” and who were my schoolmates and used to join
in the sport that was made of me because I had only a “homespun” cap,
have ended their careers in the penitentiary, while others are not able
now to buy any kind of hat.

My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather _A_ name.
From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply
“Booker.” Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it
was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. When I heard the
school-roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two
names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance
of having three. I was in deep perplexity, because I knew that the
teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only one. By
the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea
occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation;
and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told
him “Booker Washington,” as if I had been called by that name all my
life; and by that name I have since been known. Later in my life I
found that my mother had given me the name of “Booker Taliaferro” soon
after I was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to
disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as soon as I found
out about it I revived it, and made my full name “Booker Taliaferro
Washington.” I think there are not many men in our country who have had
the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have.

More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy
or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which I could trace
back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only
inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I
have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had
been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to
yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to
do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that
because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my
children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher
effort.

The world should not pass judgment upon the Negro, and especially the
Negro youth, too quickly or too harshly. The Negro boy has obstacles,
discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known
to those not situated as he is. When a white boy undertakes a task, it
is taken for granted that he will succeed. On the other hand, people
are usually surprised if the Negro boy does not fail. In a word, the
Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him.

The influence of ancestry, however, is important in helping forward any
individual or race, if too much reliance is not placed upon it. Those
who constantly direct attention to the Negro youth’s moral weaknesses,
and compare his advancement with that of white youths, do not consider
the influence of the memories which cling about the old family
homesteads. I have no idea, as I have stated elsewhere, who my
grandmother was. I have, or have had, uncles and aunts and cousins, but
I have no knowledge as to where most of them are. My case will
illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part
of our country. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if
he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending
back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him to
resist temptations. The fact that the individual has behind and
surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a
stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success.

The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was
short, and my attendance was irregular. It was not long before I had to
stop attending day-school altogether, and devote all of my time again
to work. I resorted to the night-school again. In fact, the greater
part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered through the
night-school after my day’s work was done. I had difficulty often in
securing a satisfactory teacher. Sometimes, after I had secured some
one to teach me at night, I would find, much to my disappointment, that
the teacher knew but little more than I did. Often I would have to walk
several miles at night in order to recite my night-school lessons.
There was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging
the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me,
and that was a determination to secure an education at any cost.

Soon after we moved to West Virginia, my mother adopted into our
family, notwithstanding our poverty, an orphan boy, to whom afterward
we gave the name of James B. Washington. He has ever since remained a
member of the family.

After I had worked in the salt-furnace for some time, work was secured
for me in a coal-mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of
securing fuel for the salt-furnace. Work in the coal-mine I always
dreaded. One reason for this was that any one who worked in a coal-mine
was always unclean, at least while at work, and it was a very hard job
to get one’s skin clean after the day’s work was over. Then it was
fully a mile from the opening of the coal-mine to the face of the coal,
and all, of course, was in the blackest darkness. I do not believe that
one ever experiences anywhere else such darkness as he does in a
coal-mine. The mine was divided into a large number of different
“rooms” or departments, and, as I never was able to learn the location
of all these “rooms,” I many times found myself lost in the mine. To
add to the horror of being lost, sometimes my light would go out, and
then, if I did not happen to have a match, I would wander about in the
darkness until by chance I found some one to give me a light. The work
was not only hard, but it was dangerous. There was always the danger of
being blown to pieces by a premature explosion of powder, or of being
crushed by falling slate. Accidents from one or the other of these
causes were frequently occurring, and this kept me in constant fear.
Many children of the tenderest years were compelled then, as is now
true I fear, in most coal-mining districts, to spend a large part of
their lives in these coal-mines, with little opportunity to get an
education; and, what is worse, I have often noted that, as a rule,
young boys who begin life in a coal-mine are often physically and
mentally dwarfed. They soon lose ambition to do anything else than to
continue as a coal-miner.

In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my
imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely
no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities. I used to envy the
white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a
Congressman, Governor, Bishop, or President by reason of the accident
of his birth or race. I used to picture the way that I would act under
such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising
until I reached the highest round of success.

In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once
did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the
position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has
overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I
almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy’s birth and
connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life
is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and
must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to
secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through
which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that
one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and
race.

From any point of view, I had rather be what I am, a member of the
Negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of
any other race. I have always been made sad when I have heard members
of any race claiming rights or privileges, or certain badges of
distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or
that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. I
have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of
the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race
will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has
individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an
inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possesses
intrinsic, individual merit. Every persecuted individual and race
should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is
universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is,
in the long run, recognized and rewarded. This I have said here, not to
call attention to myself as an individual, but to the race to which I
am proud to belong.




Chapter III.
The Struggle For An Education


One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two
miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in
Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about
any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little
coloured school in our town.

In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to
the two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not only
was the school established for the members of any race, but the
opportunities that it provided by which poor but worthy students could
work out all or a part of the cost of a board, and at the same time be
taught some trade or industry.

As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be
the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more
attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.

After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few
months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a
vacant position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of
the salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General
Ruffner, was a “Yankee” woman from Vermont. Mrs. Ruffner had a
reputation all through the vicinity for being very strict with her
servants, and especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few of
them remained with her more than two or three weeks. They all left with
the same excuse: she was too strict. I decided, however, that I would
rather try Mrs. Ruffner’s house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my
mother applied to her for the vacant position. I was hired at a salary
of $5 per month.

I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner’s severity that I was almost
afraid to see her, and trembled when I went into her presence. I had
not lived with her many weeks, however, before I began to understand
her. I soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything
kept clean about her, that she wanted things done promptly and
systematically, and that at the bottom of everything she wanted
absolute honesty and frankness. Nothing must be sloven or slipshod;
every door, every fence, must be kept in repair.

I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to
Hampton, but I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate,
I here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons
that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as
any education I have ever gotten anywhere else. Even to this day I
never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that
I do not want to pick them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I
do not want to clean it, a paling off of a fence that I do not want to
put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to
paint or whitewash it, or a button off one’s clothes, or a grease-spot
on them or on a floor, that I do not want to call attention to it.

From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my
best friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so
implicitly. During the one or two winters that I was with her she gave
me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a
portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at
night, sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom I could hire to
teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all
my efforts to get an education. It was while living with her that I
began to get together my first library. I secured a dry-goods box,
knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting
into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called
it my “library.”

Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner’s I did not give up the idea
of going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I determined to
make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no
definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it
would cost to go there. I do not think that any one thoroughly
sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless it was my
mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out
on a “wild-goose chase.” At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent
from her that I might start. The small amount of money that I had
earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the
family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very
little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. My
brother John helped me all that he could, but of course that was not a
great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn
much, and most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying the
household expenses.

Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with
my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older
coloured people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of
their lives in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time
when they would see a member of their race leave home to attend a
boarding-school. Some of these older people would give me a nickel,
others a quarter, or a handkerchief.

Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton. I had only a
small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing I could
get. My mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I
hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more
sad. She, however, was very brave through it all. At that time there
were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with
eastern Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the
remainder of the distance was travelled by stage-coaches.

The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had
not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton. One
experience I shall long remember. I had been travelling over the
mountains most of the afternoon in an old-fashion stage-coach, when,
late in the evening, the coach stopped for the night at a common,
unpainted house called a hotel. All the other passengers except myself
were whites. In my ignorance I supposed that the little hotel existed
for the purpose of accommodating the passengers who travelled on the
stage-coach. The difference that the colour of one’s skin would make I
had not thought anything about. After all the other passengers had been
shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, I shyly presented myself
before the man at the desk. It is true I had practically no money in my
pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I had hoped in some way
to beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, for at that season
in the mountains of Virginia the weather was cold, and I wanted to get
indoors for the night. Without asking as to whether I had any money,
the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of
providing me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in
finding out what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I managed to
keep warm by walking about, and so got through the night. My whole soul
was so bent upon reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish
any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper.

By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and
dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city, and
this rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond, I was
completely out of money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place,
and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied
at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was
what I did not have. Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the
streets. In doing this I passed by many food-stands where fried chicken
and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most
tempting appearance. At that time it seemed to me that I would have
promised all that I expected to possess in the future to have gotten
hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. But I could not
get either of these, nor anything else to eat.

I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so
exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired, I was hungry, I was
everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme
physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board
sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till I
was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the
sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of
clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet
over my head. The next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I
was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since I had had
sufficient food. As soon as it became light enough for me to see my
surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and that this ship
seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron. I went at once to the
vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in
order to get money for food. The captain, a white man, who seemed to be
kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn money for my
breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have been about
the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.

My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I
could continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad
to do. I continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After
buying food with the small wages I received there was not much left to
add on the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to
economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a
reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave
me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. Many years after that the
coloured citizens of Richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at
which there must have been two thousand people present. This reception
was held not far from the spot where I slept the first night I spent in
the city, and I must confess that my mind was more upon the sidewalk
that first gave me shelter than upon the recognition, agreeable and
cordial as it was.

When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
started again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a
surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me
it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large,
three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all
that I had undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who
gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence
the sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths,
they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed
to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen.
The sight of it seemed to give me new life. I felt that a new kind of
existence had now begun—that life would now have a new meaning. I felt
that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle
prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to
accomplish the most good in the world.

As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton
Institute, I presented myself before the head teacher for an assignment
to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and a
change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable
impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in
her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I
could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless
loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither
did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and
to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the
meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to
my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as
well as they, if I could only get a chance to show what was in me.

After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: “The
adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it.”

It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive
an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner
had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.

I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and
dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench,
table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides,
every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in
the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large
measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher
in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the
head teacher. She was a “Yankee” woman who knew just where to look for
dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then
she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the
walls, and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one
bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the
furniture, she quietly remarked, “I guess you will do to enter this
institution.”

I was one of the happiest souls on Earth. The sweeping of that room was
my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for
entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction.
I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt
that this was the best one I ever passed.

I have spoken of my own experience in entering the Hampton Institute.
Perhaps few, if any, had anything like the same experience that I had,
but about the same period there were hundreds who found their way to
Hampton and other institutions after experiencing something of the same
difficulties that I went through. The young men and women were
determined to secure an education at any cost.

The sweeping of the recitation-room in the manner that I did it seems
to have paved the way for me to get through Hampton. Miss Mary F.
Mackie, the head teacher, offered me a position as janitor. This, of
course, I gladly accepted, because it was a place where I could work
out nearly all the cost of my board. The work was hard and taxing but I
stuck to it. I had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work
late into the night, while at the same time I had to rise by four
o’clock in the morning, in order to build the fires and have a little
time in which to prepare my lessons. In all my career at Hampton, and
ever since I have been out in the world, Miss Mary F. Mackie, the head
teacher to whom I have referred, proved one of my strongest and most
helpful friends. Her advice and encouragement were always helpful in
strengthening to me in the darkest hour.

