Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements
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Title: Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements
Editor: Booker T. Washington
Release date: February 15, 2009 [eBook #28087]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TUSKEGEE & ITS PEOPLE: THEIR IDEALS AND ACHIEVEMENTS ***
Produced by Bryan Ness, Meredith Bach, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
_Compliments of_
_BOOKER T. WASHINGTON_
_Principal Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama_
TUSKEGEE AND ITS PEOPLE
[Illustration: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.]
TUSKEGEE & ITS PEOPLE: THEIR IDEALS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
EDITED BY
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published June, 1905_
PREFACE
In a general way the reading public is fairly well acquainted with the
work of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, but there is
continued demand for definite information as to just what the graduates
of that institution are doing with their education.
That inquiry is partly answered by this book. The scope of the Tuskegee
Institute work is outlined by the chapters contained in Part I, while
those of Part II evidence the fact that the graduates of the school are
grappling at first-hand with the conditions that environ the masses of
the Negro people.
At the school, in addition to the regular Normal School course of
academic work, thirty-six industries are taught the young men and women.
These are: Agriculture; Basketry; Blacksmithing; Bee-keeping;
Brickmasonry; Plastering; Brick-making; Carpentry; Carriage Trimming;
Cooking; Dairying; Architectural, Freehand, and Mechanical Drawing;
Dressmaking; Electrical and Steam Engineering; Founding; Harness-making;
Housekeeping; Horticulture; Canning; Plain Sewing; Laundering;
Machinery; Mattress-making; Millinery; Nurse Training; Painting;
Sawmilling; Shoemaking; Printing; Stock-raising; Tailoring; Tinning; and
Wheelwrighting.
Since the founding of the institution, July 4, 1881, seven hundred and
forty-six graduates have gone out from the institution, while more than
six thousand others who were not able to remain and complete the
academic course, and thereby secure a diploma, have been influenced for
good by it.
The school has sought from the very beginning to make itself of
practical value to the Negro people and to the South as well. It has
taught those industries that are of the South, the occupations in which
our men and women find most ready employment, and unflinchingly has
refused to abandon its course; it has sought to influence its young men
and women to live unselfish, sacrificing lives; to put into practise the
lessons taught on every side that make for practical, helpful every-day
living.
In the main those who go out from Tuskegee Institute, (1) follow the
industry they have been taught, (2) teach in a public or private school
or teach part of the year and farm or labor the rest, (3) follow
housekeeping or other domestic service, or (4) enter a profession or the
Government service, or become merchants. Among the teachers are many who
instruct in farming or some industry; the professional men are largely
physicians, and the professional women mostly trained nurses. Dr.
Washington, the Principal of the school, makes the unqualified
statement: "After diligent investigation, I can not find a dozen former
students in idleness. They are in shop, field, schoolroom, home, or the
church. They are busy because they have placed themselves in demand by
learning to do that which the world wants done, and because they have
learned the disgrace of idleness and the sweetness of labor."
No attempt has here been made to represent all of the industries; no
attempt has especially been made to confine representation to those who
are working at manual labor. The public, or at least a part of it,
somewhat gratuitously, has reached the conclusion that Tuskegee
Institute is a "servant training school," or an employment agency. That
is a mistaken idea.
The object of the school is to train men and women who will go out and
repeat the work done here, to teach what they have learned to others,
and to leaven the whole mass of the Negro people in the South with a
desire for the knowledge and profitable operation of those industries in
which they have in so large a measure the right of way. Tuskegee
students and graduates are never urged not to take such service,
especially not to refuse in preference to idleness, but it all involves
a simple, ordinary, economic principle. Capable men and women, skilled
in the industrial arts, are like those of all races--they seek the most
profitable employment. A blacksmith, a tailor, a brickmason, a
harness-maker, or other artisan, who can find work in shops and
factories, or independently, and make thirty to seventy-five dollars a
month, and even more, will not, simply because he is black, leave those
chances to accept service in private employment for fifteen dollars per
month, and less, and board himself. No school could covenant to train
servants for an indefinite tenure; it can at best only promise to train
leaders who shall go among the masses and lift them up; to train men and
women who shall in turn reach hundreds of others.
Those who write the following chapters represent, in the main, this
class. They have written simply, with perfect frankness, have dealt with
the significant things of their lives, and have demonstrated, the
writer believes, that from humble origin black men and women may
confidently be counted upon, with proper encouragement, to win success.
The chapters are autobiographical, significantly optimistic, with just
pride in what has been done, and outlining, as did "Up from
Slavery"--which was commended as a proper model--experiences from
childhood, the school-life of the writer, and the results achieved in
the direction of putting into practise what was learned in school.
Through this symposium it is hoped that the public may learn, in the
best possible way, some of the finer results already accomplished by the
Tuskegee Institute.
E. J. S.
TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALABAMA, _April 1, 1905_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1
By Booker T. Washington.
PART I
THE SCHOOL AND ITS PURPOSES
I.--PRESENT ACHIEVEMENTS AND GOVERNING IDEALS 19
By Emmett J. Scott, Mr. Washington's Executive Secretary.
II.--RESOURCES AND MATERIAL EQUIPMENT 35
By Warren Logan, Treasurer of the School.
III.--THE ACADEMIC AIMS 56
By Roscoe C. Bruce, Director of the Academic Department.
IV.--WHAT GIRLS ARE TAUGHT, AND HOW 68
By Mrs. Booker T. Washington, Director of Industries for Girls.
V.--HAMPTON INSTITUTE'S RELATION TO TUSKEGEE 87
By Robert R. Moton.
PART II
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY GRADUATES OF THE SCHOOL
I.--A COLLEGE PRESIDENT'S STORY 101
By Isaac Fisher, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
II.--A SCHOOL PRINCIPAL'S STORY 111
By William H. Holtzclaw, of Utica, Mississippi.
III.--A LAWYER'S STORY 141
By George W. Lovejoy, of Mobile, Alabama.
IV.--A SCHOOL TREASURER'S STORY 152
By Martin A. Menafee, of Denmark, South Carolina.
V.--THE STORY OF A FARMER 164
By Frank Reid, of Dawkins, Alabama.
VI.--THE STORY OF A CARPENTER 173
By Gabriel B. Miller, of Fort Valley, Georgia.
VII.--COTTON-GROWING IN AFRICA 184
By John W. Robinson, of Lome, Togo, West Africa.
VIII.--THE STORY OF A TEACHER OF COOKING 200
By Mary L. Dotson, of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
IX.--A WOMAN'S WORK 211
By Cornelia Bowen, of Waugh (Mt. Meigs), Alabama.
X.--UPLIFTING OF THE SUBMERGED MASSES 224
By W. J. Edwards, of Snow Hill, Alabama.
XI.--A DAIRYMAN'S STORY 253
By Lewis A. Smith, of Rockford, Illinois.
XII.--THE STORY OF A WHEELWRIGHT 264
By Edward Lomax, of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
XIII.--THE STORY OF A BLACKSMITH 276
By Jubie B. Bragg, of Tallahassee, Florida.
XIV.--A DRUGGIST'S STORY 285
By David L. Johnston, of Birmingham, Alabama.
XV.--THE STORY OF A SUPERVISOR OF MECHANICAL INDUSTRIES 299
By James M. Canty, of Institute P. O., West Virginia.
XVI.--A NEGRO COMMUNITY BUILDER 317
By Russell C. Calhoun, of Eatonville, Florida.
XVII.--THE EVOLUTION OF A SHOEMAKER 338
By Charles L. Marshall, of Cambria, Virginia.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON _Frontispiece_
EMMETT J. SCOTT 20
Mr. Washington's Executive Secretary.
THE COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL BUILDING 26
WARREN LOGAN 36
Treasurer of the School
THE OFFICE BUILDING IN PROCESS OF ERECTION 50
Student carpenters shown at work.
ROSCOE C. BRUCE 56
Director of the Academic Department.
A PORTION OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS 64
ANOTHER PORTION OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS 66
MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 68
Director of Industries for Girls.
A CLASS IN MILLINERY 76
THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 94
Standing, left to right: P. C. Parks, Superintendent of Farm;
George W. Carver, Director, Agricultural Department; J. N. Calloway,
Land Extension; John H. Palmer, Registrar; Charles H. Gibson,
Resident Auditor; Edgar J. Penney, Chaplain.
Seated, left to right: Lloyd G. Wheeler, Business Agent; Robert R.
Taylor, Director of Mechanical Industries; John H. Washington,
General Superintendent of Industries; Warren Logan, Treasurer; Booker
T. Washington, Principal; Miss Jane E. Clark, Dean of Woman's
Department; Mrs. Booker T. Washington, Director of Industries for
Girls; and Emmett J. Scott, Secretary to the Principal.
The Director of the Academic Department, Roscoe C. Bruce, and the
Commandant of Cadets, Major J. B. Ramsey, also members of the
Executive Council, were absent when photograph was taken.
THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY BUILDING 108
MORNING AT THE BARNS ON THE SCHOOL FARM 122
Teams of horses and cattle ready to start for the day's work.
STUDENTS PRUNING PEACH-TREES 146
A SILO ON THE FARM 166
Students filling it with fodder corn, steam-power being used.
A MODEL DINING-ROOM 208
From the department where table-service is taught.
THE CULTURE OF BEES 220
Students at work in the apiary.
IN THE DAIRY 254
Students using separators.
STUDENTS AT WORK IN THE HARNESS SHOP 270
AT THE HOSPITAL 294
A corner in the boys' ward.
IN THE TIN SHOP 300
STUDENTS CANNING FRUIT 308
STARTING A NEW BUILDING 314
Student masons laying the foundation in brick.
GIRLS GARDENING 344
TUSKEGEE AND ITS PEOPLE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
Institutions, like individuals, are properly judged by their ideals,
their methods, and their achievements in the production of men and women
who are to do the world's work.
One school is better than another in proportion as its system touches
the more pressing needs of the people it aims to serve, and provides the
more speedily and satisfactorily the elements that bring to them
honorable and enduring success in the struggle of life. Education of
some kind is the first essential of the young man, or young woman, who
would lay the foundation of a career. The choice of the school to which
one will go and the calling he will adopt must be influenced in a very
large measure by his environments, trend of ambition, natural capacity,
possible opportunities in the proposed calling, and the means at his
command.
In the past twenty-four years thousands of the youth of this and other
lands have elected to come to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute to secure what they deem the training that would offer them
the widest range of usefulness in the activities open to the masses of
the Negro people. Their hopes, fears, strength, weaknesses, struggles,
and triumphs can not fail to be of absorbing interest to the great body
of American people, more particularly to the student of educational
theories and their attendant results.
When an institution has, like Tuskegee Institute, reached that stage in
its development that its system of instruction has aroused very general
discussion, and has given to the world of varied industry an army of
workers, numbering not less than 6,000, there is a natural curiosity on
the part of the public to learn all that is possible of such an
institution, and of the personality and methods of those administering
its affairs. They wish to ascertain the actual truth concerning its
resources and equipment; they want figures detailing the degree of
pecuniary productiveness and moral efficiency attained by those who have
received the prescribed training; and they are eager to hear the whole
story from the lips of both the instructors and the instructed as to how
the recorded results have been accomplished.
In several volumes already published, bearing upon Tuskegee Institute
and what it stands for, an endeavor has been made to present a truthful
account of the Principal's early strivings and life-work; an honest
attempt has been made to analyze and impress the basic principles upon
which Tuskegee Institute was founded. It has been the aim to write a
history of individual yearnings for the light of knowledge that would
stir the inner consciousness of the humblest of the race and arouse him
to the vast possibilities that lie in the wake of solid character,
intelligent industry, and material acquisition. He has tried, with all
earnestness, to hold up the future of the American Negro in its most
attractive aspect, and to emphasize the virile philosophy that there is
a positive dignity in working with the hands, when that labor is
fortified by a developed brain and a consecrated heart.
Though much has been said of the spirit and purpose of this center of
social and economic uplift in the famed Black Belt of the South, there
is still a wide-spread demand for a more specific recital of what is
being done here, by whom, under what conditions, and the concrete
evidences of the benefits that are growing out of the thrift, industry,
right thinking, and right living taught by our faculty.
In response to this insistent call, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Executive
Secretary of the Tuskegee Institute, presents to the public a further
contribution, Tuskegee and Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements,
with authentic accompanying autobiographies of a number of typical
students of the school.
To this work Mr. Scott brings a peculiar fitness, unequaled by any other
person who might have been chosen to perform it. He is closely knit to
the Southland and her great masses by the common sympathy of nativity
and the mutuality of hopes. The South has always been his home, but he
has traveled so extensively and mingled so freely that he has acquired
most ample breadth of vision as regards men and things.
For many years now Mr. Scott has served the school with rare fidelity
and zeal, and has been to the Principal not only a loyal assistant in
every phase of his manifold and frequently trying duties, but has proved
a valuable personal friend and counselor in matters of the most
delicate nature, exhibiting in emergencies a quality of judgment and
diplomatic calmness seldom found in men of even riper maturity and more
extended experience.
As I stated in one of my books published several years ago, as far as
one individual can fill the place of another, Mr. Scott has acted in the
Principal's stead, seeing with the Principal's eyes and hearing with the
Principal's ears, counting no sacrifice too great to be made for
Tuskegee's well-being. He is in perfect accord with the fundamental
principles and practical policies through the persistent adherence to
which Tuskegee Institute has won its conspicuous place in the
educational world.
The volume here presented has been edited by Mr. Scott with the utmost
care, he preferring to have the contributors understate rather than
overstate the results that have come from the labors of Tuskegee and its
people. It has been the Principal's pleasure and privilege to examine
and critically review the manuscript after its completion, and the
volume is so praiseworthy that it is given his cordial approval. The
task of editing he had expected to perform has been so well done that it
has only been necessary to review the manuscript after its preparation
for the publishers, and to forego the strict editorial revisioning
planned. The book is an accurate portrait of the Tuskegee of to-day, and
reasonably forecasts the hopes for the institution of to-morrow. It
tells with forceful directness and graphic precision the formative work
that is being done for this generation, and supplies a fulcrum upon
which there may justly rest a prophecy of greater things for the
generations that are to follow.