I have spoken of the impression that was made upon me by the buildings
and general appearance of the Hampton Institute, but I have not spoken
of that which made the greatest and most lasting impression on me, and
that was a great man—the noblest, rarest human being that it has ever
been my privilege to meet. I refer to the late General Samuel C.
Armstrong.

It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great
characters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say
that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of
General Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave
plantation and the coal-mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be
permitted to come into direct contact with such a character as General
Armstrong. I shall always remember that the first time I went into his
presence he made the impression upon me of being a perfect man: I was
made to feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. It
was my privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered
Hampton till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in
my estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings,
class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women
there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General
Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. The
older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which
one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which
can be gotten from contact with great men and women. Instead of
studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges
might learn to study men and things!

General Armstrong spent two of the last six months of his life in my
home at Tuskegee. At that time he was paralyzed to the extent that he
had lost control of his body and voice in a very large degree.
Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and
day for the cause to which he had given his life. I never saw a man who
so completely lost sight of himself. I do not believe he ever had a
selfish thought. He was just as happy in trying to assist some other
institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton. Although
he fought the Southern white man in the Civil War, I never heard him
utter a bitter word against him afterward. On the other hand, he was
constantly seeking to find ways by which he could be of service to the
Southern whites.

It would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the
students at Hampton, or the faith they had in him. In fact, he was
worshipped by his students. It never occurred to me that General
Armstrong could fail in anything that he undertook. There is almost no
request that he could have made that would not have been complied with.
When he was a guest at my home in Alabama, and was so badly paralyzed
that he had to be wheeled about in an invalid’s chair, I recall that
one of the General’s former students had occasion to push his chair up
a long, steep hill that taxed his strength to the utmost. When the top
of the hill was reached, the former pupil, with a glow of happiness on
his face, exclaimed, “I am so glad that I have been permitted to do
something that was real hard for the General before he dies!” While I
was a student at Hampton, the dormitories became so crowded that it was
impossible to find room for all who wanted to be admitted. In order to
help remedy the difficulty, the General conceived the plan of putting
up tents to be used as rooms. As soon as it became known that General
Armstrong would be pleased if some of the older students would live in
the tents during the winter, nearly every student in school volunteered
to go.

I was one of the volunteers. The winter that we spent in those tents
was an intensely cold one, and we suffered severely—how much I am sure
General Armstrong never knew, because we made no complaints. It was
enough for us to know that we were pleasing General Armstrong, and that
we were making it possible for an additional number of students to
secure an education. More than once, during a cold night, when a stiff
gale would be blowing, our tent was lifted bodily, and we would find
ourselves in the open air. The General would usually pay a visit to the
tents early in the morning, and his earnest, cheerful, encouraging
voice would dispel any feeling of despondency.

I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was
but a type of that Christlike body of men and women who went into the
Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in
lifting up my race. The history of the world fails to show a higher,
purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found
their way into those Negro schools.

Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking
me into a new world. The matter of having meals at regular hours, of
eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of
the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all
new to me.

I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the
Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath. I learned there
for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body
healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my
travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always
in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been
the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been
easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have
always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should
be a part of every house.

For some time, while a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single
pair of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I
would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I
might wear them again the next morning.

The charge for my board at Hampton was ten dollars per month. I was
expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder.
To meet this cash payment, as I have stated, I had just fifty cents
when I reached the institution. Aside from a very few dollars that my
brother John was able to send me once in a while, I had no money with
which to pay my board. I was determined from the first to make my work
as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable. This I
succeeded in doing to such an extent that I was soon informed that I
would be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work. The
cost of tuition was seventy dollars a year. This, of course, was wholly
beyond my ability to provide. If I had been compelled to pay the
seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, I
would have been compelled to leave the Hampton school. General
Armstrong, however, very kindly got Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New
Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time
that I was at Hampton. After I finished the course at Hampton and had
entered upon my lifework at Tuskegee, I had the pleasure of visiting
Mr. Morgan several times.

After having been for a while at Hampton, I found myself in difficulty
because I did not have books and clothing. Usually, however, I got
around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more
fortunate than myself. As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had
practically nothing. Everything that I possessed was in a small hand
satchel. My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact
that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in
ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished,
there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots. To wear
one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the schoolroom,
and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard problem for me to
solve. In some way I managed to get on till the teachers learned that I
was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then some of them were kind
enough to see that I was partly supplied with second-hand clothing that
had been sent in barrels from the North. These barrels proved a
blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving students. Without them I
question whether I should ever have gotten through Hampton.

When I first went to Hampton I do not recall that I had ever slept in a
bed that had two sheets on it. In those days there were not many
buildings there, and room was very precious. There were seven other
boys in the same room with me; most of them, however, students who had
been there for some time. The sheets were quite a puzzle to me. The
first night I slept under both of them, and the second night I slept on
top of them; but by watching the other boys I learned my lesson in
this, and have been trying to follow it ever since and to teach it to
others.

I was among the youngest of the students who were in Hampton at the
time. Most of the students were men and women—some as old as forty
years of age. As I now recall the scene of my first year, I do not
believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with
three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest
as these men and women were. Every hour was occupied in study or work.
Nearly all had had enough actual contact with the world to teach them
the need of education. Many of the older ones were, of course, too old
to master the text-books very thoroughly, and it was often sad to watch
their struggles; but they made up in earnest much of what they lacked
in books. Many of them were as poor as I was, and, besides having to
wrestle with their books, they had to struggle with a poverty which
prevented their having the necessities of life. Many of them had aged
parents who were dependent upon them, and some of them were men who had
wives whose support in some way they had to provide for.

The great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every
one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home. No one
seemed to think of himself. And the officers and teachers, what a rare
set of human beings they were! They worked for the students night and
day, in seasons and out of season. They seemed happy only when they
were helping the students in some manner. Whenever it is written—and I
hope it will be—the part that the Yankee teachers played in the
education of the Negroes immediately after the war will make one of the
most thrilling parts of the history off this country. The time is not
far distant when the whole South will appreciate this service in a way
that it has not yet been able to do.




Chapter IV.
Helping Others


At the end of my first year at Hampton I was confronted with another
difficulty. Most of the students went home to spend their vacation. I
had no money with which to go home, but I had to go somewhere. In those
days very few students were permitted to remain at the school during
vacation. It made me feel very sad and homesick to see the other
students preparing to leave and starting for home. I not only had no
money with which to go home, but I had none with which to go anywhere.

In some way, however, I had gotten hold of an extra, second-hand coat
which I thought was a pretty valuable coat. This I decided to sell, in
order to get a little money for travelling expenses. I had a good deal
of boyish pride, and I tried to hide, as far as I could, from the other
students the fact that I had no money and nowhere to go. I made it
known to a few people in the town of Hampton that I had this coat to
sell, and, after a good deal of persuading, one coloured man promised
to come to my room to look the coat over and consider the matter of
buying it. This cheered my drooping spirits considerably. Early the
next morning my prospective customer appeared. After looking the
garment over carefully, he asked me how much I wanted for it. I told
him I thought it was worth three dollars. He seemed to agree with me as
to price, but remarked in the most matter-of-fact way: “I tell you what
I will do; I will take the coat, and will pay you five cents, cash
down, and pay you the rest of the money just as soon as I can get it.”
It is not hard to imagine what my feelings were at the time.

With this disappointment I gave up all hope of getting out of the town
of Hampton for my vacation work. I wanted very much to go where I might
secure work that would at least pay me enough to purchase some
much-needed clothing and other necessities. In a few days practically
all the students and teachers had left for their homes, and this served
to depress my spirits even more.

After trying for several days in and near the town of Hampton, I
finally secured work in a restaurant at Fortress Monroe. The wages,
however, were very little more than my board. At night, and between
meals, I found considerable time for study and reading; and in this
direction I improved myself very much during the summer.

When I left school at the end of my first year, I owed the institution
sixteen dollars that I had not been able to work out. It was my
greatest ambition during the summer to save money enough with which to
pay this debt. I felt that this was a debt of honour, and that I could
hardly bring myself to the point of even trying to enter school again
till it was paid. I economized in every way that I could think of—did
my own washing, and went without necessary garments—but still I found
my summer vacation ending and I did not have the sixteen dollars.

One day, during the last week of my stay in the restaurant, I found
under one of the tables a crisp, new ten-dollar bill. I could hardly
contain myself, I was so happy. As it was not my place of business I
felt it to be the proper thing to show the money to the proprietor.
This I did. He seemed as glad as I was, but he coolly explained to me
that, as it was his place of business, he had a right to keep the
money, and he proceeded to do so. This, I confess, was another pretty
hard blow to me. I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now
look back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged
over anything that I set out to accomplish. I have begun everything
with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with
the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot
succeed. I determined to face the situation just as it was. At the end
of the week I went to the treasurer of the Hampton Institute, General
J.F.B. Marshall, and told him frankly my condition. To my gratification
he told me that I could reenter the institution, and that he would
trust me to pay the debt when I could. During the second year I
continued to work as a janitor.

The education that I received at Hampton out of the text-books was but
a small part of what I learned there. One of the things that impressed
itself upon me deeply, the second year, was the unselfishness of the
teachers. It was hard for me to understand how any individuals could
bring themselves to the point where they could be so happy in working
for others. Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that
those who are happiest are those who do the most for others. This
lesson I have tried to carry with me ever since.

I also learned a valuable lesson at Hampton by coming into contact with
the best breeds of live stock and fowls. No student, I think, who has
had the opportunity of doing this could go out into the world and
content himself with the poorest grades.

Perhaps the most valuable thing that I got out of my second year was an
understanding of the use and value of the Bible. Miss Nathalie Lord,
one of the teachers, from Portland, Me., taught me how to use and love
the Bible. Before this I had never cared a great deal about it, but now
I learned to love to read the Bible, not only for the spiritual help
which it gives, but on account of it as literature. The lessons taught
me in this respect took such a hold upon me that at the present time,
when I am at home, no matter how busy I am, I always make it a rule to
read a chapter or a portion of a chapter in the morning, before
beginning the work of the day.

Whatever ability I may have as a public speaker I owe in a measure to
Miss Lord. When she found out that I had some inclination in this
direction, she gave me private lessons in the matter of breathing,
emphasis, and articulation. Simply to be able to talk in public for the
sake of talking has never had the least attraction to me. In fact, I
consider that there is nothing so empty and unsatisfactory as mere
abstract public speaking; but from my early childhood I have had a
desire to do something to make the world better, and then to be able to
speak to the world about that thing.

The debating societies at Hampton were a constant source of delight to
me. These were held on Saturday evening; and during my whole life at
Hampton I do not recall that I missed a single meeting. I not only
attended the weekly debating society, but was instrumental in
organizing an additional society. I noticed that between the time when
supper was over and the time to begin evening study there were about
twenty minutes which the young men usually spent in idle gossip. About
twenty of us formed a society for the purpose of utilizing this time in
debate or in practice in public speaking. Few persons ever derived more
happiness or benefit from the use of twenty minutes of time than we did
in this way.

At the end of my second year at Hampton, by the help of some money sent
me by my mother and brother John, supplemented by a small gift from one
of the teachers at Hampton, I was enabled to return to my home in
Malden, West Virginia, to spend my vacation. When I reached home I
found that the salt-furnaces were not running, and that the coal-mine
was not being operated on account of the miners being out on “strike.”
This was something which, it seemed, usually occurred whenever the men
got two or three months ahead in their savings. During the strike, of
course, they spent all that they had saved, and would often return to
work in debt at the same wages, or would move to another mine at
considerable expense. In either case, my observations convinced me that
the miners were worse off at the end of the strike. Before the days of
strikes in that section of the country, I knew miners who had
considerable money in the bank, but as soon as the professional labour
agitators got control, the savings of even the more thrifty ones began
disappearing.

My mother and the other members of my family were, of course, much
rejoiced to see me and to note the improvement that I had made during
my two years’ absence. The rejoicing on the part of all classes of the
coloured people, and especially the older ones, over my return, was
almost pathetic. I had to pay a visit to each family and take a meal
with each, and at each place tell the story of my experiences at
Hampton. In addition to this I had to speak before the church and
Sunday-school, and at various other places. The thing that I was most
in search of, though, work, I could not find. There was no work on
account of the strike. I spent nearly the whole of the first month of
my vacation in an effort to find something to do by which I could earn
money to pay my way back to Hampton and save a little money to use
after reaching there.

Toward the end of the first month, I went to a place a considerable
distance from my home, to try to find employment. I did not succeed,
and it was night before I got started on my return. When I had gotten
within a mile or so of my home I was so completely tired out that I
could not walk any farther, and I went into an old, abandoned house to
spend the remainder of the night. About three o’clock in the morning my
brother John found me asleep in this house, and broke to me, as gently
as he could, the sad news that our dear mother had died during the
night.

This seemed to me the saddest and blankest moment in my life. For
several years my mother had not been in good health, but I had no idea,
when I parted from her the previous day, that I should never see her
alive again. Besides that, I had always had an intense desire to be
with her when she did pass away. One of the chief ambitions which
spurred me on at Hampton was that I might be able to get to be in a
position in which I could better make my mother comfortable and happy.
She had so often expressed the wish that she might be permitted to live
to see her children educated and started out in the world.

In a very short time after the death of my mother our little home was
in confusion. My sister Amanda, although she tried to do the best she
could, was too young to know anything about keeping house, and my
stepfather was not able to hire a housekeeper. Sometimes we had food
cooked for us, and sometimes we did not. I remember that more than once
a can of tomatoes and some crackers constituted a meal. Our clothing
went uncared for, and everything about our home was soon in a
tumble-down condition. It seems to me that this was the most dismal
period of my life.

My good friend, Mrs. Ruffner, to whom I have already referred, always
made me welcome at her home, and assisted me in many ways during this
trying period. Before the end of the vacation she gave me some work,
and this, together with work in a coal-mine at some distance from my
home, enabled me to earn a little money.

At one time it looked as if I would have to give up the idea of
returning to Hampton, but my heart was so set on returning that I
determined not to give up going back without a struggle. I was very
anxious to secure some clothes for the winter, but in this I was
disappointed, except for a few garments which my brother John secured
for me. Notwithstanding my need of money and clothing, I was very happy
in the fact that I had secured enough money to pay my travelling
expenses back to Hampton. Once there, I knew that I could make myself
so useful as a janitor that I could in some way get through the school
year.

Three weeks before the time for the opening of the term at Hampton, I
was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from my good friend Miss
Mary F. Mackie, the lady principal, asking me to return to Hampton two
weeks before the opening of the school, in order that I might assist
her in cleaning the buildings and getting things in order for the new
school year. This was just the opportunity I wanted. It gave me a
chance to secure a credit in the treasurer’s office. I started for
Hampton at once.

During these two weeks I was taught a lesson which I shall never
forget. Miss Mackie was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured
families of the North, and yet for two weeks she worked by my side
cleaning windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order, and what not.
She felt that things would not be in condition for the opening of
school unless every window-pane was perfectly clean, and she took the
greatest satisfaction in helping to clean them herself. The work which
I have described she did every year that I was at Hampton.

It was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her
education and social standing could take such delight in performing
such service, in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate
race. Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my
race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of
labour.

During my last year at Hampton every minute of my time that was not
occupied with my duties as janitor was devoted to hard study. I was
determined, if possible, to make such a record in my class as would
cause me to be placed on the “honour roll” of Commencement speakers.
This I was successful in doing. It was June of 1875 when I finished the
regular course of study at Hampton. The greatest benefits that I got
out of my my life at the Hampton Institute, perhaps, may be classified
under two heads:—

First was contact with a great man, General S.C. Armstrong, who, I
repeat, was, in my opinion, the rarest, strongest, and most beautiful
character that it has ever been my privilege to meet.

Second, at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was
expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal
of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an
education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for
manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace
to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial
value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and
self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants
done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant
to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that
the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others
useful and happy.

I was completely out of money when I graduated. In company with other
Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel
in Connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get
there. I had not been in this hotel long before I found out that I knew
practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table. The head waiter,
however, supposed that I was an accomplished waiter. He soon gave me
charge of the table at which there sat four or five wealthy and rather
aristocratic people. My ignorance of how to wait upon them was so
apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became
frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without
food. As a result of this I was reduced from the position of waiter to
that of a dish-carrier.

But I determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within a
few weeks and was restored to my former position. I have had the
satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a
waiter there.

At the close of the hotel season I returned to my former home in
Malden, and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place.
This was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life. I now
felt that I had the opportunity to help the people of my home town to a
higher life. I felt from the first that mere book education was not all
that the young people of that town needed. I began my work at eight
o’clock in the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten
o’clock at night. In addition to the usual routine of teaching, I
taught the pupils to comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces
clean, as well as their clothing. I gave special attention to teaching
them the proper use of the tooth-brush and the bath. In all my teaching
I have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am
convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are
more far-reaching.

There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
men and women, who had to work in the daytime and still were craving an
opportunity for an education, that I soon opened a night-school. From
the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as the
school that I taught in the day. The efforts of some of the men and
women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn, were
in some cases very pathetic.

My day and night school work was not all that I undertook. I
established a small reading-room and a debating society. On Sundays I
taught two Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon,
and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from
Malden. In addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young
men whom I was fitting to send to the Hampton Institute. Without regard
to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who wanted to
learn anything that I could teach him. I was supremely happy in the
opportunity of being able to assist somebody else. I did receive,
however, a small salary from the public fund, for my work as a
public-school teacher.

During the time that I was a student at Hampton my older brother, John,
not only assisted me all that he could, but worked all of the time in
the coal-mines in order to support the family. He willingly neglected
his own education that he might help me. It was my earnest wish to help
him to prepare to enter Hampton, and to save money to assist him in his
expenses there. Both of these objects I was successful in
accomplishing. In three years my brother finished the course at
Hampton, and he is now holding the important position of Superintendent
of Industries at Tuskegee. When he returned from Hampton, we both
combined our efforts and savings to send our adopted brother, James,
through the Hampton Institute. This we succeeded in doing, and he is
now the postmaster at the Tuskegee Institute. The year 1877, which was
my second year of teaching in Malden, I spent very much as I did the
first.

It was while my home was at Malden that what was known as the “Ku Klux
Klan” was in the height of its activity. The “Ku Klux” were bands of
men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating
the conduct of the coloured people, especially with the object of
preventing the members of the race from exercising any influence in
politics. They corresponded somewhat to the “patrollers” of whom I used
to hear a great deal during the days of slavery, when I was a small
boy. The “patrollers” were bands of white men—usually young men—who
were organized largely for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the
slaves at night in such matters as preventing the slaves from going
from one plantation to another without passes, and for preventing them
from holding any kind of meetings without permission and without the
presence at these meetings of at least one white man.

Like the “patrollers” the “Ku Klux” operated almost wholly at night.
They were, however, more cruel than the “patrollers.” Their objects, in
the main, were to crush out the political aspirations of the Negroes,
but they did not confine themselves to this, because schoolhouses as
well as churches were burned by them, and many innocent persons were
made to suffer. During this period not a few coloured people lost their
lives.

As a young man, the acts of these lawless bands made a great impression
upon me. I saw one open battle take place at Malden between some of the
coloured and white people. There must have been not far from a hundred
persons engaged on each side; many on both sides were seriously
injured, among them General Lewis Ruffner, the husband of my friend
Mrs. Viola Ruffner. General Ruffner tried to defend the coloured
people, and for this he was knocked down and so seriously wounded that
he never completely recovered. It seemed to me as I watched this
struggle between members of the two races, that there was no hope for
our people in this country. The “Ku Klux” period was, I think, the
darkest part of the Reconstruction days.

I have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the South
simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that
has taken place since the days of the “Ku Klux.” To-day there are no
such organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is
almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now
where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.




Chapter V.
The Reconstruction Period


The years from 1867 to 1878 I think may be called the period of
Reconstruction. This included the time that I spent as a student at
Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia. During the whole of the
Reconstruction period two ideas were constantly agitating in the minds
of the coloured people, or, at least, in the minds of a large part of
the race. One of these was the craze for Greek and Latin learning, and
the other was a desire to hold office.

It could not have been expected that a people who had spent generations
in slavery, and before that generations in the darkest heathenism,
could at first form any proper conception of what an education meant.
In every part of the South, during the Reconstruction period, schools,
both day and night, were filled to overflowing with people of all ages
and conditions, some being as far along in age as sixty and seventy
years. The ambition to secure an education was most praiseworthy and
encouraging. The idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one
secured a little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free
from most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live
without manual labour. There was a further feeling that a knowledge,
however little, of the Greek and Latin languages would make one a very
superior human being, something bordering almost on the supernatural. I
remember that the first coloured man whom I saw who knew something
about foreign languages impressed me at the time as being a man of all
others to be envied.

Naturally, most of our people who received some little education became
teachers or preachers. While among those two classes there were many
capable, earnest, godly men and women, still a large proportion took up
teaching or preaching as an easy way to make a living. Many became
teachers who could do little more than write their names. I remember
there came into our neighbourhood one of this class, who was in search
of a school to teach, and the question arose while he was there as to
the shape of the earth and how he could teach the children concerning
the subject. He explained his position in the matter by saying that he
was prepared to teach that the earth was either flat or round,
according to the preference of a majority of his patrons.

The ministry was the profession that suffered most—and still suffers,
though there has been great improvement—on account of not only ignorant
but in many cases immoral men who claimed that they were “called to
preach.” In the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who
learned to read would receive “a call to preach” within a few days
after he began reading. At my home in West Virginia the process of
being called to the ministry was a very interesting one. Usually the
“call” came when the individual was sitting in church. Without warning
the one called would fall upon the floor as if struck by a bullet, and
would lie there for hours, speechless and motionless. Then the news
would spread all through the neighborhood that this individual had
received a “call.” If he were inclined to resist the summons, he would
fall or be made to fall a second or third time. In the end he always
yielded to the call. While I wanted an education badly, I confess that
in my youth I had a fear that when I had learned to read and write very
well I would receive one of these “calls”; but, for some reason, my
call never came.