A Tuskegee book, whatever its primary motive, is invariably expected to
deal broadly with the entire problem of the Negro and his relationships
of every kind. It must be more than a mere flesh-and-blood narrative,
descriptive of the material progress of the men and women the Institute
has produced and is producing. It must be a book free from ostentatious
pretension, breathing the atmosphere of the life of the earnest people
it describes. It must, of course, exhibit not only the achievements, but
also the ideals, the possibilities of the Tuskegee trained man and
woman. This, I feel, is adequately done in this volume.
Tuskegee and Its People possesses ideals in thought, morals, and
action--and they are lofty. In these respects the symposium will not
prove a disappointment. This instinct for the ideal, however, lies not
in idly sighing for it, but is born of an abiding belief that worth is
intrinsic, and that applied common sense, practical knowledge, constancy
of effort, and mechanical skill will make a place for the patient
striver far more secure than the artificial niche into which some one
may thrust him. The masses who are most helpfully reached by the
Tuskegee Institute are coming to realize that education in its truest
sense is no longer to be regarded as an emotional impulse, a fetish made
up of loosely joined information, to be worshiped for its mere
possession, but as a practical means to a definite end. They are being
taught that mind-training is the logical helpmeet of hand-training, and
that both, supplemented and sweetened by heart-training, make the
high-souled, useful, productive, patriotic, law-loving, public-spirited
citizen, of whom any nation might well be proud. The outcome of such
education will be that, instead of the downtrodden child of ignorance,
shiftlessness, and moral weakness, we shall generate the thoroughly
rounded man of prudence, foresight, responsibility, and financial
independence. He will cease to be the gullible victim of the sharper who
plays upon vanity, credulity, and superstition, and learn to value only
that which is real and substantial. It is of the highest importance to
the Negro, who must make his way amid disadvantages and embarrassments
of the severest character, that he be made aware of the vast difference
between working and being worked. In carrying this inspiring message and
impressing these fundamental truths, the new Tuskegee book renders a
splendid service.
Industrial training will be more potent for good to the race when its
relation to the other phases of essential education is more clearly
understood. There is afloat no end of discussion as to what is the
"proper kind of education for the Negro," and much of it is hurtful to
the cause it is designed to promote. The danger, at present, that most
seriously threatens the success of industrial training, is the
ill-advised insistence in certain quarters that this form of education
should be offered to the exclusion of all other branches of knowledge.
If the idea becomes fixed in the minds of the people that industrial
education means class education, that it should be offered the Negro
because he is a Negro, and that the Negro should be confined to this
sort of education, then I fear serious injury will be done the cause of
hand-training. It should be understood rather that at such institutions
as Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute, industrial education is not
emphasized because colored people are to receive it, but because the
ripest educational thought of the world approves it; because the
undeveloped material resources of the South make it peculiarly important
for both races; and because it should be given in a large measure to any
race, regardless of color, which is in the same stage of development as
the Negro.
On the other hand, no one understanding the real needs of the race would
advocate that industrial education should be given to every Negro to the
exclusion of the professions and other branches of learning. It is
evident that a race so largely segregated as the Negro is, must have an
increasing number of its own professional men and women. There is, then,
a place and an increasing need for the Negro college as well as for the
industrial institute, and the two classes of schools should, and as a
matter of fact do, cooperate in the common purpose of elevating the
masses. There is nothing in hand-training to suggest that it is a
class-training. The best educational authorities in the world are
indorsing it as an essential feature in the education of both races,
and especially so when a very large proportion of the people in question
are compelled by dint of circumstances to earn their living in
manufactures and agricultural and mechanical pursuits in general. It so
happens that the bulk of our people are permanently to remain in the
South, and conditions beyond their control have attached them to the
soil; for a long time the status of the majority of them is likely to be
that of laborers. To make hard conditions easier, to raise common labor
from drudgery to dignity, and to adopt systems of training that will
meet the needs of the greatest number and prepare them for the better
things that intelligent effort will surely bring, form a task to which
the wisest of the race are addressing themselves with an eager
enthusiasm which refuses to be chilled by adverse criticism.
Tuskegee emphasizes industrial training for the Negro, not with the
thought that the Negro should be confined to industrialism, the plow, or
the hoe, but because the undeveloped material resources of the South
offer at this time a field peculiarly advantageous to the worker skilled
in agriculture and the industries, and here are found the Negro's most
inviting opportunities for taking on the rudimentary elements that
ultimately make for a permanently progressive civilization.
The Tuskegee Idea is that correct education begins at the bottom, and
expands naturally as the necessities of the people expand. As the race
grows in knowledge, experience, culture, taste, and wealth, its wants
are bound to become more and more diverse; and to satisfy these wants
there will be gradually developed within our own ranks--as has already
been true of the whites--a constantly increasing variety of professional
and business men and women. Their places in the economic world will be
assured and their prosperity guaranteed in proportion to the merit
displayed by them in their several callings, for about them will have
been established the solid bulwark of an industrial mass to which they
may safely look for support. The esthetic demands will be met as the
capacity of the race to procure them is enlarged through the processes
of sane intellectual advancement. In this cumulative way there will be
erected by the Negro, and for the Negro, a complete and indestructible
civilization that will be respected by all whose respect is worth the
having. There should be no limit placed upon the development of any
individual because of color, and let it be understood that no one kind
of training can safely be prescribed for any entire race. Care should be
taken that racial education be not one-sided for lack of adaptation to
personal fitness, nor unwieldy through sheer top-heaviness. Education,
to fulfil its mission for any people anywhere, should be symmetrical and
sensible.
A mastery of the industries taught at Tuskegee presupposes and requires
no small degree of academic study, for competency in agriculture calls
for considerable knowledge of chemistry, and no mechanical pursuit can
be followed satisfactorily without some acquaintance with the "three
R's." Likewise, the individual of liberal academic or college
preparation possesses a stronger equipment for constructive work who has
trained his hands to supplement his brain.
After all, the final test of the value of any system of education is
found in the record of its actual achievements. In Tuskegee and Its
People heads of the several departments have not only given a succinct
account of the history, resources, and current labors of the school, but
deal most happily with the governing ideals behind the institution, and
vindicate its claim to the approval of the world's thinkers and moving
forces. Besides treating rather elaborately the structural efficiency
of the work of the teachers, the editor has not neglected to emphasize
the spiritual and ethical virtues that spread over a wider range of
influence here and among our people throughout the Southland than those
familiar with the purely academic phases have adequately understood.
Tuskegee's germ principle is to be found in its unboasted ideals, in the
things that of necessity can not be listed in catalogue or report,
rather than in its buildings, shops, farms, and what not. The school
dwells upon the saving power of land, and learning, and skill, and a
bank-account--not as finalities in themselves, but as tangible witnesses
to the Negro's capacity to compete with others.
Perhaps the newest and most refreshing feature of the book is its vivid
pen-portraits of the young men and women who have gone out of Tuskegee
carrying into diversified lives the principles and precepts imbibed from
their parent school. The pictures are drawn by the originals themselves,
and they illustrate by honorable achievement the wholesome and
evangelizing influence of Tuskegee's preachments, and the far-reaching
effect of placing before them as teachers the highest example of what
the Negro of morals and manners may become. They tell their story at
first-hand, modestly and sincerely, and the foundations of inspiring
lives, laid in the Christian virtues and conscientious service of their
fellow men, foster a firm belief that the school is doing a work that
will live.
These types of Tuskegee's graduates, picked out at random from hundreds
of equal scholarship and ability, represent distinctive channels of
activity, including the president of a leading college, principals and
teachers of thriving schools, a lawyer, a tinner, a school treasurer,
farmers, cotton-growers, master builders and contractors, a dairyman,
and a blacksmith. No element contributing to the racial uplift is
overlooked. The scenes of their labors are scattered over a vast area,
showing convincingly the diffusive character as well as the rich harvest
garnered through the Tuskegee Idea. These rough-hewn sketches of a
sturdy pioneer band in staking out a larger life and a wider horizon for
later generations are worthy of the most careful perusal.
The immeasurable advancement of the Negro, manifested in character,
courage, and cash, vitalized by valiant service to the republic in
education, commerce, and religion, and crowned by an enlightened,
vigorously efficient, sensibly ambitious, and law-abiding citizenship,
is "confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ" that the gospel of
industry, as exemplified by Tuskegee and its helpers, has exerted a
leavening influence upon civilization wherever it has been brought
within the reach of those who are struggling toward the heights. Under
this new dispensation of mind, morals, and muscle, with the best whites
and best blacks in sympathetic cooperation, and justice meaning the same
to the weak as to the strong, the South will no longer be vexed by a
"race problem." Peace and prosperity for all will come with the strength
to rise above the baser self. Civic righteousness is the South's
speediest thoroughfare to economic greatness.
A book that opens the inner chambers of a people's heart, and sheds a
light that may guide the footsteps of both races along the upward way,
should meet with a hearty welcome at the hands of all lovers of
mankind.
_PART I_
_THE SCHOOL AND ITS PURPOSES_
I
PRESENT ACHIEVEMENTS AND GOVERNING IDEALS
BY EMMETT J. SCOTT
So much has been said about Tuskegee Institute as a training-school in
which to prepare young colored men and women for earning a living in the
world of trade and business, that the ideals and spirit behind all this
training are to a very large extent lost sight of.
Tuskegee, with its hundreds of acres of farm-land under intelligent
cultivation, with its ever-increasing number of well-appointed buildings
and its equipment, and the many things on the grounds included in the
name of handicrafts, is always in the public eye, and continually
appeals to the interest of those who are deeply concerned in the
well-being and progress of the Negro people.
Yet behind all of these more tangible manifestations of work, skill, and
achievement, there is an unseen, persistent groping after the higher
ideals of life and living. No one can remain long on the grounds as an
intelligent observer of all that is to be here seen and felt, without
recognizing that the things that are not written in the catalogue and
not a part of the daily program of activities are real, vital, and of
far-reaching importance.
Principal Booker T. Washington and the men and women who have helped him
to build Tuskegee Institute are constantly looking beyond the present to
a future filled with the evidences of a better living for all those who
have felt the transforming spirit of the hidden forces at work.
How the perspective widens and deepens! Far, far beyond the confines of
the Tuskegee Institute community the light of this new life is seen and
felt and has its salutary effect. The stagnant life of centuries has
awakened, and is casting off its bonds. A new term, "intelligent
thrift," has come into its possession. Wherever this term has gone and
taken root, there has gone with it the thought that unless the idea make
for character, as well as for more cotton or corn, it is not of much
value.
The Tuskegee Idea always asks one question, and that is, "What are you?"
and not, "What have you?" The man who does not rise superior to his
possessions does not measure up to the Tuskegee idea of manhood.
[Illustration: EMMETT J. SCOTT.
Mr. Washington's Executive Secretary.]
In other words, character-building is the Alpha and Omega of all that
Tuskegee stands for. From the moment the new student comes on the
grounds until he leaves, he is appealed to in ways innumerable to regard
life as more than bread or meat, as more than mere mental equipment.
Cleanliness, decorum, promptness, truthfulness--these are old-fashioned
virtues, and are more properly taught in the home, but in Tuskegee they
mean everything. Tuskegee not only acts as a teacher, but assumes the
rôle of parent, and lays emphasis on the importance of these virtues
every moment of the time from the entrance of the student until
Commencement Day. The "cleanliness that is next to godliness" is one of
the Tuskegee ideals, and a student can scarcely commit a more serious
misdemeanor than to appear slovenly, either in dress or manners. The
facilities and requirements for bathing are quite as complete and
exacting as the equipments in the laboratories and recitation-rooms. The
result is that Tuskegee has the reputation of being one of the most
cleanly and sanitary institutions in the South.
As for good manners, Lord Chesterfield himself would scarcely ask more
than is insisted upon by Tuskegee precision. A man must first be
conscious of being a gentleman before he can be recognized as such by
others, and a girl's good manners are only outward evidences of her
individual worth and passport to respectful treatment. Tuskegee
Institute, then, insists upon these things because they make for
character, and are a part of the ideals toward which all training tends.
But how are all these things taught and enforced? The first requisite,
of course, is the character of the teachers and instructors themselves,
the men and women who are the embodiment of the ideals that Tuskegee
Institute stands for. While it can not be claimed that the best teachers
in the South are all at Tuskegee, it can be said that no other school
has so large a number of colored men and women who have had the
advantage of the highest industrial and intellectual, moral and
religious training. The teaching force is made up largely of graduates
from nearly every first-class educational institution in America. These
teachers have been carefully sought out and brought to Tuskegee, not
only for their teaching ability, but that the students may have the
benefit of the best examples before them of what the highest culture can
do for men and women of their own race. For the majority of our students
the perspective of life is narrow: many of them have never lived out of
the community in which they were born. That was their only world; their
ideals of life were shaped by their mean and narrow environments. They
have learned to believe, and act accordingly, that the best people are
all of one complexion, and the worst and poorest people are all of
another complexion. There is no such thing as creating a sentiment of
race pride in such people unless they have set before them living
examples of their own race in whom they can feel a sense of pride.
It is scarcely too much to say that one of the best things about the
Tuskegee Institute is that it wins our young men and women from mean and
sordid environment and brings them in contact with teachers whose minds,
hearts, and lives have been enlarged and graced by the highest learning
in the best educational institutions of the country. The school teaches
no more important lesson than that of cultivating a sense of pride and
respect for colored men and women who deserve it because of their
character, education, and achievements.
Pride of race, though not so written in the courses of study, is as much
a part of Tuskegee's work as agriculture, brick-making, millinery, or
any other trade, and quite as important. This may be called sentiment,
but it makes for race development quite as much as any of the material
things taught in the class-room or shop. To borrow a line from George
Eliot:
"Because our race has no great memories,
I will so live, it shall remember me
For deeds of such divine beneficence
As rivers have, that teach men what is good
By blessing them--
And make their name, now but a badge of scorn,
A glorious banner floating in their midst,
Stirring the air they breathe with impulses
Of generous pride, exalting fellowship
Until it soars to magnanimity."
That self-respect demands race pride; that virtue is its own reward;
that character is the greatest thing in human life, are taught and
emphasized in other ways also. Dr. Washington has succeeded, to a
remarkable degree, in developing the Tuskegee Institute by insisting
that this institution must have nothing less than the best within and
without it, everywhere. What is not best is only temporary. Those who
have done most for the school have been made to feel that the character
of the work done here and the ideals striven for are deserving of the
best. The idea that "anything is good enough for a Negro school" has
never been allowed to have any part or exert any effect in Tuskegee's
expansion.