When we add the number of wholly ignorant men who preached or
“exhorted” to that of those who possessed something of an education, it
can be seen at a glance that the supply of ministers was large. In
fact, some time ago I knew a certain church that had a total membership
of about two hundred, and eighteen of that number were ministers. But,
I repeat, in many communities in the South the character of the
ministry is being improved, and I believe that within the next two or
three decades a very large proportion of the unworthy ones will have
disappeared. The “calls” to preach, I am glad to say, are not nearly so
numerous now as they were formerly, and the calls to some industrial
occupation are growing more numerous. The improvement that has taken
place in the character of the teachers is even more marked than in the
case of the ministers.

During the whole of the Reconstruction period our people throughout the
South looked to the Federal Government for everything, very much as a
child looks to its mother. This was not unnatural. The central
government gave them freedom, and the whole Nation had been enriched
for more than two centuries by the labour of the Negro. Even as a
youth, and later in manhood, I had the feeling that it was cruelly
wrong in the central government, at the beginning of our freedom, to
fail to make some provision for the general education of our people in
addition to what the states might do, so that the people would be the
better prepared for the duties of citizenship.

It is easy to find fault, to remark what might have been done, and
perhaps, after all, and under all the circumstances, those in charge of
the conduct of affairs did the only thing that could be done at the
time. Still, as I look back now over the entire period of our freedom,
I cannot help feeling that it would have been wiser if some plan could
have been put in operation which would have made the possession of a
certain amount of education or property, or both, a test for the
exercise of the franchise, and a way provided by which this test should
be made to apply honestly and squarely to both the white and black
races.

Though I was but little more than a youth during the period of
Reconstruction, I had the feeling that mistakes were being made, and
that things could not remain in the condition that they were in then
very long. I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related
to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was
artificial and forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance
of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into
office, and that there was an element in the North which wanted to
punish the Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over
the heads of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the
one to suffer for this in the end. Besides, the general political
agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more
fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their
doors and in securing property.

The temptations to enter political life were so alluring that I came
very near yielding to them at one time, but I was kept from doing so by
the feeling that I would be helping in a more substantial way by
assisting in the laying of the foundation of the race through a
generous education of the hand, head, and heart. I saw coloured men who
were members of the state legislatures, and county officers, who, in
some cases, could not read or write, and whose morals were as weak as
their education. Not long ago, when passing through the streets of a
certain city in the South, I heard some brick-masons calling out, from
the top of a two-story brick building on which they were working, for
the “Governor” to “hurry up and bring up some more bricks.” Several
times I heard the command, “Hurry up, Governor!” “Hurry up, Governor!”
My curiosity was aroused to such an extent that I made inquiry as to
who the “Governor” was, and soon found that he was a coloured man who
at one time had held the position of Lieutenant-Governor of his state.

But not all the coloured people who were in office during
Reconstruction were unworthy of their positions, by any means. Some of
them, like the late Senator B.K. Bruce, Governor Pinchback, and many
others, were strong, upright, useful men. Neither were all the class
designated as carpetbaggers dishonourable men. Some of them, like
ex-Governor Bullock, of Georgia, were men of high character and
usefulness.

Of course the coloured people, so largely without education, and wholly
without experience in government, made tremendous mistakes, just as
many people similarly situated would have done. Many of the Southern
whites have a feeling that, if the Negro is permitted to exercise his
political rights now to any degree, the mistakes of the Reconstruction
period will repeat themselves. I do not think this would be true,
because the Negro is a much stronger and wiser man than he was
thirty-five years ago, and he is fast learning the lesson that he
cannot afford to act in a manner that will alienate his Southern white
neighbours from him. More and more I am convinced that the final
solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each
state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the
franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without
opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any
other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be
unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of
the state in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some
time we shall have to pay for.

In the fall of 1878, after having taught school in Malden for two
years, and after I had succeeded in preparing several of the young men
and women, besides my two brothers, to enter the Hampton Institute, I
decided to spend some months in study at Washington, D.C. I remained
there for eight months. I derived a great deal of benefit from the
studies which I pursued, and I came into contact with some strong men
and women. At the institution I attended there was no industrial
training given to the students, and I had an opportunity of comparing
the influence of an institution with no industrial training with that
of one like the Hampton Institute, that emphasizes the industries. At
this school I found the students, in most cases, had more money, were
better dressed, wore the latest style of all manner of clothing, and in
some cases were more brilliant mentally. At Hampton it was a standing
rule that, while the institution would be responsible for securing some
one to pay the tuition for the students, the men and women themselves
must provide for their own board, books, clothing, and room wholly by
work, or partly by work and partly in cash. At the institution at which
I now was, I found that a large portion of the students by some means
had their personal expenses paid for them. At Hampton the student was
constantly making the effort through the industries to help himself,
and that very effort was of immense value in character-building. The
students at the other school seemed to be less self-dependent. They
seemed to give more attention to mere outward appearances. In a word,
they did not appear to me to be beginning at the bottom, on a real,
solid foundation, to the extent that they were at Hampton. They knew
more about Latin and Greek when they left school, but they seemed to
know less about life and its conditions as they would meet it at their
homes. Having lived for a number of years in the midst of comfortable
surroundings, they were not as much inclined as the Hampton students to
go into the country districts of the South, where there was little of
comfort, to take up work for our people, and they were more inclined to
yield to the temptation to become hotel waiters and Pullman-car porters
as their life-work.

During the time I was a student at Washington the city was crowded with
coloured people, many of whom had recently come from the South. A large
proportion of these people had been drawn to Washington because they
felt that they could lead a life of ease there. Others had secured
minor government positions, and still another large class was there in
the hope of securing Federal positions. A number of coloured men—some
of them very strong and brilliant—were in the House of Representatives
at that time, and one, the Hon. B.K. Bruce, was in the Senate. All this
tended to make Washington an attractive place for members of the
coloured race. Then, too, they knew that at all times they could have
the protection of the law in the District of Columbia. The public
schools in Washington for coloured people were better then than they
were elsewhere. I took great interest in studying the life of our
people there closely at that time. I found that while among them there
was a large element of substantial, worthy citizens, there was also a
superficiality about the life of a large class that greatly alarmed me.
I saw young coloured men who were not earning more than four dollars a
week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on Sunday to ride up and
down Pennsylvania Avenue in, in order that they might try to convince
the world that they were worth thousands. I saw other young men who
received seventy-five or one hundred dollars per month from the
Government, who were in debt at the end of every month. I saw men who
but a few months previous were members of Congress, then without
employment and in poverty. Among a large class there seemed to be a
dependence upon the Government for every conceivable thing. The members
of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves,
but wanted the Federal officials to create one for them. How many times
I wished then, and have often wished since, that by some power of magic
I might remove the great bulk of these people into the county districts
and plant them upon the soil, upon the solid and never deceptive
foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and races that have ever
succeeded have gotten their start,—a start that at first may be slow
and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real.

In Washington I saw girls whose mothers were earning their living by
laundrying. These girls were taught by their mothers, in rather a crude
way it is true, the industry of laundrying. Later, these girls entered
the public schools and remained there perhaps six or eight years. When
the public school course was finally finished, they wanted more costly
dresses, more costly hats and shoes. In a word, while their wants have
been increased, their ability to supply their wants had not been
increased in the same degree. On the other hand, their six or eight
years of book education had weaned them away from the occupation of
their mothers. The result of this was in too many cases that the girls
went to the bad. I often thought how much wiser it would have been to
give these girls the same amount of maternal training—and I favour any
kind of training, whether in the languages or mathematics, that gives
strength and culture to the mind—but at the same time to give them the
most thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundrying and
other kindred occupations.




Chapter VI.
Black Race And Red Race


During the year that I spent in Washington, and for some little time
before this, there had been considerable agitation in the state of West
Virginia over the question of moving the capital of the state from
Wheeling to some other central point. As a result of this, the
Legislature designated three cities to be voted upon by the citizens of
the state as the permanent seat of government. Among these cities was
Charleston, only five miles from Malden, my home. At the close of my
school year in Washington I was very pleasantly surprised to receive,
from a committee of three white people in Charleston, an invitation to
canvass the state in the interests of that city. This invitation I
accepted, and spent nearly three months in speaking in various parts of
the state. Charleston was successful in winning the prize, and is now
the permanent seat of government.

The reputation that I made as a speaker during this campaign induced a
number of persons to make an earnest effort to get me to enter
political life, but I refused, still believing that I could find other
service which would prove of more permanent value to my race. Even then
I had a strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a
foundation in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt
that they could better afford to strive than for political preferment.
As for my individual self, it appeared to me to be reasonably certain
that I could succeed in political life, but I had a feeling that it
would be a rather selfish kind of success—individual success at the
cost of failing to do my duty in assisting in laying a foundation for
the masses.

At this period in the progress of our race a very large proportion of
the young men who went to school or to college did so with the
expressed determination to prepare themselves to be great lawyers, or
Congressmen, and many of the women planned to become music teachers;
but I had a reasonably fixed idea, even at that early period in my
life, that there was a need for something to be done to prepare the way
for successful lawyers, Congressmen, and music teachers.

I felt that the conditions were a good deal like those of an old
coloured man, during the days of slavery, who wanted to learn how to
play on the guitar. In his desire to take guitar lessons he applied to
one of his young masters to teach him, but the young man, not having
much faith in the ability of the slave to master the guitar at his age,
sought to discourage him by telling him: “Uncle Jake, I will give you
guitar lessons; but, Jake, I will have to charge you three dollars for
the first lesson, two dollars for the second lesson, and one dollar for
the third lesson. But I will charge you only twenty-five cents for the
last lesson.”

Uncle Jake answered: “All right, boss, I hires you on dem terms. But,
boss! I wants yer to be sure an’ give me dat las’ lesson first.”

Soon after my work in connection with the removal of the capital was
finished, I received an invitation which gave me great joy and which at
the same time was a very pleasant surprise. This was a letter from
General Armstrong, inviting me to return to Hampton at the next
Commencement to deliver what was called the “post-graduate address.”
This was an honour which I had not dreamed of receiving. With much care
I prepared the best address that I was capable of. I chose for my
subject “The Force That Wins.”

As I returned to Hampton for the purpose of delivering this address, I
went over much of the same ground—now, however, covered entirely by
railroad—that I had traversed nearly six years before, when I first
sought entrance into Hampton Institute as a student. Now I was able to
ride the whole distance in the train. I was constantly contrasting this
with my first journey to Hampton. I think I may say, without seeming
egotism, that it is seldom that five years have wrought such a change
in the life and aspirations of an individual.

At Hampton I received a warm welcome from teachers and students. I
found that during my absence from Hampton the institute each year had
been getting closer to the real needs and conditions of our people;
that the industrial teaching, as well as that of the academic
department, had greatly improved. The plan of the school was not
modelled after that of any other institution then in existence, but
every improvement was made under the magnificent leadership of General
Armstrong solely with the view of meeting and helping the needs of our
people as they presented themselves at the time. Too often, it seems to
me, in missionary and educational work among underdeveloped races,
people yield to the temptation of doing that which was done a hundred
years before, or is being done in other communities a thousand miles
away. The temptation often is to run each individual through a certain
educational mould, regardless of the condition of the subject or the
end to be accomplished. This was not so at Hampton Institute.

The address which I delivered on Commencement Day seems to have pleased
every one, and many kind and encouraging words were spoken to me
regarding it. Soon after my return to my home in West Virginia, where I
had planned to continue teaching, I was again surprised to receive a
letter from General Armstrong, asking me to return to Hampton partly as
a teacher and partly to pursue some supplementary studies. This was in
the summer of 1879. Soon after I began my first teaching in West
Virginia I had picked out four of the brightest and most promising of
my pupils, in addition to my two brothers, to whom I have already
referred, and had given them special attention, with the view of having
them go to Hampton. They had gone there, and in each case the teachers
had found them so well prepared that they entered advanced classes.
This fact, it seems, led to my being called back to Hampton as a
teacher. One of the young men that I sent to Hampton in this way is now
Dr. Samuel E. Courtney, a successful physician in Boston, and a member
of the School Board of that city.

About this time the experiment was being tried for the first time, by
General Armstrong, of educating Indians at Hampton. Few people then had
any confidence in the ability of the Indians to receive education and
to profit by it. General Armstrong was anxious to try the experiment
systematically on a large scale. He secured from the reservations in
the Western states over one hundred wild and for the most part
perfectly ignorant Indians, the greater proportion of whom were young
men. The special work which the General desired me to do was to be a
sort of “house father” to the Indian young men—that is, I was to live
in the building with them and have the charge of their discipline,
clothing, rooms, and so on. This was a very tempting offer, but I had
become so much absorbed in my work in West Virginia that I dreaded to
give it up. However, I tore myself away from it. I did not know how to
refuse to perform any service that General Armstrong desired of me.

On going to Hampton, I took up my residence in a building with about
seventy-five Indian youths. I was the only person in the building who
was not a member of their race. At first I had a good deal of doubt
about my ability to succeed. I knew that the average Indian felt
himself above the white man, and, of course, he felt himself far above
the Negro, largely on account of the fact of the Negro having submitted
to slavery—a thing which the Indian would never do. The Indians, in the
Indian Territory, owned a large number of slaves during the days of
slavery. Aside from this, there was a general feeling that the attempt
to educate and civilize the red men at Hampton would be a failure. All
this made me proceed very cautiously, for I felt keenly the great
responsibility. But I was determined to succeed. It was not long before
I had the complete confidence of the Indians, and not only this, but I
think I am safe in saying that I had their love and respect. I found
that they were about like any other human beings; that they responded
to kind treatment and resented ill-treatment. They were continually
planning to do something that would add to my happiness and comfort.
The things that they disliked most, I think, were to have their long
hair cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but
no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized
until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food,
speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s
religion.

When the difficulty of learning the English language was subtracted, I
found that in the matter of learning trades and in mastering academic
studies there was little difference between the coloured and Indian
students. It was a constant delight to me to note the interest which
the coloured students took in trying to help the Indians in every way
possible. There were a few of the coloured students who felt that the
Indians ought not to be admitted to Hampton, but these were in the
minority. Whenever they were asked to do so, the Negro students gladly
took the Indians as room-mates, in order that they might teach them to
speak English and to acquire civilized habits.

I have often wondered if there was a white institution in this country
whose students would have welcomed the incoming of more than a hundred
companions of another race in the cordial way that these black students
at Hampton welcomed the red ones. How often I have wanted to say to
white students that they lift themselves up in proportion as they help
to lift others, and the more unfortunate the race, and the lower in the
scale of civilization, the more does one raise one’s self by giving the
assistance.

This reminds me of a conversation which I once had with the Hon.
Frederick Douglass. At one time Mr. Douglass was travelling in the
state of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, 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. When some of
the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass,
and 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.”

In one part of the country, where the law demands the separation of the
races on the railroad trains, I saw at one time a rather amusing
instance which showed how difficult it sometimes is to know where the
black begins and the white ends.

There was a man who was well known in his community as a Negro, but who
was so white that even an expert would have hard work to classify him
as a black man. This man was riding in the part of the train set aside
for the coloured passengers. When the train conductor reached him, he
showed at once that he was perplexed. If the man was a Negro, the
conductor did not want to send him to the white people’s coach; at the
same time, if he was a white man, the conductor did not want to insult
him by asking him if he was a Negro. The official looked him over
carefully, examining his hair, eyes, nose, and hands, but still seemed
puzzled. Finally, to solve the difficulty, he stooped over and peeped
at the man’s feet. When I saw the conductor examining the feet of the
man in question, I said to myself, “That will settle it;” and so it
did, for the trainman promptly decided that the passenger was a Negro,
and let him remain where he was. I congratulated myself that my race
was fortunate in not losing one of its members.

My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to
observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is
less fortunate than his own. This is illustrated in no better way than
by observing the conduct of the old-school type of Southern gentleman
when he is in contact with his former slaves or their descendants.

An example of what I mean is shown in a story told of George
Washington, who, meeting a coloured man in the road once, who politely
lifted his hat, lifted his own in return. Some of his white friends who
saw the incident criticised Washington for his action. In reply to
their criticism George Washington said: “Do you suppose that I am going
to permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than I am?”

While I was in charge of the Indian boys at Hampton, I had one or two
experiences which illustrate the curious workings of caste in America.
One of the Indian boys was taken ill, and it became my duty to take him
to Washington, deliver him over to the Secretary of the Interior, and
get a receipt for him, in order that he might be returned to his
Western reservation. At that time I was rather ignorant of the ways of
the world. During my journey to Washington, on a steamboat, when the
bell rang for dinner, I was careful to wait and not enter the dining
room until after the greater part of the passengers had finished their
meal. Then, with my charge, I went to the dining saloon. The man in
charge politely informed me that the Indian could be served, but that I
could not. I never could understand how he knew just where to draw the
colour line, since the Indian and I were of about the same complexion.
The steward, however, seemed to be an expert in this manner. I had been
directed by the authorities at Hampton to stop at a certain hotel in
Washington with my charge, but when I went to this hotel the clerk
stated that he would be glad to receive the Indian into the house, but
said that he could not accommodate me.

An illustration of something of this same feeling came under my
observation afterward. I happened to find myself in a town in which so
much excitement and indignation were being expressed that it seemed
likely for a time that there would be a lynching. The occasion of the
trouble was that a dark-skinned man had stopped at the local hotel.
Investigation, however, developed the fact that this individual was a
citizen of Morocco, and that while travelling in this country he spoke
the English language. As soon as it was learned that he was not an
American Negro, all the signs of indignation disappeared. The man who
was the innocent cause of the excitement, though, found it prudent
after that not to speak English.

At the end of my first year with the Indians there came another opening
for me at Hampton, which, as I look back over my life now, seems to
have come providentially, to help to prepare me for my work at Tuskegee
later. General Armstrong had found out that there was quite a number of
young coloured men and women who were intensely in earnest in wishing
to get an education, but who were prevented from entering Hampton
Institute because they were too poor to be able to pay any portion of
the cost of their board, or even to supply themselves with books. He
conceived the idea of starting a night-school in connection with the
Institute, into which a limited number of the most promising of these
young men and women would be received, on condition that they were to
work for ten hours during the day, and attend school for two hours at
night. They were to be paid something above the cost of their board for
their work. The greater part of their earnings was to be reserved in
the school’s treasury as a fund to be drawn on to pay their board when
they had become students in the day-school, after they had spent one or
two years in the night-school. In this way they would obtain a start in
their books and a knowledge of some trade or industry, in addition to
the other far-reaching benefits of the institution.

General Armstrong asked me to take charge of the night-school, and I
did so. At the beginning of this school there were about twelve strong,
earnest men and women who entered the class. During the day the greater
part of the young men worked in the school’s sawmill, and the young
women worked in the laundry. The work was not easy in either place, but
in all my teaching I never taught pupils who gave me much genuine
satisfaction as these did. They were good students, and mastered their
work thoroughly. They were so much in earnest that only the ringing of
the retiring-bell would make them stop studying, and often they would
urge me to continue the lessons after the usual hour for going to bed
had come.

These students showed so much earnestness, both in their hard work
during the day, as well as in their application to their studies at
night, that I gave them the name of “The Plucky Class”—a name which
soon grew popular and spread throughout the institution. After a
student had been in the night-school long enough to prove what was in
him, I gave him a printed certificate which read something like this:—

“This is to certify that James Smith is a member of The Plucky Class of
the Hampton Institute, and is in good and regular standing.”

The students prized these certificates highly, and they added greatly
to the popularity of the night-school. Within a few weeks this
department had grown to such an extent that there were about
twenty-five students in attendance. I have followed the course of many
of these twenty-five men and women ever since then, and they are now
holding important and useful positions in nearly every part of the
South. The night-school at Hampton, which started with only twelve
students, now numbers between three and four hundred, and is one of the
permanent and most important features of the institution.




Chapter VII.
Early Days At Tuskegee


During the time that I had charge of the Indians and the night-school
at Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under the direction of the
instructors there. One of these instructors was the Rev. Dr. H.B.
Frissell, the present Principal of the Hampton Institute, General
Armstrong’s successor.

In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the
night-school, in a way that I had not dared expect, the opportunity
opened for me to begin my life-work. One night in the chapel, after the
usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong referred to the
fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen in Alabama
asking him to recommend some one to take charge of what was to be a
normal school for the coloured people in the little town of Tuskegee in
that state. These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted that no
coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and they were
expecting the General to recommend a white man for the place. The next
day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and, much to
my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill the position in
Alabama. I told him that I would be willing to try. Accordingly, he
wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he
did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing
to take a coloured man, he had one whom he could recommend. In this
letter he gave them my name.

Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter.
Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a
messenger came in and handed the general a telegram. At the end of the
exercises he read the telegram to the school. In substance, these were
its words: “Booker T. Washington will suit us. Send him at once.”

There was a great deal of joy expressed among the students and
teachers, and I received very hearty congratulations. I began to get
ready at once to go to Tuskegee. I went by way of my old home in West
Virginia, where I remained for several days, after which I proceeded to
Tuskegee. I found Tuskegee to be a town of about two thousand
inhabitants, nearly one-half of whom were coloured. It was in what was
known as the Black Belt of the South. In the county in which Tuskegee
is situated the coloured people outnumbered the whites by about three
to one. In some of the adjoining and near-by counties the proportion
was not far from six coloured persons to one white.