For example, when Mr. Carnegie donated the money for a library for
Tuskegee, a building was erected of classic outline--a noble structure
of artistic symmetry and beauty that must appeal to every one who has
any appreciation of architectural beauty. The Collis P. Huntington
Memorial Building, just completed, a gift of Mrs. C. P. Huntington, used
for the academic classes of the school, would be a credit and delight to
any municipality. There is everything about the exterior and interior
that must awaken a sense of pride in every pupil who enters its portals.
Its facilities are sensible and unostentatious, yet they meet every
requirement of the department. What is true of the new Academic Building
is likewise true of the various dormitories for girls and boys. The
cleanliness and the sanitation to be found at Tuskegee are in delightful
contrast to the poor environment to which many of the students have been
accustomed; especially is this contrast heightened when these same
students have, under competent direction, installed the plants which
yield these comforts. Thus it is that in dormitory, recitation-room,
shop, dining-hall, library, chapel, and landscape, the idea that only
the best is worth having and striving for is emphasized as an
object-lesson and principle with such insistence that it becomes an
actual part of a student's training and life.
The student at Tuskegee is constantly being trained to look up and
forward. He learns how the idea of beauty can be actualized in home and
social life; how faithful performance of every duty means nobility of
character; how the value of achievement is determined by the motive
behind it. But besides these, the one aim, thought, or anxiety around
which all others revolve is the high honorableness of all kinds of work
intelligently done.
In a section where those who work with their hands are marked off by the
inexorable line of caste from those who work with their brains or not at
all, this idea of making intelligent work more honorable than
intelligent idleness is of constructive value in race development. The
problem that the Tuskegee Institute is helping to solve is not only that
the colored people shall do their proportionate share of the work, but
that they shall do it in such a way that the benefits will remain with
those who do the work. Who can measure the transforming effect and
influence when it can be said that the "best mechanics" and the "best
agriculturists" in the South are Negroes? Certainly, if such a time ever
comes, there will be no such painful thing as a race problem, as Negroes
now see it and feel it.
[Illustration: THE COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL BUILDING.]
This is one of Tuskegee's largest ideals; not that Tuskegee alone can
bring about a "consummation so devoutly to be wished," but it is
ambitious to be a potent factor in all the tendencies that make for such
a condition of life in the heart of the South. So important is this aim
and idea of Tuskegee, that it allows no criticism to affect, interfere,
or obscure its vision. Tuskegee says to the world that it is determined
not only to be a school, but an agent of civilization, a missionary for
a better life, that shall stand for a kindlier relationship between the
races.
The school enthusiastically seeks to live up to the ideal of its
Principal, that education in the broadest and truest sense is designed
to influence individuals to help others; is designed, first, last, and
all the time, to transform and energize individuals into life-giving
agencies for the uplift of their fellows. Principal Washington's whole
educational creed, accepted by Tuskegee Institute teachers and students
alike, was recently declared in one of his familiar Sunday-evening
"talks" to the students of the institution. Said he:
"Education in the broadest and truest sense will make an individual seek
to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless
of condition. And you will find that the person who is most truly
educated is the one who is going to be kindest, and is going to act in
the gentlest manner toward persons who are unfortunate, toward the race
or the individual that is most despised. The highly educated person is
the one who is most considerate of those individuals who are less
fortunate. I hope when you go out from here and meet persons who are
afflicted by poverty, whether of mind or body, or persons who are
unfortunate in any way, that you will show your education by being just
as kind and considerate toward those persons as it is possible for you
to be. That is the way to test a person with education. You may see
ignorant persons, who perhaps think themselves educated, going about the
street, and when they meet an individual who is unfortunate--lame, or
with a defect of body, mind, or speech--are inclined to laugh at and
make sport of that individual. But the highly educated person, the one
who is really cultivated, is gentle and sympathetic to every one.
Education is meant to make us absolutely honest in dealing with our
fellows. I do not care how much arithmetic we have, or how many cities
we can locate; it is all useless unless we have an education that makes
us absolutely honest. Education is meant to make us give satisfaction,
and to get satisfaction out of giving it. It is meant to make us get
happiness out of service for our fellows. And until we get to the point
where we can get happiness and supreme satisfaction out of helping our
fellows, we are not truly educated.... Education is meant to make us
appreciate the things that are beautiful in nature. A person is never
educated until he is able to go into the swamps and woods and see
something that is beautiful in the trees and shrubs there--is able to
see something beautiful in the grass and flowers that surround him--is,
in short, able to see something beautiful, elevating, and inspiring in
everything that God has created. Not only should education enable us to
see beauty in these objects which God has put about us, but it is meant
to influence us to bring beautiful objects about us. I hope that each
one of you, after you graduate, will surround himself at home with what
is beautiful, inspiring, and elevating. I do not believe that any
person is educated so long as he lives in a dirty, miserable shanty. I
do not believe that any person is educated until he has learned to want
to live in a clean room made attractive with pictures and books, and
with such surroundings as are elevating. In a word, I wish to say again
that education is meant to give us that culture, that refinement, that
taste, which will make us deal truthfully and sympathetically with our
fellow men, and will make us see what is beautiful, elevating, and
inspiring in what God has created. I want you to bear in mind that your
text-books, with all their contents, are not an end, but a means to an
end--a means to help us get the highest, the best, the purest, and the
most beautiful things out of life."
The Tuskegee trained boy or girl has set before him every hour in the
day, and every day in the year, the substantial educational ideals here
set forth. Books, valuable as they are, and nowhere more thoroughly
reckoned as such than here, are only a means to an end: this is the
gospel preached by the Tuskegee teacher. Life is the great, the eternal
thing; the serving of one's fellows, the ministering unto the needy of a
groping, developing people--this is the thing not forgotten, but ever
constantly enforced by precept and by example.
The many old and time-worn frame buildings are being replaced by finely
built and imposing brick and stone structures; the tallow dip and
antiquated oil-lamp and gas-jet, as illuminators, have paled before the
more brilliant white light of electricity, installed by Tuskegee
students and operated by them. Patience and faith!--these are Tuskegee's
watchwords and her standard virtues. What can not be accomplished to-day
will certainly be accomplished to-morrow.
So, in its larger outlook and household anxieties, Tuskegee Institute
teachers are confident that the things taught and enforced by example
and precept will justify their efforts in helping to make a dependent
people independent, a distracted people confident, and an humble people
to thrill with pride in itself and in its best men and women. Thus it is
that Tuskegee Institute has never been satisfied with being merely a
school, concerned wholly with its recitations and training in shop and
field. Every student who carries a diploma from these grounds is urged
not to hang that diploma on the wall as an ornament, as an evidence of
individual superiority, but to make it mean something constructive and
life-giving to every one in the community where he must live and work.
The young men and women who are trained for mission work in foreign
countries are not more carefully trained in the spirit of consecration
than are these young men and women trained at Tuskegee for the work of
creating better economic and social conditions among their own people.
It is not necessary to state here what has already been accomplished in
many parts of the South by Tuskegee graduates. The selected examples set
forth in this book are evidence enough. It is sufficient to say that the
Tuskegee Institute is determined to become more and more a distinctive
influence among the regenerative agencies that are gradually bringing
order out of chaos, and justice, peace, and happiness out of the
wretched disorders of a painful past. It is easy to trace the influence
of such well-established institutions as Harvard and Yale in the
progressive life of the American people. The sons of Harvard and Yale
almost dominate civilization in America. In another sense, it is
possible for Tuskegee to have a like influence in the many things that
must be accomplished in the South, before love and justice shall
supplant race prejudice and race antagonism.
This reaching out helpfully in all directions where help is needed is
the distinguishing feature of Tuskegee. This race-loving spirit gives it
a largeness of view and purpose that saves both its teachers and pupils
from being narrow and self-centered. Take from Tuskegee all this "vision
splendid," and it will at once shrink into common-place insignificance.
"Set your ideals high," says the distinguished man who here is Principal
as he was founder, "and in your efforts to reach them you become strong
for greater things." It is but truth to say that no institution in all
the land, whether for white or black education, stands for higher and
more generous ideals.
Unless the young man who goes away from Tuskegee as blacksmith,
carpenter, printer, or as any other mechanic, is something more than
these, he has been incapable of perceiving and taking in the ideals that
go with these accomplishments. He has been taught over and over again to
"hitch his wagon to the stars," and if he fail to do so, the fault is in
himself, and not in Tuskegee.
As between a poor doctor and a poor carpenter, there is but scant
choice. They are both failures and to be avoided. Honor in one is as
precious as in the other. Honor and efficiency--these, therefore, are
the ideal test of every son and daughter that passes out of these
grounds into the larger world of work and responsibility.
What a terrible task it has been and still is to teach the lessons of
the upward spirit: "God's in His heaven, all's well with the world."
Hope is strength and discouragement is weakness. Everything that is
false and unjust and wrong is transitory. Those who are brave enough to
solve problems shall be more honored of mankind than those who create
problems which they make no effort to solve.
There can be no liberty without intelligence, no independence without
industry, and no power for man, and no charm for woman, without
character.
These are some of the ideals toward which all our teaching leads;
without these there would be no Tuskegee; with them, as its very life
and spirit and inspiration, Tuskegee shall lead into more ways of peace,
happiness, and power than we of this generation have yet dreamed of, or
realized.
II
RESOURCES AND MATERIAL EQUIPMENT
BY WARREN LOGAN
When the Alabama Legislature in 1881 passed an act to establish a Normal
School for colored people at Tuskegee and appropriated for it $2,000
yearly, it made no provision whatever for land or buildings; these were
left to be provided for by the people who were to be benefited by the
school. Here was almost a case of being required to make bricks without
straw. But as matters have turned out, this neglect was the best thing
that could have happened to the school. First it gave opportunity for
the employment of those splendid qualities of pluck, self-help, and
perseverance which have distinguished Mr. Washington so preeminently in
the building of Tuskegee. Moreover, the State has contributed nothing to
the school in the way of land or buildings; it has not sought to control
the property of the institution, leaving it free to be managed by the
Board of Trustees.
The school was opened on the 4th of July, 1881, in an old church
building in the town of Tuskegee, which lies nearly two miles from the
present school-grounds. Later in the same year the growth of the school
made it necessary to obtain additional room, which was found in a
dilapidated shanty standing near the church and which had been used as
the village schoolhouse since the war. These buildings were in such bad
condition that when it rained it was necessary for the teacher and
students to use umbrellas in order to protect themselves from the
elements while recitations were being conducted.
Students who came from a distance boarded in families in the town, where
the conditions of living were very much like those in their own homes,
and these were far below proper standards. Mr. Washington, understanding
the great need for colored people to be trained in correct ways of
living as well as to be educated in books, determined to secure a
permanent location for the school, with buildings in which the students
might live under the care and influence of teachers day and night,
during the whole period of their connection with the school.
[Illustration: WARREN LOGAN.
Treasurer of the School.]
It so happened at this time that there was an old farm of 100 acres in
the western part of the town of Tuskegee, well suited to be the site of
such a school, which could be had for $500. But where was the money to
be found to pay for it? Mr. Washington himself had no money, and the
people of the town, much interested as they were in the enterprise, were
wholly unable to give direct financial assistance. General J. F. B.
Marshall, then treasurer of the Hampton Institute in Virginia, was
appealed to for a loan of $200 with which to make the first payment.
This he gladly made, and the farm was secured. In a few months
sufficient money was raised from entertainments and subscriptions in the
North and South (one friend in Connecticut giving $300) to return the
loan of General Marshall and pay the balance due on the purchase of the
property.
The land thus secured, preparations were at once begun to put up a
school building, toward the cost of which Mr. A. H. Porter, of Brooklyn,
N. Y., gave $500, the structure being named Porter Hall in recognition
of Mr. Porter's generosity. In this building, which has three stories
and a basement, all the operations of the school were for a time
conducted. In the basement were a kitchen, dining-room, laundry, and
commissary. The first story was devoted to academic and industrial
class-rooms; in the second was an assembly-room, where devotions and
public exercises for the whole school were held, while the third was
given up to dormitories.
From this small beginning has grown the present extensive plant at
Tuskegee, comprising 2,300 acres of land, on which are located 123
buildings of all kinds devoted to the uses of the institution. Some idea
of the impression which the size of the school makes upon one who sees
it for the first time may be gathered from the remark of a Northern
visitor, who, upon returning to his home from a trip through the South,
was asked by a friend if he had seen "Booker Washington's school."
"School?" he replied. "I have seen Booker Washington's city."
About 150 acres constitute the present campus, the rest of the
school-lands being devoted to farms, truck-gardens, pastures,
brick-yards, etc. Running through the grounds proper and extending the
entire distance of the farms for two or three miles is a driveway, on
either side of which, and on roads leading from it, are located the
buildings of the Institute. These, for the most part, are brick
structures, and have been built by the students themselves under the
direction of their instructors in the various building trades. The plans
for these buildings have been drawn in the architectural-drawing
division of the Institute. While not as ornate as the buildings of some
other institutions, they are substantial and well adapted to the uses
for which they are intended. The newer buildings, constructed in the
last ten years, are more artistic and imposing, showing great
improvement in matters of architectural design and finish. Not only have
the students performed the building operations that entered into the
construction of these buildings, but they have also manufactured the
brick, and have prepared much of the wooden and other materials that
were used. We sometimes speak of a man as self-made, but I have never
known another great educational institution that could be so described.
Tuskegee, itself, is distinctively self-made.
Porter Hall was completed and occupied in the spring of 1883. The
following year a brick building for girls was undertaken, and two years
later completed. This building, named Alabama Hall, is rectangular in
shape and four stories high. It contains a kitchen and dining-room,
reception-rooms, apartments of the Dean of the Woman's Department, and
sleeping-rooms. There was no special gift made for this building, the
money required for its erection being taken from the general funds of
the Institute as they could be spared. A wing added later gave more
space for dining-rooms and provided a number of sleeping-rooms.
The money used in putting up the buildings at Tuskegee is made to do
double duty. In the first place, it provides the buildings for which it
was primarily given, and, in the second place, furnishes opportunities
for young men to learn the trades which are employed in their
construction. Following closely upon the completion of Alabama Hall,
there was begun another brick structure to be used as a dormitory for
young men. Olivia Davidson Hall bears the honored name of the school's
first and only Assistant Principal. Miss Davidson performed a
conspicuous part in establishing the school and placing its claim for
support before the public. This building is a four-story structure, and
the first of the school's buildings for which the plans were made by the
teacher of architectural drawing. The plans for all the buildings put up
by the Institute are now made in the division of architectural drawing
in charge of Mr. R. R. Taylor, a graduate of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, who is ably assisted by Mr. W. S. Pittman, a
graduate of Tuskegee and of the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia.
The need for a building to house the mechanical industries which, until
1892, had been conducted in temporary frame buildings on different parts
of the grounds, led to the erection of Cassedy Hall, a three-story brick
building standing at the east entrance to the grounds. Cassedy Hall,
together with a smaller building devoted to a blacksmith shop and
foundry, was used for the purpose mentioned, until three years ago, when
all the industries for men were moved into the Slater-Armstrong Memorial
Trades Building, at the opposite end of the grounds. Through the
generosity of Mr. George F. Peabody, of New York, Cassedy Hall has since
been converted into a dormitory for young men, and serves admirably for
this purpose.
Phelps Hall, which is the Bible Training School Building, is the gift of
two New York ladies who desired to do something to improve the Negro
ministry. The building is of wood and has three stories, containing a
lecture-hall, recitation-rooms, library, and sleeping-rooms for young
men. A broad veranda extends entirely around the building. Last year
there were enrolled fifty-six students for the course in Bible Training,
and among them were a number of ordained ministers who have regular
charges. Phelps Hall was dedicated in 1892, Dr. Lyman Abbott preaching
the dedicatory sermon and General Samuel C. Armstrong delivering an
address, which was among his last public utterances.
In the next year Science Hall (now called Thrasher Hall, after the
lamented Max Bennett Thrasher) was built. This is a handsome three-story
building, with recitation-rooms and laboratories in the first two
stories, and sleeping-rooms for teachers and boys in the third story.
About this time a frame cottage with two stories and attic was built by
the school as a residence for Mr. Washington. This he occupied until the
gift of two Brooklyn friends enabled him to erect on his own lot, just
opposite the school-grounds, his present handsome brick residence, where
he dispenses a generous hospitality to the school's guests and to the
teachers of the Institute. The cottage which he vacated was afterward
utilized for a time as a library, but now is the home of Director Bruce
of the Academic Department.
Alabama Hall, already mentioned, soon proved inadequate to meet the
needs of the Woman's Department. A long one-story frame building, having
the shape of a letter T, was then erected just in the rear of Alabama
Hall. It has been used for girls' sleeping-rooms until this year, when
it was taken down to make room for a park and playground for young
women. There were also successively built for the growing demands of
this department, and in the vicinity of the original girls' building,
Willow Cottage, Hamilton Cottage, Parker Memorial Home, Huntington Hall,
and only this last year Douglass Hall. Huntington Hall is the gift of
Mrs. Collis P. Huntington. In design, finish, and appointments it is one
of the best buildings owned by the school.
Three years ago a wealthy but unostentatious gentleman, who would not
permit his name to be used in connection with his benefaction, gave the
school $25,000 for a building for girls, suggesting that the structure
should bear the name of some noted Negro. Douglass Hall was erected with
this money and named in honor of that great leader of the race,
Frederick Douglass. It is a two-story brick building, with a basement in
its central section, and contains 40 sleeping-rooms, a reception-room,
bathrooms, and a large assembly-room with a seating capacity or 450. In
this room the Dean of the Woman's Department holds meetings with the
girls on questions of health, morals, and manners. The building is
heated with steam and lighted by electricity. All in all, Douglass Hall
is the best of the buildings so far built by the Institute, and is a
fitting monument to the man whose name it bears.
The Slater-Armstrong Memorial Agricultural Building was completed and
dedicated in 1897. Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture of the
United States, honored the school by his presence and an address on the
occasion of the formal opening of this building. It is a brick structure
of two-and-a-half stories, with recitation-rooms, laboratory, museums,
library, and an office for the use of the Department of Agriculture. In
addition to its appropriation of $3,000 for the general work of the
school, the State of Alabama makes an annual appropriation of $1,500 for
the maintenance of an Agricultural Experiment Station. The plots of the
Station and the school-farm are in close proximity to the Agricultural
Building, and on these the young men taking the course in Agriculture
put in practise the theories which they learn in the class-room. Many
important experiments have been undertaken by the Station, of
particular interest being those relating to soil building, the
hybridization of sea-island cotton with some of the common short-staple
varieties, fertilizer tests with potatoes, by which it has been shown
that it is possible to raise as much as 266 bushels per acre on light,
sandy soil such as that comprising the school-lands, while the average
yield in the same part of Alabama is not more than 40 bushels to the
acre.
The next building of importance to be put up after the Agricultural
Building was the Chapel. Another gift from the two New York ladies who
gave the money for Phelps Hall made possible this magnificent structure,
admittedly one of the most imposing church edifices in the South. It is
built of brick, 1,200,000 bricks entering into its construction, all of
which were laid by student masons. It has stone trimmings, and in shape
is a cross, the nave with choir having a length of 154 feet, and the
distance through the transept being 106 feet. There are anterooms and a
study for the Chaplain of the Institute. Including the gallery the
seating capacity is 2,400. Here all gatherings of the school for
religious and other purposes are now held. The great Tuskegee Negro
Conference that assembles in February of each year holds its meetings
in the Chapel. Near the Chapel are the Barracks, two long, roughly
constructed one-story frame buildings, which are used as sleeping
quarters for young men until they can be better housed in permanent
buildings.
Until 1900 the mechanical industries at Tuskegee were conducted in
Cassedy Hall and some adjoining frame buildings. In that year they were
moved into the commodious quarters which the then just completed
Slater-Armstrong Memorial Trades Building furnished. This building is
rectangular in shape, is built about a central court, and covers more
space than any other of the school buildings. In its outside dimensions
it is 283 feet by 315 feet. The front half of the building is two
stories high, the rear half one story. It is constructed of brick, with
a tin roof, and, like the other larger buildings at the Institute, has
steam heat and electric light. The money for this building came in part
from the J. W. and Belinda L. Randall Charities Fund of Boston and the
steadfast friend of the school, Mr. George Foster Peabody, of New York.
There is a tablet in the building bearing the following inscription:
"This tablet is erected in memory of the generosity of J. W. and
Belinda L. Randall, of Boston, Massachusetts, from whose estate $20,000
were received toward the erection of the building."
The various shops in this building are fairly well equipped with tools
and apparatus to do the work required of them and to teach the trades
pursued by the young men. Taking the Machine Division as an example, we
find it supplied with one 18-inch lathe, one 14-inch lathe, one 20-inch
planer, one 12-inch shaping-machine, one 20-inch drill-press, one
6-1/2-inch pipe-cutting and threading machine, one Brown and Sharpe
tool-grinder, one sensitive drill-press, and, of course, the customary
tools that go with these machines. The Electric-Lighting Plant is also
located in this building. Not only does this Division light the
buildings and grounds of the Institute, but it furnishes light to
individuals in the town of Tuskegee, which is, at present, without other
electric-lighting facilities.
In 1895 the school suffered the loss by fire of its well-appointed barn,
together with some of its finest milch cows. This is the only serious
fire that has occurred in the history of the school--a record almost
unparalleled in an establishment so large. This fact has led to the
school being able to get insurance at a lower rate than is generally
given to educational institutions. It was not until 1900 that the school
fully recovered from the loss of its barn. In this year friends in
Brooklyn gave the money with which to rebuild the barn on a larger
scale. It was deemed wise not to put all the money into one building,
but to erect numbers of smaller ones and locate them so as to minimize
the fire risk. Accordingly, plans were made to build a hennery,
creamery, dairy-barn, horse-barn, carriage-house, tool-house, piggery,
silos, and slaughter-house. All these buildings were at once put up, and
are now giving effective service. At present the school owns 47 horses
and colts, 76 mules, 495 cows and calves, 601 pigs, and 977 fowls of
different kinds. These animals are all of good stock, some of them being
thoroughbreds, and are cared for by the students who work in the
Agricultural Department.
Dorothy Hall, the building which accommodates the Girls' Industrial
Department, was built in 1901 on the side of the driveway opposite the
Boys' Trades Building. This building is the gift of the two New York
ladies who gave the Chapel and Phelps Hall. It serves its purpose
admirably, the rooms being large, well lighted, and airy. Here are
conducted all the trades taught to young women, including sewing,
dressmaking, millinery, laundering, cooking, housekeeping,
mattress-making, upholstering, broom-making, and basketry. As with the
boys' trades, there is a very fair equipment of accessories for proper
teaching.
In point of time, the next important building provided was the Carnegie
Library, Mr. Carnegie giving $20,000 for the building and furnishings.
The structure is two stories high, with massive Corinthian columns on
the front. It contains, besides the library proper, a large
assembly-room, an historical room, study-rooms, and offices for the
Librarian. The building and the furniture are the product of student
labor.
In 1901, with $2,000 given by Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, and $100
contributed by graduates of the Institute as a nucleus, the Children's
House was built. This is a one-story frame building of good proportions,
in which the primary school of the town is taught. It is the
practise-school for students of the Institute who mean to teach. A
kindergarten has also been established.
Mr. Rockefeller has given a dormitory for boys, which was completed and
occupied last year. The lack of adequate sleeping quarters for young
men, from which the school has suffered from the beginning, was very
materially supplied in Rockefeller Hall, which is a three-story brick
structure, furnishing accommodations for 150 students. This need for
dormitories has been still further met through the gift of three brick
cottages by Miss Julia Emery, an American now living in London. Two of
these buildings were finished last year, and young men are now living in
them. The third is nearing completion. All are two stories high, with a
hall running through the middle, and contain 40 rooms of good size.
Until last year the offices of the Institute were scattered over the
grounds wherever room could be found. A New York friend, who does not
permit the use of his name, seeing the need of the school for a building
in which the offices might be concentrated, thus greatly increasing the
efficiency of its administrative work, gave $19,000 for this purpose.
The Office Building, completed in the latter part of 1903, is the result
of this benefaction. It is two-and-a-half stories high, and contains the
offices of the Principal, the Principal's Secretary, Treasurer, Auditor,
Business Agent, Commandant, Registrar, and the Post-Office and Savings
Department.
[Illustration: THE OFFICE BUILDING IN PROCESS OF ERECTION.
Student carpenters shown at work.]
The most pretentious building owned by the Institute is the Collis P.
Huntington Memorial Building, the new home of the Academic Department,
which is the gift of Mrs. Huntington as a memorial to her husband, who
was one of Tuskegee's stanchest supporters. It is built near the site of
the original building, Porter Hall, which it displaces as the center of
the academic work of the school. The outside dimensions are 183 feet by
103 feet. It is four stories in height. Besides recitation-rooms for all
the classes, it contains a gymnasium in the basement for young women,
and an assembly-room on the top floor capable of seating 800 persons.
The finishing is in yellow pine. The buildings of the Institute show a
steady progression in quality of workmanship, materials, and
architectural design and efficiency, from the rather rough, wooden
Porter Hall erected by hired workmen in 1882 to the stately Huntington
Hall built by students in 1904.
Located at different points on the grounds and on lots detached are
cottages occupied as residences by teachers and officers of the
Institute.
The furnishings for all the buildings, as well as the buildings
themselves, have been made by the students in the various shops, who at
the same time were learning trades and creating articles of use.
The annual cost of conducting the institution is, in round numbers,
$150,000. This may seem high, but when certain facts in regard to the
work are borne in mind it will not appear exorbitant. In the first
place, there are really three schools at Tuskegee--a day-school, a
night-school, and a trade-school. Such a system makes necessary the
employment of a larger number of teachers than would be needed in a
purely academic institution holding only one session a day. Teachers in
the trade-school, with special technical training, can be obtained only
by paying them higher salaries than are paid to those who simply teach
in the class-rooms.
Secondly, and principally, it is expensive to employ student labor to do
the work of the school. By the time students become fairly proficient in
their trades and reach the point where their services begin to be
profitable, their time at the institution has expired, and a new,
untrained set take their places, so that the school is constantly
working on new material or raw recruits. Then, too, Tuskegee is still in
the formative period of its growth as to buildings, laying-out and
improvement of grounds, and equipment of its various departments. When
the school's needs in these directions shall have been met, and the
Negro parent shall become able to pay a larger share of the cost of
educating his children, the expenses to the public of running the school
may be materially reduced.
Money for the support of the school is derived principally from the
following sources, viz.: The State of Alabama, $4,500; the John F.
Slater Fund, $10,000; the General Education Board, $10,000; the Peabody
Fund, $1,500; the Institute's Endowment Fund, $40,000; contributions of
persons and charitable organizations, $84,000; a total of $150,000. The
individual contributions are, for the most part, small, and come from
persons of moderate means. Yet the institution annually receives some
large gifts toward its expenses from those who are blessed with wealth.
Especial appeals are made by the institution for scholarships of $50
each, in order to pay the tuition of students who provide for their
other expenses themselves largely by their work for the school, but who
are unable to contribute anything toward the item of teaching. These
scholarships are not turned over to the students, but are held by the
institution and assigned for their benefit, the aim being to do nothing
for students which they can do for themselves, and thus help to develop
in them a spirit of manly and womanly self-reliance.
The majority of the large donations, aside from those for endowment,
have been for buildings and the purchase of additional farm-lands made
necessary by the enlargement of the school's agricultural work.
What may be regarded as the greatest need of the institution is an
adequate endowment which will put it upon a permanent basis and make its
future certain.
A gratifying beginning in the building up of an endowment has already
been made. It is a fact, still well remembered by the public, that Mr.
Andrew Carnegie has given to the endowment fund the princely sum of
$600,000. Before that time $400,000 had been collected from other
sources for the same purpose, the largest single contribution toward
this amount being $50,000 from the late Collis P. Huntington.
As already stated, the income from the present endowment is $40,000, out
of which several annuities are paid. This is only a little more than
one-fourth of the amount that must be had each year to pay the expenses
of the school. It will require an endowment of at least $3,000,000 to
yield an income adequate to the present needs of the institution alone.