I have often been asked to define the term “Black Belt.” So far as I
can learn, the term was first used to designate a part of the country
which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of the
country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of
course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable,
and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later,
and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a
political sense—that is, to designate the counties where the black
people outnumber the white.

Before going to Tuskegee I had expected to find there a building and
all the necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching. To my
disappointment, I found nothing of the kind. I did find, though, that
which no costly building and apparatus can supply,—hundreds of hungry,
earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge.

Tuskegee seemed an ideal place for the school. It was in the midst of
the great bulk of the Negro population, and was rather secluded, being
five miles from the main line of railroad, with which it was connected
by a short line. During the days of slavery, and since, the town had
been a centre for the education of the white people. This was an added
advantage, for the reason that I found the white people possessing a
degree of culture and education that is not surpassed by many
localities. While the coloured people were ignorant, they had not, as a
rule, degraded and weakened their bodies by vices such as are common to
the lower class of people in the large cities. In general, I found the
relations between the two races pleasant. For example, the largest, and
I think at that time the only hardware store in the town was owned and
operated jointly by a coloured man and a white man. This copartnership
continued until the death of the white partner.

I found that about a year previous to my going to Tuskegee some of the
coloured people who had heard something of the work of education being
done at Hampton had applied to the state Legislature, through their
representatives, for a small appropriation to be used in starting a
normal school in Tuskegee. This request the Legislature had complied
with to the extent of granting an annual appropriation of two thousand
dollars. I soon learned, however, that this money could be used only
for the payment of the salaries of the instructors, and that there was
no provision for securing land, buildings, or apparatus. The task
before me did not seem a very encouraging one. It seemed much like
making bricks without straw. The coloured people were overjoyed, and
were constantly offering their services in any way in which they could
be of assistance in getting the school started.

My first task was to find a place in which to open the school. After
looking the town over with some care, the most suitable place that
could be secured seemed to be a rather dilapidated shanty near the
coloured Methodist church, together with the church itself as a sort of
assembly-room. Both the church and the shanty were in about as bad
condition as was possible. I recall that during the first months of
school that I taught in this building it was in such poor repair that,
whenever it rained, one of the older students would very kindly leave
his lessons and hold an umbrella over me while I heard the recitations
of the others. I remember, also, that on more than one occasion my
landlady held an umbrella over me while I ate breakfast.

At the time I went to Alabama the coloured people were taking
considerable interest in politics, and they were very anxious that I
should become one of them politically, in every respect. They seemed to
have a little distrust of strangers in this regard. I recall that one
man, who seemed to have been designated by the others to look after my
political destiny, came to me on several occasions and said, with a
good deal of earnestness: “We wants you to be sure to vote jes’ like we
votes. We can’t read de newspapers very much, but we knows how to vote,
an’ we wants you to vote jes’ like we votes.” He added: “We watches de
white man, and we keeps watching de white man till we finds out which
way de white man’s gwine to vote; an’ when we finds out which way de
white man’s gwine to vote, den we votes ’xactly de other way. Den we
knows we’s right.”

I am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition to
vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely
disappearing, and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what
the voter considers to be for the best interests of both races.

I reached Tuskegee, as I have said, early in June, 1881. The first
month I spent in finding accommodations for the school, and in
travelling through Alabama, examining into the actual life of the
people, especially in the court districts, and in getting the school
advertised among the class of people that I wanted to have attend it.
The most of my travelling was done over the country roads, with a mule
and a cart or a mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance. I ate and slept
with the people, in their little cabins. I saw their farms, their
schools, their churches. Since, in the case of the most of these
visits, there had been no notice given in advance that a stranger was
expected, I had the advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the
people.

In the plantation districts I found that, as a rule, the whole family
slept in one room, and that in addition to the immediate family there
sometimes were relatives, or others not related to the family, who
slept in the same room. On more than one occasion I went outside the
house to get ready for bed, or to wait until the family had gone to
bed. They usually contrived some kind of a place for me to sleep,
either on the floor or in a special part of another’s bed. Rarely was
there any place provided in the cabin where one could bathe even the
face and hands, but usually some provision was made for this outside
the house, in the yard.

The common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread. At times I
have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and “black-eye
peas” cooked in plain water. The people seemed to have no other idea
than to live on this fat meat and corn bread,—the meat, and the meal of
which the bread was made, having been bought at a high price at a store
in town, notwithstanding the fact that the land all about the cabin
homes could easily have been made to produce nearly every kind of
garden vegetable that is raised anywhere in the country. Their one
object seemed to be to plant nothing but cotton; and in many cases
cotton was planted up to the very door of the cabin.

In these cabin homes I often found sewing-machines which had been
bought, or were being bought, on instalments, frequently at a cost of
as much as sixty dollars, or showy clocks for which the occupants of
the cabins had paid twelve or fourteen dollars. I remember that on one
occasion when I went into one of these cabins for dinner, when I sat
down to the table for a meal with the four members of the family, I
noticed that, while there were five of us at the table, there was but
one fork for the five of us to use. Naturally there was an awkward
pause on my part. In the opposite corner of that same cabin was an
organ for which the people told me they were paying sixty dollars in
monthly instalments. One fork, and a sixty-dollar organ!

In most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were so
worthless that they did not keep correct time—and if they had, in nine
cases out of ten there would have been no one in the family who could
have told the time of day—while the organ, of course, was rarely used
for want of a person who could play upon it.

In the case to which I have referred, where the family sat down to the
table for the meal at which I was their guest, I could see plainly that
this was an awkward and unusual proceeding, and was done in my honour.
In most cases, when the family got up in the morning, for example, the
wife would put a piece of meat in a frying-pan and put a lump of dough
in a “skillet,” as they called it. These utensils would be placed on
the fire, and in ten or fifteen minutes breakfast would be ready.
Frequently the husband would take his bread and meat in his hand and
start for the field, eating as he walked. The mother would sit down in
a corner and eat her breakfast, perhaps from a plate and perhaps
directly from the “skillet” or frying-pan, while the children would eat
their portion of the bread and meat while running about the yard. At
certain seasons of the year, when meat was scarce, it was rarely that
the children who were not old enough or strong enough to work in the
fields would have the luxury of meat.

The breakfast over, and with practically no attention given to the
house, the whole family would, as a general thing, proceed to the
cotton-field. Every child that was large enough to carry a hoe was put
to work, and the baby—for usually there was at least one baby—would be
laid down at the end of the cotton row, so that its mother could give
it a certain amount of attention when she had finished chopping her
row. The noon meal and the supper were taken in much the same way as
the breakfast.

All the days of the family would be spent after much this same routine,
except Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday the whole family would spent at
least half a day, and often a whole day, in town. The idea in going to
town was, I suppose, to do shopping, but all the shopping that the
whole family had money for could have been attended to in ten minutes
by one person. Still, the whole family remained in town for most of the
day, spending the greater part of the time in standing on the streets,
the women, too often, sitting about somewhere smoking or dipping snuff.
Sunday was usually spent in going to some big meeting. With few
exceptions, I found that the crops were mortgaged in the counties where
I went, and that the most of the coloured farmers were in debt. The
state had not been able to build schoolhouses in the country districts,
and, as a rule, the schools were taught in churches or in log cabins.
More than once, while on my journeys, I found that there was no
provision made in the house used for school purposes for heating the
building during the winter, and consequently a fire had to be built in
the yard, and teacher and pupils passed in and out of the house as they
got cold or warm. With few exceptions, I found the teachers in these
country schools to be miserably poor in preparation for their work, and
poor in moral character. The schools were in session from three to five
months. There was practically no apparatus in the schoolhouses, except
that occasionally there was a rough blackboard. I recall that one day I
went into a schoolhouse—or rather into an abandoned log cabin that was
being used as a schoolhouse—and found five pupils who were studying a
lesson from one book. Two of these, on the front seat, were using the
book between them; behind these were two others peeping over the
shoulders of the first two, and behind the four was a fifth little
fellow who was peeping over the shoulders of all four.

What I have said concerning the character of the schoolhouses and
teachers will also apply quite accurately as a description of the
church buildings and the ministers.

I met some very interesting characters during my travels. As
illustrating the peculiar mental processes of the country people, I
remember that I asked one coloured man, who was about sixty years old,
to tell me something of his history. He said that he had been born in
Virginia, and sold into Alabama in 1845. I asked him how many were sold
at the same time. He said, “There were five of us; myself and brother
and three mules.”

In giving all these descriptions of what I saw during my month of
travel in the country around Tuskegee, I wish my readers to keep in
mind the fact that there were many encouraging exceptions to the
conditions which I have described. I have stated in such plain words
what I saw, mainly for the reason that later I want to emphasize the
encouraging changes that have taken place in the community, not wholly
by the work of the Tuskegee school, but by that of other institutions
as well.




Chapter VIII.
Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House


I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation
left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to lift
these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. I was only one
person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which I could put
forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results. I
wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for
me to try.

Of one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending
this month in seeing the actual life of the coloured people, and that
was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than
merely to imitate New England education as it then existed. I saw more
clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had
inaugurated at Hampton. To take the children of such people as I had
been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book
education, I felt would be almost a waste of time.

After consultation with the citizens of Tuskegee, I set July 4, 1881,
as the day for the opening of the school in the little shanty and
church which had been secured for its accommodation. The white people,
as well as the coloured, were greatly interested in the starting of the
new school, and the opening day was looked forward to with much earnest
discussion. There were not a few white people in the vicinity of
Tuskegee who looked with some disfavour upon the project. They
questioned its value to the coloured people, and had a fear that it
might result in bringing about trouble between the races. Some had the
feeling that in proportion as the Negro received education, in the same
proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the state.
These people feared the result of education would be that the Negroes
would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them
for domestic service.

The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school
had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro, with
a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid
gloves, fancy boots, and what not—in a word, a man who was determined
to live by his wits. It was difficult for these people to see how
education would produce any other kind of a coloured man.

In the midst of all the difficulties which I encountered in getting the
little school started, and since then through a period of nineteen
years, there are two men among all the many friends of the school in
Tuskegee upon whom I have depended constantly for advice and guidance;
and the success of the undertaking is largely due to these men, from
whom I have never sought anything in vain. I mention them simply as
types. One is a white man and an ex-slaveholder, Mr. George W.
Campbell; the other is a black man and an ex-slave, Mr. Lewis Adams.
These were the men who wrote to General Armstrong for a teacher.

Mr. Campbell is a merchant and banker, and had had little experience in
dealing with matters pertaining to education. Mr. Adams was a mechanic,
and had learned the trades of shoemaking, harness-making, and
tinsmithing during the days of slavery. He had never been to school a
day in his life, but in some way he had learned to read and write while
a slave. From the first, these two men saw clearly what my plan of
education was, sympathized with me, and supported me in every effort.
In the days which were darkest financially for the school, Mr. Campbell
was never appealed to when he was not willing to extend all the aid in
his power. I do not know two men, one an ex-slaveholder, one an
ex-slave, whose advice and judgment I would feel more like following in
everything which concerns the life and development of the school at
Tuskegee than those of these two men.