III
THE ACADEMIC AIMS
BY ROSCOE CONKLING BRUCE
The Negro needs industrial training in eminent degree, because the
capacity for continuous labor is a requisite of civilized living;
because, indeed, the very first step in social advance must be economic;
because the industrial monopoly with which slavery encompassed black men
has fallen shattered before the trumpet-blast of white labor and eager
competition; and, finally, because no instrument of moral education is
more effective upon the mass of mankind than cheerful and intelligent
work. These ideas powerfully voiced, together with an unusually
magnanimous attitude toward the white South, have set the man who toiled
doggedly up from slavery, upon a hill apart. These things are
distinctive of this man; they suggest his temper, his spirit, his point
of view; but they do not exhaust his interests. Similarly, the
distinctive feature of Tuskegee--adequate provision for industrial
training--sets it upon a hill apart, but by a whimsical perversity
this major feature is in some quarters assumed to be the whole school. A
moment's reflection shows such a view to be mistaken.
[Illustration: ROSCOE C. BRUCE.
Director of the Academic Department.]
The very industries at Tuskegee presuppose a considerable range of
academic study. Tuskegee does not graduate hoe-hands or plowboys.
Agriculture is, of course, fundamental--fundamental in recognition of
the fact that the Negro population is mainly a farming population, and
of the truth that something must be done to stem the swelling tide which
each year sweeps thousands of black men and women and children from the
sunlit monotony of the plantation to the sunless iniquity of the slums,
from a drudgery that is not quite cheerless to a competition that is
altogether merciless. But the teaching of agriculture, even in its
elementary stages, presupposes a considerable amount of academic
preparation. To be sure, a flourishing garden may be made and managed by
bright-eyed tots just out of the kindergarten, but how can commercial
fertilizers be carefully analyzed by a boy who has made no study of
general chemistry? and how can a balanced ration be adjusted by an
illiterate person? Similarly, the girl in the laundry does not make soap
by rote, but by principle; and the girl in the dressmaking-shop does
not cut out her pattern by luck, or guess, or instinct, or rule of
thumb, but by geometry. And so the successful teaching of the industries
demands no mean amount of academic preparation. In this lies the
technical utility of Tuskegee's Academic Department.
Then, too, a public service has been rendered by Hampton and Tuskegee in
showing that industrial training--the system in which the student learns
by doing and is paid for the commodities he produces--may be so managed
as to educate. Among the excellencies of industrial training, I would
state that the severe commercial test in which sentiment plays no part
is applied as consistently to the student's labor as is the force of
gravitation to a falling body. Here we must keep in mind the unavoidably
concrete nature of the product, whether satisfactory or not; the
discipline such training affords in organized endeavor; the stimulus it
offers to all the virtues of a drudgery which, though it repel an
unusually ardent and sensitive temperament, yet wears a precious jewel
in its head; and an exceptionally keen sense of responsibility, since on
occasion large amounts of money and the esteem of the school at large
and the lives of a student's fellows depend upon his circumspection and
skill. Such training educates.
But that would indeed be a sorry program of education which blinked the
fact that the student must be rendered responsive to the nobler ideals
of the human race, that his eyes must be opened to the immanent values
of life. If a clear title to forty acres and a mule represents the
extreme upper limit of a black man's ambition, why call him a man? If a
bank-account represents the sum of his happiness, that happiness lacks
humanity. If you would educate for life, you must arouse spiritual
interests. "The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment."
Through history and literature the Tuskegee student is brought to
develop a criticism, an appreciation of life and the worthier ends of
human striving. To such a discipline, however elementary, the critic
will not, I take it, begrudge the name "education."
And if the reader wavers in contemplating the problems of trudging
Negroes, remember that the type of Negro who is a menace to the
community is he who, in moments of leisure, responds to somewhat grosser
incentives than the poetry of Longfellow, the romance of Hawthorne, and
the philosophy of Emerson. I would reassure your idealism with this
counsel of prudence.
Another question presses: Does the value of Tuskegee lie in the fact
that the school equips for happy lives merely as many persons as are
subjected to the immediate play of its influences; that its circle of
efficiency includes only as many as are enrolled in its various courses?
To that question every teacher in the school and the mass of graduates
and students would give an emphatic, a decisive, No! The real value of
the school lies in the service rendered to the people of the communities
where our young folks go to live and labor. Now, work in wood and iron,
however assiduously prosecuted, never erected in any human being's heart
a passion for social service; a finer material must be used, a material
finer than gold. And so the plan and deeper intent of Tuskegee Institute
are incapable of realization without the incentives supplied by history
and literature.
Finally, there is a trade for which the academic studies, supplemented
by specific normal instruction, are the direct preparation--teaching
school. In the census year there were over 21,000 Negro school-teachers
in the United States, and in the decade 1890-1900 the ratio of increase
was more than twice as rapid as that of the Negro population; but,
nevertheless, there were in 1900 more than twice as many teachers in the
South per 10,000 white children as per 10,000 colored. But such data can
not even approximately indicate the relative amounts of teaching enjoyed
by these two classes of children, for the statistical method can not
express the incalculable disparity in teaching-efficiency.
A friend of mine--a graduate of Brown University--was for several years
a member of a board which corrected the examination-papers of Negro
candidates for teachers' certificates in a certain Southern State where
the school facilities for the Negro population are exceptionally good;
but he confessed to me that repeatedly not a paper submitted deserved a
passing mark, but the board was "simply compelled to grant certificates
in order to provide teachers enough to go around." Nor is such a dearth
of black pedagogues in the least extraordinary. The mission of Tuskegee
Institute is largely to supply measurably well-equipped teachers for the
schools--teachers able and eager to teach gardening and carpentry as
well as grammar and arithmetic, teachers who seek to organize the social
life of their communities upon wholesome principles, tactfully
restraining grossness and unobtrusively proffering new and nobler
sources of enjoyment. And so the academic studies are wrought into the
essential scheme of Tuskegee's work.
Let us inspect with some closeness the organization of the institution.
The student-body is fundamentally divided into day-students and
night-students. The night-students work in the industries, largely at
common labor, all day and every day, and go to school at night, thus
paying their current board bills, and accumulating such credits at the
Treasurer's office as will later defray their expenses in the
day-school. The day-school students are divided perpendicularly through
the classes into two sections, section No. 1 working in the industries
every other day for three days a week and attending academic classes the
remaining three days, while this situation is exactly reversed for
section No. 2. Thus every week-day half of each day-school class is in
the Academic Department, while the other half is in the Industrial. This
arrangement induces a wholesome rivalry between the students of the two
sections, and effects an equal distribution of the working force and
skill over every week-day.
The day-school students consist, then, of two classes of persons: those
who, as night-students, have accumulated credits sufficient to pay their
way in the day-school, and those whose families are able to pay a
considerable part of their expenses. The earnings of a student in the
day-school can not be large enough to pay his current board bill, but
such a student is ordinarily enjoying the valuable advantage of working
at one of the more skilled trades.
The night-school student, perhaps, because of greater maturity in years
and experience, may be relied upon to apply himself with the utmost
diligence to his academic studies; so, in much less than half the
time-allotment, he advances in his academic studies about half as fast
as the day-school student. This schedule did not spring full-fledged
from the seething brain of any theorist; it is no fatuous imitation of
the educational practise of some remote and presumptively dissimilar
institution; it has, so to say, elaborated itself in adjustment to the
actual needs of the particular situation. This provision boasts not of
novelty, but of utility; though not ideal, it is practicable. But the
central fact is that this Tuskegee Plan, while clearly securing ample
time for the teaching of the industries, makes possible no mean amount
of academic study.
In order more clearly to exhibit the grounds of this proposition, I
shall refer in some slight detail to the course of study in English and
in Mathematics.
Mathematics represents the group of academic studies which possess
direct technical value for the industries; moreover, it is a pretty good
index of the grades comprehended in the Academic Department. In the
lowest class in the day-school--there is one lower in the
night-school--the arithmetical tables are mastered, and fractions
introduced and developed with the use of liquid, dry, surface, and time
measures; whereas in the Senior class algebra is studied through
quadratics and plane geometry through the "area of polygons." That is to
say, the lowest day-school class is about equivalent to a fourth grade
in the North, and the Senior to the first or the second year (barring
the foreign languages) in a Northern high school.
[Illustration: A PORTION OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS.]
Despite a much smaller time-allotment, our students, roughly speaking,
keep pace with Northern students because they are older and somewhat
more serious, because the course is shortened by the elimination of
uselessly perplexing topics in arithmetic like compound proportion and
cube root, but chiefly because the utility of mathematics is made vivid,
and vigorous interest aroused by its immediate application in class-room
and shop to problems arising in the industries. Our students are not
stuffed like sausages with rules and definitions, mathematical or other;
they ascend to general principles through the analysis of concrete
cases.
English serves to represent the group of studies that exert a
liberalizing influence upon the student, that possess a cultural rather
than a technical value. From oral lessons in language in the lower
classes, the students advance to a modicum of technical grammar in the
middle of the course, and hence to the rhetoric of the Senior year.
Moreover, an unusually large amount of written composition is insisted
upon, the compositions being used not merely to discipline the student
in chaste feeling, consecutive thinking, and efficient expression, but
also to sharpen his powers of observation and to stimulate him to pick
out of his daily experience the elements that are significant. School
readers are used in the lower classes because the readers present
economically and compactly a whole gamut of literary styles and forms.
These readers are importantly supplemented and gradually superseded by
certain classics appropriate to the grades. The classic, whether
Robinson Crusoe, or Ivanhoe, Rip Van Winkle, the House of Seven Gables,
or The Merchant of Venice, presents an artistic whole, and permits the
students to acquire some sense of literary structure. The dominant
motive in literary instruction is, perhaps, esthetic, but I am convinced
that the ethical influence of this instruction at Tuskegee is profound
and abiding.
However liberal the provisions of the academic curriculum, the value of
the department is finally determined by the devotion and ability of the
teachers. Universities and normal schools, and the seasoned staffs of
public-school systems--from these sources, whether in Massachusetts,
California, or Tennessee, Principal Washington has gathered a force of
academic teachers of rare ability and devotion. Eminent for personality
rather than for method, these teachers are no tyros in method. In such
hands the excellent features of the curriculum are raised to the N-th
power.
Finally, academic and industrial teachers are animated with a sentiment
of solidarity, with an esprit de corps, which solves many a problem of
conflicting duty and jurisdiction, and which must impress the student
with the essential unity of Tuskegee's endeavor to equip men and women
for life. The crude, stumbling, sightless plantation-boy who lives in
the environment of Tuskegee for three or four years, departs with an
address, an alertness, a resourcefulness, and above all a spirit of
service, that announce the educated man.
[Illustration: ANOTHER PORTION OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS.]
IV
WHAT GIRLS ARE TAUGHT, AND HOW
BY MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
"We wants our baby gal, Mary Lou, to come up to Tuskegee to git
eddicated and learn seamstress; kase we doesn't want her to work lak we
is," says the farmer. "I wish to help you plant this new industry,
broom-making," writes Miss Susan B. Anthony, "because you are trying so
earnestly to teach your girls other means of livelihood besides sewing,
housework, and cooking." This is the problem we have been trying to
solve at Tuskegee for over twenty years: What handiwork can we give our
girls with their academic training that will better fit them to meet the
demand for skilled teachers in the various avenues of the industrial and
academic world now opening so rapidly to women?
[Illustration: MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
Director of Industries for Girls.]
Learning to sew, with the ultimate end of becoming a full-fledged
dressmaker, has been the height of ambition with the major part of our
girls when brought to the institution by their horny-handed fathers and
mothers fresh from the soil of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, or Florida.
After the last gripless hand-shake, with the tremulous, "Take care of
yourself, honey," the hard-working father and mother have turned their
faces homeward, visibly affected by the separation, but resolved to
shoulder the sacrifice of the daughter's much-needed help on the
plantation, which oftentimes is all that they are able to contribute
toward her education.
Not infrequently the girl has begun in the lowest class in night-school.
Her parents send her articles of clothing now and then on Christmas; but
the largest contributions to her wardrobe come from the boxes and
barrels sent to the institution by Northern friends. She has remained in
school during the summer vacation, and within two years has entered
day-school with enough to her credit to finish her education. When the
happy parents return to see their daughter graduated, after six or seven
long years, their faces are radiant because of their realized hopes.
When they see their white-robed daughter transformed from the girl they
brought here clad in the homespun of the old days, and receiving her
certificate, the tears come unchecked, and the moving lips no doubt form
a whispered prayer.
In a recent class there was graduated a young woman of twenty-five. She
came to the school in her eighteenth year from the "piney woods" of
Alabama. She entered the lowest preparatory class in night-school and
was assigned to work in the laundry. She was earnest and faithful in
work and study. She passed on from class to class, remaining at school
to work during the vacation. After two years in the laundry she was
given an opportunity to learn plain sewing in that division. She was
promoted to the Dressmaking Division at the end of the year, and
received her certificate at the close of two years, after working every
day and attending night-school. She spent the last two years of her
school life in the Millinery Division, and received her certificate from
that division with one from the Academic Department on her graduation.
During these two years she taught the sewing-classes in the night-school
of the town of Tuskegee. At the outset she bought the materials used
with $1, left over from the sales of the previous year. From this small
nest-egg as a starter, seventeen girls were supplied with work. But so
efficient and frugal was the young teacher that she sold articles,
bought supplies for her class, and ended the year with $3.45 in the
treasury.
This is just a leaf from the history of one girl. Of the 520 girls
entering the institution during this year (1903-'04), 458 have remained
for the full scholastic year. About 50 per cent came from country
districts all over the United States. A large majority of them asked to
enter the Dressmaking Division to learn that trade; but, after the field
of industries was opened to their view, they were scattered about in the
different divisions, a very large per cent still leaning to the side of
dressmaking and millinery.
Taking into account the number of girls working their way through at
their trades by day and attending night-school, they were distributed as
follows: Horticulture, 4; training-kitchen, 13; housekeeping, 38;
dining-room, 29; hospital, 20; kitchen-gardening, 8; poultry-raising, 7;
tailoring, 14; dairying, 10; printing, 6; broom-making, 26;
mattress-making, 18; upholstering, 18; laundering, 54; plain sewing, 72;
millinery, 51; dressmaking, 69. All the girls were required to take
cooking twice a week and 209 of the girls in the normal classes took
basketry.
As the trades were the great attraction in the school curriculum, it was
deemed necessary to separate the school into two divisions, that
students might have an opportunity to receive instruction equally in the
Academic and Industrial Departments. This year this scheme worked
successfully by an arrangement that placed one division in the Academic
Department on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while the other was at
work, and the other division in the Trades Department on Thursdays,
Fridays, and Saturdays, while the other was in school, and so on
regularly.
Girl life at Tuskegee is strenuous. Though study and work are constantly
to the fore, character is effectively developed with brain and muscle,
and the well-earned recreation-hour comes just frequently enough to lend
the highest source of pleasure. Though the girl usually comes with a
hazy conception of what the days in school will really mean for the
ripening of those powers that she earnestly intends to use for the best
development of herself, there is always a spirit of learning, that she
may be of service to others. That is what counts in the school-days of
the average girl in her struggle for more light.
The girl, coming a stranger from her home in the city or country, is
lost in a crowd of girls new to dormitory life. New surroundings and new
conditions are everywhere. New emotions, new purposes, new resolutions
chase one another in her thoughts, and she becomes a stranger to herself
only to find her bearings first in her own room. Here Maine and
California, far-away Washington and Central America, meet on common
ground. Alabama and Georgia alone feel kinship from geographical
propinquity.
Beds, one double and one single, chairs, a table, mirror, bookcase,
wardrobe, wash-stand, and screen, all manufactured on the grounds,
compose the simple furniture of the room. But a few pictures, a strip of
carpet before each bed, a bright table-covering, soon give the room the
appearance of home, and the untried life has begun. The duty-list
assigns to each girl her work, and perhaps the first lessons in order
and system will be fairly instituted.
How many and varied are the associations that cluster about the life of
the girl in her room, that refuge from a day of discouragement in
schoolroom or workshop, and a haven of peace during the quiet hours of
the Sabbath! Roommate meets roommate, quick to resent and as quick to
forgive--and the petty strife and envy suppressed at birth only serve
to discipline them for the coming days.
Up with the rising bell at five, the duties of the room are almost
finished when the girl leaves her beds to air while she takes her six
o'clock breakfast. Social amenities, the niceties of table-training, and
the tricks of speech that betray the sectional birthright, proclaim to
the ever-observant table-mates the status of each newcomer, and she
rises or falls in estimation just so far as her metal rings true. Thus
another element enters into her life, one that will prove a potent force
in balancing character; for the frankly expressed criticisms of
schoolmates play no small part in the development of students.
If a girl be one of the forty-five waitresses on the eighty-nine tables
of the dining-room, she eats her breakfast as the other students march
out, then finishes her room-duties and is ready for work at ten minutes
of seven wherever she happens to be assigned. If she is a dishwasher,
she does that work, waits for inspection of the table that she has set,
finishes her room-duty, and is admitted into her work division at half
past seven.
Gardening and greenhouse work are becoming so attractive through the
Nature-Study classes of the Academic Department that there are constant
applications for transfers from the sewing divisions to this outside
work. Equipped in an overall gingham apron and sunbonnet of the same
material, the girl begins her duties, and no prouder girl can be found
than she who takes her first basket of early spring vegetables to the
Teachers' Home.
If the day is to be spent with the whole agricultural force of girls
picking strawberries for the tables of the Boarding Department and the
local market, the stage takes the group out to the patch two miles back
on the farm--and that is happiness unalloyed for the schoolgirl. When
she correlates her outing with her school work on the day following,
there is seen nature at first-hand in the class-room.
If other classmates have been working in the Plain-Sewing Division
turning out cotton underwear and plain articles of clothing to supply
the demand of the Salesroom of the institution, the lesson in English
has a natural, practical bearing, arising from the fact that one hour
has been spent with the theory class of the workroom studying the warp
and woof of the materials used, perhaps the sixth or seventh lesson in a
series on cotton, introduced to the class first in its native heath.
Correlation comes in wherever it may, and the association of ideas
obtained in class-room and workroom is closely joined.
The large class of the Dressmaking Division, spending the day from seven
until half past five making the blue uniform dresses, filling orders for
tailor-made dresses in silk and cloth, measuring, drafting, cutting, and
fitting, has many a representative in the schoolroom the succeeding day;
and still more is the lesson varied by the practical illustrations in
Mathematics or the recital of the experiences of the day in the English
classes.
The girl in the millinery work, shaping forms, trimming hats, blending
colors, drawing designs, studying textiles and fabrics for analysis in
her theory classes twice during her three days of work, finds added
inspiration for her three days of class-room study. If she is in the
Senior class, she specializes in geometry on her school-days and
mechanical drawing on her work-days. When our girl has finished her
course in drawing and begins one of the uniform hats worn by the
hundreds of girls, she ranks among the first milliners of the land in
the estimation of the beginners. She completes hat after hat, drapes
them until the number meets the requirement, and then comes her own
creation, a pattern hat, undersized of course, but a real dress hat and
a thing of beauty. It usually finds its way to the old home for her
mother and neighbors to admire. The commendation that comes back to the
school is worth its weight in gold.
[Illustration: A CLASS IN MILLINERY.]
But there are backward learners. Some there are who excel in embroidery,
crocheting, making ties and other fancy articles, but who have no
aptitude for shaping and trimming hats. They plod on, and win at last.
Then there is the girl whose parents wish her to open a millinery
establishment in their town. She tries, but finally agrees with her
long-suffering instructor that she would succeed at mattress-making and
upholstering instead.
The work in the Mattress Division begins with sheet, pillow-case,
table-linen, and comforter-making for the endless demands of the lodging
division of the boys and girls. Pulling shucks for the mattress is the
next step in advance, and when shucks are covered by the cotton layers
in the making, they prove an excellent substitute for the hair filling
of a more expensive manufacture, and they have an advantage in the
matter of cleanliness. Covering screen frames made in the Carpentry
Division for the numerous rooms, caning couches, rockers, and stools,
help add to the variety of work in the division. The girl is not
awarded her certificate until she has completed the round of work,
including the fashioning of a bedroom suite from barrels finally covered
with neat-figured denim. The semiweekly theory classes are not unlike
those of the plain-sewing division, and the girl is as proud of her
achievement with needle, hammer, and saw as if she were an adept in
lighter work.
When the machinery was introduced for Broom-making, the girls looked
askance at the appliances. But when the broom-corn was delivered from
the farm, and the pioneer girl broom-maker began threshing of the seed
in the cleaner, an interest was evinced that has increased with the
knowledge that the work, study, or manufacture (call it what you will)
is very productive, especially in the confines of the girls'
broom-factory at Tuskegee Institute. The poultry-yard bought the seeds
threshed off the broom-stalks; the hundreds of old handles collected
cost nothing, and when the wiring, stitching, and clipping were finished
and the girl saw the first broom turned out, there was triumph in the
fact that the industry was the most inexpensive and still the most
productive of credit of all the girls' industries under the roof of
Dorothy Hall. The evolution from the flag-straw broom used in cabins of
the South to the ones now completed and labeled, creates the sensation
of the girl-world in the trades school. The wonders brought out in the
theory class in connection with broom-making were marvelous.
Broom-making has come to remain with our other girls' industries.
Work in the Laundry presents another aspect to the onlooker, and he
doubtless decides on the spur of the moment that all is drudgery here.
Girls are then assorting countless pieces received on Mondays from
students and teachers. They are placing the assorted articles in cages
in the basement. Two boys are filling three washers with bed-linen, and
in another apartment two girls are weighing and measuring materials to
make more soap to add to the boxes standing in the soap-room. Girls
up-stairs in the wash-room are busy rubbing at the tubs. Some girls are
starching, and others are sending baskets down on the elevator for girls
below to hang in the drying-room. Others are in the assorting-room
putting away clothes-bags into numerous boxes. The ironing-room farther
on is filled with busy workers. Days come during every week when time is
spent in the study of laundry chemistry. Rust and mildew stains and
scorching are some of the problems of the Laundry, and they find
solution. Soap, starch, water, and bluing have their composite qualities
and are analyzed, and no more interesting correlation is there than that
of the laundry with the class-room.
Although each Tuskegee girl is expected to become proficient in one
trade at least, all are required to attend the cooking classes. Girls
belonging to certain classes are scattered in the various divisions,
each busily engaged at her chosen trade. At the ringing of the bells in
each division at stated hours, classes form and pass to the
training-kitchen for their lesson in cooking. Both night-school and
day-school girls report every day until every girl has received her
lesson weekly. The normal classes have theory and practise one hour
each, the preparatory girls one hour weekly for their trades.
This is true also of girls in the normal classes. They spend one hour in
basketry study, making in all three hours away from their individual
trades each week. Theory is combined with practise, and many a fanciful
thought is woven in with the reed and raffia of the Indian baskets,
African purses, belts, and pine-needle work-baskets. The shuck hats and
foot-mats are so foreign in design that one often wonders how it were
possible to utilize the same material in so widely different purposes.
But our girl is progressive, and not a few instances have occurred when
one has been informed of the presence of a Tuskegee student in a remote
country district, by the inevitable shuck hat prettily designed and worn
by an utter stranger. So remunerative has been the work that many have
earned money enough from the sales of these hats to purchase books for
the school year and pay their entrance fees.
Few girls work at typesetting. Those learning the trade are in the Boys'
Trades Building. The same is true of the girl tailors, who are as
capable workers in the trade as the boys. The majority of these girls
are in night-school, and of late years have not earned much for their
work. In former years the greater body of the students were working
their way through school, and by their labor would earn enough to
complete their education in the Academic Department and the Industrial
as well. Last year the pay schedule was reduced, and many appeals for
assistance came from those battling their way through. A young girl
whose monthly statement warned her that she owed the school $15, at the
end of the school year wrote the following:
"DEAR MRS. WASHINGTON: I write to inform you of the enormous sum
that I owe on my board bill. I am not satisfied, because I want to
earn something in life, but it seems that means and opportunity
will not permit me. I can't help from crying when I think how
anxious and willing my people are to help me to be something, and
yet they are unable to help me.
"My mother has struggled to bring up eight of us, and now is to the
point where she can give me no more help, and that leaves me alone
to be something by myself. I am anxious to enter day-school so I
may finish my course of study and my trade, and at last let my
mother see me a good, noble woman, who will take care of her.
"I will thank you very much for your kindness, if you will look
into my board bill and help me as soon, and as much, as possible.
Yours gratefully."
As the day girls have put in so many hours of work recently under the
new system, it eliminates the necessity of so many night-school girls
being paid for their work. It is to the interest of the school and its
day-students that fewer work their way through school, and the time has
come to teach this fact. The boy or girl for a time will stagger in the
attempt to gain education, but will be all the more able, later, to
reach the desired goal.
All girls are taught housekeeping incidentally in the care of their
rooms; but the number assigned to the regular division yearly are
instructed in all branches of home industry. The course covering two
years is mapped out thoroughly, and when the girls reach the Senior
class, all have their turn at housekeeping in the Practise Cottage of
four rooms. No girl is graduated from the school without the finishing
touch of the little home. Marketing, the planning of meals,
table-setting, the care of table- and bed-linen, dusting, sweeping, and
everything else pertaining to a well-kept house, are taught by the
teacher in domestic science who is in charge of the training-kitchen
where the senior girls received their first lessons in cookery. The
young housekeepers have reached the stage of efficiency when they may
prepare a meal for a distinguished guest.
A red-letter day in the history of the cottage came when a warm-hearted
and much-beloved trustee of the institution expressed a wish to dine
with the girls during one of his visits to the institution. The flowers
that graced the small table on this day were brought by the
distinguished visitor, who came from a stroll in the "piney" woods. The
girls, apprehensive of their success in preparing the dinner for one
with so cultured a palate, felt visibly relieved on the disappearance of
the roast, the vegetables, and the dessert. The corn bread was voted the
best ever eaten, and the dinner, as a whole, a delicious preparation. If
ever, in the years to come, any of the four forgets the kindly heart
that made all forget station or condition, "the right hand will forget
its cunning."
Days pass all too quickly in work and study. After the supper at six,
the girls in the normal classes go to their rooms or the Carnegie
Library for study, the girls in the preparatory classes go to the
study-hour, and those who have been working at the trades during the day
spend two hours in night-school covering half as much ground as those in
day-school, and consequently spend a longer period in school. At the
ringing of the bell at half past eight all the girls form in line to
pass to the Chapel for prayers.
School and work over for the day, every girl seems to lose her
personality in her blue braided uniform, with her red tie and turnover
on week-day evenings at Chapel, and her white ribbon on Sundays when she
passes the platform as she marches by out of the Chapel to her room. Her
carriage at least identifies her class-standing, and one may easily
note the difference in the manner of her who has newly arrived and
another who has been in school with the advantages of several years.
Friday afternoons mark an hour for lectures, girls' clubs, and circle
entertainments. Saturday evenings are spent optionally. Time for class
gymnastics or sewing or swimming is always spent pleasantly on schedule
time during the week. Our girl attends the Christian Endeavor Sunday
mornings at nine, Chapel at eleven, Sunday-school at one, and, after
dinner is out of the way, spends the enforced quiet hour in her room
from three until four o'clock reading. The band concert on the lawn
calls all to listen, some walking, some sitting on the seats on the
green, but all presenting a picturesque appearance in the blue skirts
and white waists of the spring season.
Thus the days and weeks pass, mingled with the sorrows and joys of
school-life, its encouragements and disappointments. The months and
seasons come and go, and, before one is scarcely aware of the fact, the
Commencement Week is here and the hundreds of young people whose lives
have come in touch with one another pass on to their homes. Some go out
as helpful workers, giving useful service to others; many will return
to complete the course begun, but all, we hope, will give out the light
that will not fail. Some are workers with ten talents, some with five,
some with one; but all, we trust, will be using them for the upbuilding
of the kingdom here on earth.
V
HAMPTON INSTITUTE'S RELATION TO TUSKEGEE
BY ROBERT R. MOTON
In his eloquent address in May, 1903, at the memorial services of
General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Founder, and for twenty-five years
Principal, of Hampton Institute, Dr. Booker T. Washington said: "A few
nights ago, while I was driving through the woods in Alabama, I
discerned in the distance a large, bright fire. Driving to it, I soon
found out that by the glow of this fire several busy hands were building
a nice frame cottage, to replace a log cabin that had been the abode of
the family for a quarter of a century. That fire was lighted by General
Armstrong years ago. What does it matter that it was twenty-five years
passing through Hampton to Tuskegee and through the Tuskegee Conference
to that lonely spot in those lonely woods! It was doing its work very
effectually all the same, and will continue to do it through the years
to come."