I have always felt that Mr. Adams, in a large degree, derived his
unusual power of mind from the training given his hands in the process
of mastering well three trades during the days of slavery. If one goes
to-day into any Southern town, and asks for the leading and most
reliable coloured man in the community, I believe that in five cases
out of ten he will be directed to a Negro who learned a trade during
the days of slavery.

On the morning that the school opened, thirty students reported for
admission. I was the only teacher. The students were about equally
divided between the sexes. Most of them lived in Macon County, the
county in which Tuskegee is situated, and of which it is the
county-seat. A great many more students wanted to enter the school, but
it had been decided to receive only those who were above fifteen years
of age, and who had previously received some education. The greater
part of the thirty were public-school teachers, and some of them were
nearly forty years of age. With the teachers came some of their former
pupils, and when they were examined it was amusing to note that in
several cases the pupil entered a higher class than did his former
teacher. It was also interesting to note how many big books some of
them had studied, and how many high-sounding subjects some of them
claimed to have mastered. The bigger the book and the longer the name
of the subject, the prouder they felt of their accomplishment. Some had
studied Latin, and one or two Greek. This they thought entitled them to
special distinction.

In fact, one of the saddest things I saw during the month of travel
which I have described was a young man, who had attended some high
school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing,
filth all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in
studying a French grammar.

The students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long and
complicated “rules” in grammar and mathematics, but had little thought
or knowledge of applying these rules to their everyday affairs of their
life. One subject which they liked to talk about, and tell me that they
had mastered, in arithmetic, was “banking and discount,” but I soon
found out that neither they nor almost any one in the neighbourhood in
which they had lived had ever had a bank account. In registering the
names of the students, I found that almost every one of them had one or
more middle initials. When I asked what the “J” stood for, in the name
of John J. Jones, it was explained to me that this was a part of his
“entitles.” Most of the students wanted to get an education because
they thought it would enable them to earn more money as
school-teachers.

Notwithstanding what I have said about them in these respects, I have
never seen a more earnest and willing company of young men and women
than these students were. They were all willing to learn the right
thing as soon as it was shown them what was right. I was determined to
start them off on a solid and thorough foundation, so far as their
books were concerned. I soon learned that most of them had the merest
smattering of the high-sounding things that they had studied. While
they could locate the Desert of Sahara or the capital of China on an
artificial globe, I found out that the girls could not locate the
proper places for the knives and forks on an actual dinner-table, or
the places on which the bread and meat should be set.

I had to summon a good deal of courage to take a student who had been
studying cube root and “banking and discount,” and explain to him that
the wisest thing for him to do first was thoroughly master the
multiplication table.

The number of pupils increased each week, until by the end of the first
month there were nearly fifty. Many of them, however, said that, as
they could remain only for two or three months, they wanted to enter a
high class and get a diploma the first year if possible.

At the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the
school as a co-teacher. This was Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later
became my wife. Miss Davidson was born in Ohio, and received her
preparatory education in the public schools of that state. When little
more than a girl, she heard of the need of teachers in the South. She
went to the state of Mississippi and began teaching there. Later she
taught in the city of Memphis. While teaching in Mississippi, one of
her pupils became ill with smallpox. Every one in the community was so
frightened that no one would nurse the boy. Miss Davidson closed her
school and remained by the bedside of the boy night and day until he
recovered. While she was at her Ohio home on her vacation, the worst
epidemic of yellow fever broke out in Memphis, Tenn., that perhaps has
ever occurred in the South. When she heard of this, she at once
telegraphed the Mayor of Memphis, offering her services as a
yellow-fever nurse, although she had never had the disease.

Miss Davidon’s experience in the South showed her that the people
needed something more than mere book-learning. She heard of the Hampton
system of education, and decided that this was what she wanted in order
to prepare herself for better work in the South. The attention of Mrs.
Mary Hemenway, of Boston, was attracted to her rare ability. Through
Mrs. Hemenway’s kindness and generosity, Miss Davidson, after
graduating at Hampton, received an opportunity to complete a two years’
course of training at the Massachusetts State Normal School at
Framingham.

Before she went to Framingham, some one suggested to Miss Davidson
that, since she was so very light in colour, she might find it more
comfortable not to be known as a coloured women in this school in
Massachusetts. She at once replied that under no circumstances and for
no considerations would she consent to deceive any one in regard to her
racial identity.

Soon after her graduation from the Framingham institution, Miss
Davidson came to Tuskegee, bringing into the school many valuable and
fresh ideas as to the best methods of teaching, as well as a rare moral
character and a life of unselfishness that I think has seldom been
equalled. No single individual did more toward laying the foundations
of the Tuskegee Institute so as to insure the successful work that has
been done there than Olivia A. Davidson.

Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school
from the first. The students were making progress in learning books and
in developing their minds; but it became apparent at once that, if we
were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us for
training we must do something besides teach them mere books. The
students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies. With few
exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
but little improvement upon those from which they had come. We wanted
to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and
clothing. We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this, we wanted
to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together
with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be
sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. We wanted
to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone.

We found that the most of our students came from the country districts,
where agriculture in some form or other was the main dependence of the
people. We learned that about eighty-five per cent of the coloured
people in the Gulf states depended upon agriculture for their living.
Since this was true, we wanted to be careful not to educate our
students out of sympathy with agricultural life, so that they would be
attracted from the country to the cities, and yield to the temptation
of trying to live by their wits. We wanted to give them such an
education as would fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and
at the same time cause them to return to the plantation districts and
show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming,
as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the
people.

All these ideas and needs crowded themselves upon us with a seriousness
that seemed well-nigh overwhelming. What were we to do? We had only the
little old shanty and the abandoned church which the good coloured
people of the town of Tuskegee had kindly loaned us for the
accommodation of the classes. The number of students was increasing
daily. The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled through the
country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were reaching, to
only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom we wanted to
lift up through the medium of the students whom we should educate and
send out as leaders.

The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from
several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition
among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they
would not have to work any longer with their hands.

This is illustrated by a story told of a coloured man in Alabama, who,
one hot day in July, while he was at work in a cotton-field, suddenly
stopped, and, looking toward the skies, said: “O Lawd, de cotton am so
grassy, de work am so hard, and the sun am so hot dat I b’lieve dis
darky am called to preach!”

About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time
when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into
market for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated
about a mile from the town of Tuskegee. The mansion house—or “big
house,” as it would have been called—which had been occupied by the
owners during slavery, had been burned. After making a careful
examination of the place, it seemed to be just the location that we
wanted in order to make our work effective and permanent.

But how were we to get it? The price asked for it was very little—only
five hundred dollars—but we had no money, and we were strangers in the
town and had no credit. The owner of the land agreed to let us occupy
the place if we could make a payment of two hundred and fifty dollars
down, with the understanding that the remaining two hundred and fifty
dollars must be paid within a year. Although five hundred dollars was
cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did not have any part
of it.

In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and
wrote to my friend General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the
Hampton Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him
to lend me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal
responsibility. Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he
had no authority to lend me the money belonging to the Hampton
Institute, but that he would gladly lend me the amount needed from his
own personal funds.

I confess that the securing of this money in this way was a great
surprise to me, as well as a source of gratification. Up to that time I
never had had in my possession so much money as one hundred dollars at
a time, and the loan which I had asked General Marshall for seemed a
tremendously large sum to me. The fact of my being responsible for the
repaying of such a large amount of money weighed very heavily upon me.

I lost no time in getting ready to move the school on to the new farm.
At the time we occupied the place there were standing upon it a cabin,
formerly used as a dining room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old
hen-house. Within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use.
The stable was repaired and used as a recitation-room, and very
presently the hen-house was utilized for the same purpose.

I recall that one morning, when I told an old coloured man who lived
near, and who sometimes helped me, that our school had grown so large
that it would be necessary for us to use the hen-house for school
purposes, and that I wanted him to help me give it a thorough cleaning
out the next day, he replied, in the most earnest manner: “What you
mean, boss? You sholy ain’t gwine clean out de hen-house in de
day-time?”

Nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school
purposes was done by the students after school was over in the
afternoon. As soon as we got the cabins in condition to be used, I
determined to clear up some land so that we could plant a crop. When I
explained my plan to the young men, I noticed that they did not seem to
take to it very kindly. It was hard for them to see the connection
between clearing land and an education. Besides, many of them had been
school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not clearing land would
be in keeping with their dignity. In order to relieve them from any
embarrassment, each afternoon after school I took my axe and led the
way to the woods. When they saw that I was not afraid or ashamed to
work, they began to assist with more enthusiasm. We kept at the work
each afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty acres and had planted
a crop.

In the meantime Miss Davidson was devising plans to repay the loan. Her
first effort was made by holding festivals, or “suppers.” She made a
personal canvass among the white and coloured families in the town of
Tuskegee, and got them to agree to give something, like a cake, a
chicken, bread, or pies, that could be sold at the festival. Of course
the coloured people were glad to give anything that they could spare,
but I want to add that Miss Davidson did not apply to a single white
family, so far as I now remember, that failed to donate something; and
in many ways the white families showed their interest in the school.

Several of these festivals were held, and quite a little sum of money
was raised. A canvass was also made among the people of both races for
direct gifts of money, and most of those applied to gave small sums. It
was often pathetic to note the gifts of the older coloured people, most
of whom had spent their best days in slavery. Sometimes they would give
five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents. Sometimes the contribution was
a quilt, or a quantity of sugarcane. I recall one old coloured women
who was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were
raising money to pay for the farm. She hobbled into the room where I
was, leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags; but they were clean. She
said: “Mr. Washin’ton, God knows I spent de bes’ days of my life in
slavery. God knows I’s ignorant an’ poor; but,” she added, “I knows
what you an’ Miss Davidson is tryin’ to do. I knows you is tryin’ to
make better men an’ better women for de coloured race. I ain’t got no
money, but I wants you to take dese six eggs, what I’s been savin’ up,
an’ I wants you to put dese six eggs into the eddication of dese boys
an’ gals.”

Since the work at Tuskegee started, it has been my privilege to receive
many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, I think,
that touched me so deeply as this one.




Chapter IX.
Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights


The coming of Christmas, that first year of our residence in Alabama,
gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of
the people. The first thing that reminded us that Christmas had arrived
was the “foreday” visits of scores of children rapping at our doors,
asking for “Chris’mus gifts! Chris’mus gifts!” Between the hours of two
o’clock and five o’clock in the morning I presume that we must have had
a half-hundred such calls. This custom prevails throughout this portion
of the South to-day.