The relations existing between Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute
are much like those existing between a son and the father who has
watched the growth and development of his child through the formative
transition periods of his youth, and looks with pride upon him as he
stands forth in the full bloom of manhood, enumerating successes already
achieved, with large promise of greater and more far-reaching
achievements for the immediate future. The child never reaches the point
where he does not seek the approval and blessing of the parent, or where
he refuses to accept advice and assistance if needed.
In the early days of Tuskegee Mr. Washington turned naturally and
properly to Hampton for anything that was needed, as he so beautifully
and repeatedly testifies in his autobiography, Up from Slavery. For a
long time the men and women who helped him were from Hampton, more than
fifty such having been there.
While there is a large number of Hampton graduates in the Industrial
Departments of Tuskegee, the teaching force, especially in the Academic
Department, represents a dozen or more of the best colleges and
universities in this country. The same may be said of Hampton.
Up to about eight or ten years ago we at Hampton spoke of Tuskegee as a
small Hampton, but "small" no longer describes Tuskegee, and I doubt
seriously if _large Hampton_ would be altogether proper.
While Tuskegee was founded on the Hampton plan, and has consistently
followed that plan as far as possible, and while these two great
"Industrial Universities" are very much alike in spirit and purpose,
they are, on the other hand, very dissimilar in external appearance as
well as in internal conduct. Each sends out into the benighted districts
of the South, and Hampton also into the Indian country of the West,
hundreds of men and women who are living influences of civilization and
Christianity in their deepest and most far-reaching sense, adding much
to the solution of the perplexing questions with which the nation has to
deal.
The conditions surrounding the two schools have necessitated certain
differences in their evolution. The personnel of the two institutions is
different. Hampton has always been governed and controlled by white
people, and its teachers have come from the best families of the North.
Tuskegee was founded by a Negro, and its teachers and officers have come
from the best types of the American Negro and from the best schools
opened to them. Hampton deals with a different class of student
material, including the Indian, who is almost as different in traits and
characteristics from the Negro as he is in feature and origin. These
are, in a sense, external differences which must of necessity affect the
character and internal machinery of the two institutions.
This is no reflection upon either school, for each is unique and
complete in its way, and any marked ethnic change in the management of
either would be unfortunate. Hampton is a magnificent illustration of
Anglo-Saxon ideas in modern education. Tuskegee, on the other hand, is
the best demonstration of Negro achievement along distinctly altruistic
lines. In its successful work for the elevation and civilization of the
children of the freedmen, it is also the most convincing evidence of the
Negroes' ability to work together with mutual regard and mutual
helpfulness. When Tuskegee was started there was a serious question as
to whether Negroes could in any large measure combine for business or
educational purposes. The only cooperative institutions that had been
successful among them were the Church and, perhaps, the secret
societies.
In material development, in the rapid and steadily improving accession
of student material, in enlarging powers for greater usefulness, in
influence upon the educational methods of the country and the civilized
world, and in the sympathy and respect it has gained for the Negro
through the writings and speeches of its Founder and Principal, the
Tuskegee Institute has without doubt passed beyond the expectations of
those who were most sanguine about its future.
The Tuskegee torch, from the Hampton fire started so many years ago by
General Armstrong, has spread and is spreading light to thousands of
homes and communities throughout the South, and is the greatest pride
and glory of Hampton Institute, and a constant source of inspiration and
encouragement to the devoted men and women who have always made
Hampton's work possible.
At the conclusion of an address in a Northern city in the interest of
Hampton, in which I had quoted Dr. Curry's saying that, "if Hampton had
done nothing more than to give us Booker Washington, its history would
be immortality," a New England lady of apparently good circumstances and
well informed, in the kindness of her heart, took me to task for
distorting my facts in saying that Tuskegee had grown out of Hampton.
She was sure that it was just the other way--that Hampton was an
offshoot of Tuskegee. She certainly could not have paid a higher tribute
to Hampton, and likewise to Tuskegee.
For the past few years Mr. Washington's deserved popularity and
prominence have brought Tuskegee conspicuously and constantly before the
public. This has in no sense been a disadvantage to Hampton, but has
been a distinct gain in enabling Hampton to point to the foremost man of
the Negro race, and to the largest and most interesting and in many ways
the best-managed institution of the race, as the best and most
conspicuous product of the peculiar kind of education for which Hampton
stands.
While Tuskegee is, perhaps, in many respects, better known than Hampton,
its antecedent, Hampton, is without doubt much better known and more
highly thought of because of the existence of Tuskegee.
Tuskegee in its present state of development would be one of the marvels
of the age, even if the personality of its Principal were left out of
consideration.
Two thousand Negroes who are scarcely a generation removed from
bondage, being trained, disciplined, controlled by 200 or more of the
same racial type; 2,000 Negroes being educated, morally, industrially,
intellectually; an industrial university with 100 large buildings well
equipped and beautifully laid-off grounds, with a hum and bustle of
industry, scientifically and practically conducted by a race considered
as representing the lowest ethnic type, upsetting the theories of many
well-meaning people who believe the Negroes incapable of maintaining
themselves in this civilization, incapable of uniting in any successful
endeavor without being under the direct personal control of the dominant
Aryan--this is one of the greatest achievements of the race during its
years of freedom.
Hampton, though a dozen years older, the pioneer in industrial
education, equally well equipped, quite as well conducted, doing as
great a work in the elevation of the races it represents, and holding
just as important a place in the scheme of modern education, is not so
interesting or so wonderful, because its conception and execution are
the product of Aryan thought and Aryan ingenuity. New ideas, new
discoveries, new inventions and organizations, new methods and new
institutions, have been conspicuous among the white race for a thousand
years. General Armstrong's wisdom and foresight were truly wonderful, as
indeed are also those of his worthy successor, Dr. H. B. Frissell, under
whose direction the school's influence and usefulness have steadily
increased, and along lines that General Armstrong would approve; but had
Hampton been founded and brought to its present state of proficiency by
a Negro, and its dominating force been of the African race, it would be
a more wonderful and interesting institution. In other words, the white
race has long since passed its experimental period. It now is the
standard of measurement for all other races. The Negro's achievements,
then, are considered largely with reference to the impression which they
make upon the race of whose civilization and government he is a part.
[Illustration: THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL.]
Tuskegee, therefore, stands out more prominently than Hampton as an
exponent of industrial education, and has been more severely questioned
because of the imagined disloyalty in a Negro's aggressive attitude for
this particular kind of education for his race. There are people of both
races who, while they do not on the whole oppose Hampton and Tuskegee in
their educational methods, are honestly afraid that, because of the
growing importance and influence of these two schools and others of a
similar kind, the idea will be thoroughly established that the Negro
needs only and is capable only of the narrowest sort of industrial
training--such as is represented by the "rule-of-thumb carpenter" and
the "one-suspender mule-driver," who work by rule and rote rather than
by principle and method, not in the slightest degree comprehending the
science underlying the work in which they are engaged, whose
mathematical knowledge is bounded by "the distance between two corn or
cotton rows."
To fix such an idea in the minds of the people of this country--which is
not likely to be done--would, no doubt, be disastrous to us for
generations to come, and make it much more easy than it is now to
deprive the Negro of the civil and political rights which are guaranteed
by the Constitution. It would, without question, defeat the objects for
which Hampton and Tuskegee have persistently stood, and for which they
have ever worked and are still very successfully working.
No one familiar with the curricula of these two schools would for a
moment raise such a question. General Armstrong saw, as few people did,
the moral and intellectual value of industrial training aside from its
merely economic importance. He founded a school on an entirely different
basis from any that had been known before--the basis of
character-building through practical education, industrial training, and
self-help.
During the thirty-six years of its history, Hampton has sent into the
world about 1,200 graduates and 5,000 undergraduates, many of whom have
taken with them the spark that has started many other Hamptons, large
and small, among the Negroes of the South and the Indians of the West.
Hampton's success, and indeed the success of any institution, depends
not so much upon the scholastic attainments of its pupils as upon the
work that those who have received its instruction accomplish. Hampton
glories, and justly, in the loyalty of its graduates and in the
faithfulness with which they have inculcated and exemplified the
traditions and principles for which it stands. Hampton glories in
Tuskegee, because Tuskegee has started in so many communities the spark
of true life and real civilization; in the impetus and inspiration it
has given, so beautiful and so perfect a consummation of the prophetic
vision of Hampton's founder.
Can the relations between the two institutions be better stated than in
the words of their two founders? After a visit to Tuskegee, General
Armstrong said: "The Tuskegee school is a wonderful work and Mr.
Washington is a remarkable man. He has carried out the idea of training
the head, hand, and heart in a wonderfully complete and perfect way.
This school is very much like the one at Hampton, and any one can
recognize the similarity, but he has made many improvements. It is not
merely an imitation. It is the Hampton Idea adapted and worked into a
most sensible and efficient application to the needs of the Alabama
Negroes." In the same memorial address at General Armstrong's funeral
from which I quoted at the beginning of this paper, Mr. Washington said,
"The rose I place on his grave is _his_ work at Tuskegee."
Hampton and Tuskegee, striving along common lines for common ends,
intimate in relationship, interdependent, each frankly criticizing and
freely advising, each profiting by the failures of the other, each
benefiting by the successes of the other, are both working as best they
may toward that "far-off divine event to which the whole creation
moves."
_PART II_
_AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY GRADUATES OF THE SCHOOL_
I
A COLLEGE PRESIDENT'S STORY
BY ISAAC FISHER
I was born January 18, 1877, on a plantation called Perry's place, in
East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, and was the sixteenth and last child of
my parents. My early childhood was uneventful, save during the year
1882, when, by reason of the breaking of the Mississippi River levee
near my home, I was compelled, together with my parents, to live six
months in the plantation cotton-gin, fed by the Federal Government and
by the determination never to live so close to the "Big Muddy" again;
and during 1886, in which year my mother died.
Up to this latter year my life had been nothing more than that of the
average Negro boy on a cotton-farm. While I had been too young to feel
the burden of farm-life toil, I had not been spared a realization of the
narrowness and the dwarfing tendencies of the lives which the Negro
farmers and their families were living, and, in my heart, I cursed the
farm and all its environs as being in verity an inferno on earth. A
broader knowledge of the causes which operated to produce the cheerless
life against which my child-nature rebelled, and a clearer insight into
the possibilities of rural life, have altered this early impression; and
to-day I find myself thinking some thoughts relative to the life lived
near to nature's heart which are not at all complimentary to the bustle
and selfishness of city life.
The death of my mother furnished the opportunity to leave the farm and
go to a city; and I took advantage of this, going to Vicksburg, Miss.,
to live with an older sister. I had always desired to go to school, and
had spent four terms of six months each in the country school near my
home; but for some reason, which I can not now remember, I attended the
city school in Vicksburg but one year, after which I was employed as a
cake-baker's assistant and bread-wagon driver. A short time before this
I was a house-boy in the city. I was, at the time of my employment in
the bakery, an omnivorous reader of the newspapers, and, in fact, of all
kinds of literature; but my hours of labor at both places were so long
and incessant that I found it almost impossible to do any reading during
my employment at either place.
Finally I saw and took advantage of an opportunity to secure employment
with the drug firm of W. H. Jones & Brother; and I count my work in this
store, and with these gentlemen as employers, as the turning-point in my
life, because there my work demanded some intelligence above the
average. I had some chance to study, and in addition, when it was found
by these white men that I loved to read, all magazines, newspapers, and
drug journals, not needed by the firm and the physicians whose offices
were with them, were given to me. I never make any mention of my life in
Vicksburg without mentioning, in particular, Mr. W. H. Jones; for not
only was he a kind and considerate employer, but I learned from his
actions that a white man could be kind and interested in a Negro--a fact
which no amount of reasoning could have driven into my stubborn
understanding previous to that time.
There came a time when I learned that at the Tuskegee Institute, in
Alabama, any poor Negro boy who was willing to work could pay for all
his education in labor. To hear was to act. I wrote to Mr. Washington,
asking if my information was correct. The affirmative answer came at
once. It was the middle of August, and school began in September, but I
determined to be present at the opening of the school year. I was then a
boy wearing short trousers, but I immediately set about preparing to
deliver a "lecture" to help raise funds for my trip. With a knowledge of
the subject, and an assurance which I have never since assumed, I spoke
to a large audience in Vicksburg on the question, Will America Absorb
the Negro? I settled the question then and there to my own satisfaction,
even if I did not convince the nation that my affirmative conclusion was
rational. The "lecture" netted me my fare to Tuskegee, with a few
dollars over, and brought me from Rev. O. P. Ross, pastor of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Vicksburg, the offer of a scholarship at
Wilberforce College at the expense of his church. I respectfully
declined the offer, feeling that I did not want to bind myself to any
particular denomination by accepting so great a gift; but I have always
felt very kindly toward that church ever since.
My first glimpse of Mr. Washington was had in the depot in Montgomery,
Ala., where a friend and I, on our way to Tuskegee, had changed cars for
the Tuskegee train. Two gentlemen came into the waiting-room where we
were seated, one a man of splendid appearance and address, the other a
most ordinary appearing individual, we thought. The latter, addressing
us, inquired our destination. Upon being told that we were going to
Tuskegee, he remarked that he had heard that Tuskegee was a very hard
place--a place where students were given too much work to do, and where
the food was very simple and coarse. He was afraid we would not stay
there three months. We assured him that we were not afraid of hard work,
and meant to finish the course of study at Tuskegee at all hazards. He
then left us. Very soon after, the gentleman who had so favorably
impressed us, and whom we afterward found to be the capable treasurer of
the Tuskegee Institute, Mr. Warren Logan, came back and told us that our
interlocutor was none other than the President of the school to which we
were going.
Arriving at Tuskegee, I found what it meant to be in a school without a
penny, without assurance of help from the outside, and wholly dependent
upon one's own resources and labor; and I found further that in the
severe, trying process through which Mr. John H. Washington,
superintendent of industries, brother of Mr. Booker T. Washington, and
familiarly though very respectfully known to the students as "old man
John," put all students who offered to work for their education, only
the fittest, and the fittest of the fit at that, survived.