During the days of slavery it was a custom quite generally observed
throughout all the Southern states to give the coloured people a week
of holiday at Christmas, or to allow the holiday to continue as long as
the “yule log” lasted. The male members of the race, and often the
female members, were expected to get drunk. We found that for a whole
week the coloured people in and around Tuskegee dropped work the day
before Christmas, and that it was difficult for any one to perform any
service from the time they stopped work until after the New Year.
Persons who at other times did not use strong drink thought it quite
the proper thing to indulge in it rather freely during the Christmas
week. There was a widespread hilarity, and a free use of guns, pistols,
and gunpowder generally. The sacredness of the season seemed to have
been almost wholly lost sight of.

During this first Christmas vacation I went some distance from the town
to visit the people on one of the large plantations. In their poverty
and ignorance it was pathetic to see their attempts to get joy out of
the season that in most parts of the country is so sacred and so dear
to the heart. In one cabin I notice that all that the five children had
to remind them of the coming of Christ was a single bunch of
firecrackers, which they had divided among them. In another cabin,
where there were at least a half-dozen persons, they had only ten
cents’ worth of ginger-cakes, which had been bought in the store the
day before. In another family they had only a few pieces of sugarcane.
In still another cabin I found nothing but a new jug of cheap, mean
whiskey, which the husband and wife were making free use of,
notwithstanding the fact that the husband was one of the local
ministers. In a few instances I found that the people had gotten hold
of some bright-coloured cards that had been designed for advertising
purposes, and were making the most of these. In other homes some member
of the family had bought a new pistol. In the majority of cases there
was nothing to be seen in the cabin to remind one of the coming of the
Saviour, except that the people had ceased work in the fields and were
lounging about their homes. At night, during Christmas week, they
usually had what they called a “frolic,” in some cabin on the
plantation. That meant a kind of rough dance, where there was likely to
be a good deal of whiskey used, and where there might be some shooting
or cutting with razors.

While I was making this Christmas visit I met an old coloured man who
was one of the numerous local preachers, who tried to convince me, from
the experience Adam had in the Garden of Eden, that God had cursed all
labour, and that, therefore, it was a sin for any man to work. For that
reason this man sought to do as little work as possible. He seemed at
that time to be supremely happy, because he was living, as he expressed
it, through one week that was free from sin.

In the school we made a special effort to teach our students the
meaning of Christmas, and to give them lessons in its proper
observance. In this we have been successful to a degree that makes me
feel safe in saying that the season now has a new meaning, not only
through all that immediate region, but, in a measure, wherever our
graduates have gone.

At the present time one of the most satisfactory features of the
Christmas and Thanksgiving season at Tuskegee is the unselfish and
beautiful way in which our graduates and students spend their time in
administering to the comfort and happiness of others, especially the
unfortunate. Not long ago some of our young men spent a holiday in
rebuilding a cabin for a helpless coloured women who was about
seventy-five years old. At another time I remember that I made it known
in chapel, one night, that a very poor student was suffering from cold,
because he needed a coat. The next morning two coats were sent to my
office for him.

I have referred to the disposition on the part of the white people in
the town of Tuskegee and vicinity to help the school. From the first, I
resolved to make the school a real part of the community in which it
was located. I was determined that no one should have the feeling that
it was a foreign institution, dropped down in the midst of the people,
for which they had no responsibility and in which they had no interest.
I noticed that the very fact that they had been asking to contribute
toward the purchase of the land made them begin to feel as if it was
going to be their school, to a large degree. I noted that just in
proportion as we made the white people feel that the institution was a
part of the life of the community, and that, while we wanted to make
friends in Boston, for example, we also wanted to make white friends in
Tuskegee, and that we wanted to make the school of real service to all
the people, their attitude toward the school became favourable.

Perhaps I might add right here, what I hope to demonstrate later, that,
so far as I know, the Tuskegee school at the present time has no warmer
and more enthusiastic friends anywhere than it has among the white
citizens of Tuskegee and throughout the state of Alabama and the entire
South. From the first, I have advised our people in the South to make
friends in every straightforward, manly way with their next-door
neighbour, whether he be a black man or a white man. I have also
advised them, where no principle is at stake, to consult the interests
of their local communities, and to advise with their friends in regard
to their voting.

For several months the work of securing the money with which to pay for
the farm went on without ceasing. At the end of three months enough was
secured to repay the loan of two hundred and fifty dollars to General
Marshall, and within two months more we had secured the entire five
hundred dollars and had received a deed of the one hundred acres of
land. This gave us a great deal of satisfaction. It was not only a
source of satisfaction to secure a permanent location for the school,
but it was equally satisfactory to know that the greater part of the
money with which it was paid for had been gotten from the white and
coloured people in the town of Tuskegee. The most of this money was
obtained by holding festivals and concerts, and from small individual
donations.

Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of
the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time
give the students training in agriculture. All the industries at
Tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of
the needs of a community settlement. We began with farming, because we
wanted something to eat.

Many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few
weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay
their board. Thus another object which made it desirable to get an
industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means
of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able
to remain in school during the nine months’ session of the school year.

The first animal that the school came into possession of was an old
blind horse given us by one of the white citizens of Tuskegee. Perhaps
I may add here that at the present time the school owns over two
hundred horses, colts, mules, cows, calves, and oxen, and about seven
hundred hogs and pigs, as well as a large number of sheep and goats.

The school was constantly growing in numbers, so much so that, after we
had got the farm paid for, the cultivation of the land begun, and the
old cabins which we had found on the place somewhat repaired, we turned
our attention toward providing a large, substantial building. After
having given a good deal of thought to the subject, we finally had the
plans drawn for a building that was estimated to cost about six
thousand dollars. This seemed to us a tremendous sum, but we knew that
the school must go backward or forward, and that our work would mean
little unless we could get hold of the students in their home life.

One incident which occurred about this time gave me a great deal of
satisfaction as well as surprise. When it became known in the town that
we were discussing the plans for a new, large building, a Southern
white man who was operating a sawmill not far from Tuskegee came to me
and said that he would gladly put all the lumber necessary to erect the
building on the grounds, with no other guarantee for payment than my
word that it would be paid for when we secured some money. I told the
man frankly that at the time we did not have in our hands one dollar of
the money needed. Notwithstanding this, he insisted on being allowed to
put the lumber on the grounds. After we had secured some portion of the
money we permitted him to do this.

Miss Davidson again began the work of securing in various ways small
contributions for the new building from the white and coloured people
in and near Tuskegee. I think I never saw a community of people so
happy over anything as were the coloured people over the prospect of
this new building. One day, when we were holding a meeting to secure
funds for its erection, an old, ante-bellum coloured man came a
distance of twelve miles and brought in his ox-cart a large hog. When
the meeting was in progress, he rose in the midst of the company and
said that he had no money which he could give, but he had raised two
fine hogs, and that he had brought one of them as a contribution toward
the expenses of the building. He closed his announcement by saying:
“Any nigger that’s got any love for his race, or any respect for
himself, will bring a hog to the next meeting.” Quite a number of men
in the community also volunteered to give several days’ work, each,
toward the erection of the building.

After we had secured all the help that we could in Tuskegee, Miss
Davidson decided to go North for the purpose of securing additional
funds. For weeks she visited individuals and spoke in churches and
before Sunday schools and other organizations. She found this work
quite trying, and often embarrassing. The school was not known, but she
was not long in winning her way into the confidence of the best people
in the North.

The first gift from any Northern person was received from a New York
lady whom Miss Davidson met on the boat that was bringing her North.
They fell into a conversation, and the Northern lady became so much
interested in the effort being made at Tuskegee that before they parted
Miss Davidson was handed a check for fifty dollars. For some time
before our marriage, and also after it, Miss Davidson kept up the work
of securing money in the North and in the South by interesting people
by personal visits and through correspondence. At the same time she
kept in close touch with the work at Tuskegee, as lady principal and
classroom teacher. In addition to this, she worked among the older
people in and near Tuskegee, and taught a Sunday school class in the
town. She was never very strong, but never seemed happy unless she was
giving all of her strength to the cause which she loved. Often, at
night, after spending the day in going from door to door trying to
interest persons in the work at Tuskegee, she would be so exhausted
that she could not undress herself. A lady upon whom she called, in
Boston, afterward told me that at one time when Miss Davidson called
her to see and send up her card the lady was detained a little before
she could see Miss Davidson, and when she entered the parlour she found
Miss Davidson so exhausted that she had fallen asleep.

While putting up our first building, which was named Porter Hall, after
Mr. A.H. Porter, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who gave a generous sum toward its
erection, the need for money became acute. I had given one of our
creditors a promise that upon a certain day he should be paid four
hundred dollars. On the morning of that day we did not have a dollar.
The mail arrived at the school at ten o’clock, and in this mail there
was a check sent by Miss Davidson for exactly four hundred dollars. I
could relate many instances of almost the same character. This four
hundred dollars was given by two ladies in Boston. Two years later,
when the work at Tuskegee had grown considerably, and when we were in
the midst of a season when we were so much in need of money that the
future looked doubtful and gloomy, the same two Boston ladies sent us
six thousand dollars. Words cannot describe our surprise, or the
encouragement that the gift brought to us. Perhaps I might add here
that for fourteen years these same friends have sent us six thousand
dollars a year.

As soon as the plans were drawn for the new building, the students
began digging out the earth where the foundations were to be laid,
working after the regular classes were over. They had not fully
outgrown the idea that it was hardly the proper thing for them to use
their hands, since they had come there, as one of them expressed it,
“to be educated, and not to work.” Gradually, though, I noted with
satisfaction that a sentiment in favour of work was gaining ground.
After a few weeks of hard work the foundations were ready, and a day
was appointed for the laying of the corner-stone.

When it is considered that the laying of this corner-stone took place
in the heart of the South, in the “Black Belt,” in the centre of that
part of our country that was most devoted to slavery; that at that time
slavery had been abolished only about sixteen years; that only sixteen
years before no Negro could be taught from books without the teacher
receiving the condemnation of the law or of public sentiment—when all
this is considered, the scene that was witnessed on that spring day at
Tuskegee was a remarkable one. I believe there are few places in the
world where it could have taken place.

The principal address was delivered by the Hon. Waddy Thompson, the
Superintendent of Education for the county. About the corner-stone were
gathered the teachers, the students, their parents and friends, the
county officials—who were white—and all the leading white men in that
vicinity, together with many of the black men and women whom the same
white people but a few years before had held a title to as property.
The members of both races were anxious to exercise the privilege of
placing under the corner-stone some momento.

Before the building was completed we passed through some very trying
seasons. More than once our hearts were made to bleed, as it were,
because bills were falling due that we did not have the money to meet.
Perhaps no one who has not gone through the experience, month after
month, of trying to erect buildings and provide equipment for a school
when no one knew where the money was to come from, can properly
appreciate the difficulties under which we laboured. During the first
years at Tuskegee I recall that night after night I would roll and toss
on my bed, without sleep, because of the anxiety and uncertainty which
we were in regarding money. I knew that, in a large degree, we were
trying an experiment—that of testing whether or not it was possible for
Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education
institution. I knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race. I
knew that the 

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