I was assigned work with the resident physician, a very efficient woman
doctor from Philadelphia; and I have a recollection, by no means dim,
that when this good woman made her monthly report to the treasurer, she
could write, "Health Department to Isaac Fisher, Dr., $12.50--value
received." Every morning before breakfast it was my duty to go to the
rooms of six hundred young men to see if any were ill, have those who
were, carried to the hospital, report all such to four departments, take
meals to those confined in the hospital, attend to all their wants, keep
their building heated and supplied with fuel, and-- But space will not
permit the full catalogue of duties. At the end of such a day's work I
would attend the night-school during its session of two hours.
Desiring to learn a trade, I asked permission to enter the
printing-office for the next year. This was not granted until it was
found that I would not leave the school during the summer, but would
remain and work until the beginning of the next school year.
Accordingly, when my second year began I entered the printing-office as
an apprentice. During that year I suffered actual want and privation in
the matter of shoes and clothes; but later came under the notice of Mrs.
Booker T. Washington, who made arrangements by which I could procure
some of the second-hand clothes and shoes sent from the North to the
school for just such cases. At the end of this year my health, as a
result of my work in the office, was so poor that the resident physician
recommended my removal therefrom. To the surprise of Mr. J. H.
Washington, I asked to be transferred to the farm; and I think I proved
while working on the school-farm that I was sincere when I said that I
would work wherever I was placed.
It was during this summer that Mr. Booker T. Washington showed me that I
had come favorably under his notice. At one of the weekly
prayer-meetings, conducted by the chaplain, Mr. Penney, and at which Mr.
Washington was present, I made some remarks relative to the agnosticism
of the late Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. The following day Mr. Washington
sent for me, inquired my age and class in the school, and then said some
very kind things about the talk which I had made in the prayer-meeting,
and made me a conditional promise of his friendship, which, despite my
oft-proven unworthiness, he has ever since given me in unstinted
measure. After that second year my hardships as a "work-student" were
practically over.
In my third year I entered the day-school, working one day in every week
and every other Saturday, and going to school the remainder of the time.
While the school made compulsory the earning of some money on the part
of all students, it set no maximum limit on the amounts to be earned. I
elected to earn as much as I could under the circumstances, earning, by
reason of the many odd jobs which I did, often as much as $20 per month,
going to school every day in the meantime. The average amount usually
earned is $5 and $6 per month. At one time I worked eight days per month
on the farm, sent notes of the school to 127 Negro newspapers, cleaned
one laboratory every day, played in both the brass band and the
orchestra, blew the bugle for the battalion, and taught two classes in
the night-school, for each of which duties I received pay; and even
though I broke down under the accumulated strain soon after my
graduation, I carried my point and completed the course of study as I
had planned.
[Illustration: THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY BUILDING.]
In my fourth year I won the Trinity Church (Boston) Prize of $25 for
oratory; and in my senior year won the Loughridge Book Prize for
scholarship, and also the valedictory of my class, graduating in 1898.
I was immediately sent to the Schofield School, a Quaker institution for
Negroes in Aiken, S. C., to organize farmers' conferences on the order
of those conducted by the Tuskegee Institute, and to serve as a teacher
in the school. After one year's service in that position Mr. Washington
asked me to accept the position of Assistant Northern Financial Agent
for Tuskegee. I accepted, and remained two years in New England, helping
to interest friends in my _alma mater_. At my own request I was
transferred from the Northern work to the South, being assigned this
time to the Negro Conference work in Alabama. Before beginning this work
I was married to a Tuskegee girl, Miss Sallie McCann.
Within a few months a principal was needed for the Swayne Public School
of Montgomery, Ala., and this in the middle of the school year. Mr.
Washington recommended me for the work, and I was elected to the
position. At the close of the term I went to New York to study the
public-school system of that city as far as possible. While there I was
reelected principal of the Swayne School, and a notice of the election
reached me one morning. Three hours later I received a letter from the
secretary of the University of Arkansas (white) informing me that my
name had been presented to the board of trustees of that institution,
and I had been elected to the presidency of the State Branch Normal
College at Pine Bluff, Ark. I was not a candidate for the position, but
seeing in it an opportunity for greater usefulness, I accepted the
position in my twenty-fifth year, and have just been reelected to serve
a third term as president of the school. The Branch Normal College was
established in 1875 as one of the Land Grant colleges, and has a
property valuation of $100,000.
Over my desk hangs a picture of the Principal of Tuskegee; and in my
desk are views of the institution which he has built. But these may be
removed. In the book of my memory and in the secret chambers of my heart
I have enshrined the two names which, with God and the parents now on
the other side of the Great Divide, have shaped and given direction to
my whole life--Tuskegee and Booker T. Washington.
II
A SCHOOL PRINCIPAL'S STORY
BY WILLIAM H. HOLTZCLAW
I was born in Randolph County, Ala., near the little town of Roanoke.
The house in which I first saw the light--or that part of it which
streamed through the cracks, for there were no windows--was a little log
cabin 12 by 16 feet. I know very little of my ancestry, except that my
mother was the daughter of her mother's master, born in the days of
slavery, and up to 1864 herself the slave of her half-brother. She was
born in the State of Georgia. My father was born in Elmore County, Ala.
He never knew his father, but remembered his mother and eleven brothers.
My mother was married twice before she married my father. She married
first at the age of fifteen. I am the fifth of fifteen children, and my
father's oldest child. Neither my father nor my mother could read or
write; mother could get a little out of some pages of the Bible by
spelling each word as she came to it.
My early years were spent on a farm. When only four years old I was put
to such work as I could do--such as riding a deaf and blind mule, while
my brother plowed him in order to make him go forward, for he cared
nothing for assault from the rear. We worked for a white man for
one-fourth of the crop. He furnished the stock, land, and seeds, and we
did the work, although he was supposed to help. He furnished money to
"run" us at fifteen to a hundred per cent, according to the time of the
year. He grew wealthier; we grew, if possible, poorer. Before I was
fifteen years old I instinctively felt the injustice of the scheme. When
the crop was divided he got three loads of corn to our one, and somehow
he always got all the cotton: never did a single bale come to us.
Those were hard times for us; for it must be remembered that this was in
the days of reconstruction and the Ku-Klux-Klan, and if to this be added
the fact that my father, a young and inexperienced man, had started out
with a family of six on his hands, some idea of the situation may be
had. I can recall having been without food many a day, and the pangs of
hunger drove me almost to desperation. But mother and father would come
late at night from a day of depressing toil and excruciating inward
pain, the result of their inability to relieve our suffering, and pacify
us for the night with such things as they had been able to get. When I
awoke the next morning they were gone again on a food mission.
Hunger would sometimes nearly drive us mad. My brother and I were given
a meal of pie-crusts from the white folks' table one day, and as we ate
them, Old Buck, the family dog, who resembled an emaciated panther,
stole one of the crusts. It was our dinner. We loved Old Buck, but we
had to live first; so my brother lit on him, and a battle royal took
place over that crust. Brother was losing ground, so I joined in, and,
coming up from the rear, we conquered and saved the crust, but not till
both of us were well scratched and bitten.
I was put to school at the age of six. Both mother and father were
determined that their children should be educated. School lasted two
months in the year--July and August. The schoolhouse was three miles
from our house, but we walked every day, my oldest sister carrying me
astride her neck when I gave out. Sometimes we had an ear of roasted
green corn in our basket for dinner, or a roasted sweet potato, but more
often simply persimmons, or fruit and nuts picked from our landlord's
orchard and from the forest.
When cotton began to open, in the latter part of August, the landlord
wanted us to stop school and pick cotton, and I can distinctly remember
how my mother used to outgeneral him by slipping me off to school
through the woods, following me through the swamps and dark places, with
her hand on my back, shoving me on till I was well on the way, and then
returning to try to do as much in the field that day as she and I
together would be expected to do. When the landlord came to the quarters
early to look for me, my mother would hide me behind the cook-pot and
other vessels. When I was a little older I had to play my part on the
farm. Mother now worked another scheme. I took turns with my brother at
school and at the plow. What he learned at school on his school-day was
taught to me at night, and vice versa. In this way we got a month of
schooling each during the year, and got the habit of home study.
Our family was increasing rapidly, and to keep the children even roughly
clothed and fed was about all that could be done under the
circumstances. When the school exhibition took place and every girl was
expected to have a white dress and every boy a pair of white
pantaloons, my mother was often put to her trumps to get these things.
Father would not trouble himself about them, as he said they were
useless. But the teacher said they were necessary, and his word was law
and gospel with most parents in our community. An exhibition was near at
hand and three of us had no white pantaloons. Mother manipulated every
scheme, but no cloth yet to make them! Finally the day arrived, but not
till mother solved the problem by getting up before dawn that morning
and making three pairs of white pantaloons for us out of her Sunday
petticoat. Mother was of a determined disposition, and seldom failed to
solve a domestic problem. We looked about as well as other people's
children in that exhibition--at least we thought we did, and that was
sufficient. But it must be remembered that there is just so much cloth,
and no more, in a petticoat. So our suits were necessarily made tight. I
had to be careful how I got around on the stage.
I usually had different teachers every year, as one teacher seldom cared
to stay at a place for more than a session. I well remember the
disadvantages of this custom. One teacher would have me in a Third
Reader and fractions, another in Fifth Reader and addition. When I
reached the point where the teacher ordered me to get a United States
History, the book-store did not have one, but sold me a biography of
Martin Luther instead, which I studied for some time, thinking that I
was learning something about the United States. I did not know what the
United States was or was like, although I had studied geography and knew
something about South America and Africa; and my teacher did not tell
me. My teacher at this time was a good man, but that was all. Many of my
teachers knew very little, but I thought they knew everything, and that
was sufficient, for their teaching was wholesome. I remember one or two,
however, whose work, under the circumstances, would be hard to match
even now.
As soon as I was old enough I was hired out for wages, to help support
the family. My school opportunities were now almost gone, and for this
reason, together with a desire for more excitement, I began to grow
restless on the farm. I grew morose. I pulled myself loose from all
public functions, ceased to attend any public meetings, save regular
monthly church meetings, and betook me to the woods, where I read
everything I could get. It was during this time that accidentally, I
may say providentially, I got hold of a book containing the life of
Ignacius Sancho; and I have never read anything that has given me more
inspiration. I wish every Negro boy in the land might read it. I read
and worked, and helped to support the family. I had vowed that as soon
as I was twenty-one I would leave for some school and there stay until I
was educated. I was already a little in advance of the young people in
my community, so I spent my long winter evenings teaching a little
night-school to which the young people of the neighborhood came.
All my life up to this time my father had been working as a tenant. He
now determined to strike out for himself--buy stock and rent land. The
mule he bought soon became hopelessly lame in the back. It was a
peculiar sort of illness. Once upon his feet, he could work all day
without difficulty, but when he lay down at night he had to be helped up
the following morning. During that entire season the first thing I heard
each morning was the voice of my father, "Children, children, get up!
let's go and help up the old mule." A neighbor also was called in each
morning to help. Toward the end of the season the school opened. We were
so anxious to enter, that we determined to help the old mule. My
brother and I hitched ourselves to the plow, and sister did the plowing.
Early each morning we plowed in this way, and soon finished the crop and
entered the little school.
My father and some others had built a little school out of pine poles
which they had cut, and hauled to the spot on their shoulders. The
teacher, a married man, easily won all his pupils, but I could never
forgive him for winning and finally eloping with his pretty assistant
teacher.
Christmas eve, 1889, I went to bed a boy. Just after breakfast the next
morning I became a man--my own man. "Sandy Claw" did not come that
night, although I had hung up my stocking, and I was feeling bad about
it. After breakfast my father called me out into the yard, where we
seated ourselves on the protruding roots of a large oak-tree, and there
he set me free.
"Son," said he, "you are nearing manhood, and you have no education;
besides, if you remain with me I will not be able to help you when you
are twenty-one. We've decided to make you free, if you'll make us one
promise--that you will educate yourself."
By that time my mother had joined the party. I cried, I know not why,
and my mother cried; even my father could not conceal his emotion. I
accepted the proposal immediately, and although we usually took
Christmas till New Year's day, my Christmas that year was then at an
end. Manhood had dawned upon me that morning. I tried to be calm, but
inwardly I was like a fish out of water.
I struck out to find work, that I might make money to go to school. One
mile across the forest brought me to a man who hired me, and promised me
$9.25 a month for nine months.
At the end of six months I came across the Tuskegee Student, published
at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. I read every line in
it. On the first page was a note: "There is an opportunity for a limited
number of able-bodied young men to enter the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute and work their way through, provided application is
made at once. Booker T. Washington, Principal."
Work their way through! I had never heard of such a thing before.
Neither had I heard of Tuskegee. I sent in my application. I did not
know how to address a letter, and so only put "Booker T. Washington" on
the envelope. Somehow he received it and gave me permission to come.
There ensued a general scramble to get ready to go by the opening of
school. I broke off relations with my employer by compromising for a
suit of clothes and $8 in money. My chum, a man of about forty years of
age, seeing the struggle I was making to get off, offered to help me, or
rather to show me how to get the money easily by stealing a few chickens
and selling them. It was a tempting bait, but against all the previous
teachings of my mother. He argued, and my mother, who was not there,
also argued within me. I could not consent. My friend pitied me and
offered to do the job himself.
To get a supply of clothes to take to Tuskegee was the question. Up to
that time I had never worn an undershirt, or a pair of drawers, or a
stiff-bosom shirt, or a stiff collar. All these I had not only to get,
but had to learn to wear them. My shirts and collars were bought
second-hand from a white neighbor and were all too large by three
numbers.
The last day of September, 1890, I left for Tuskegee. When I reached
there, although I was a young man, I could not tell what county I lived
in, in answer to Mr. Washington's question. I was admitted, after some
hesitancy on the part of Principal Washington, and sent to the farm to
work for one year in the daytime and to attend school at night.
I was dazed at the splendor of Tuskegee. There was Armstrong Hall, the
most imposing brick structure I had ever seen. Then came Alabama Hall,
where the girls lived. How wonderful! I could hardly believe that I was
not dreaming, and I was almost afraid I should awake. When I went to bed
that night I got between two sheets--something I had not been accustomed
to do. About twelve o'clock an officer came in, threw the cover off me,
and asked some questions about nightshirts, comb and brush, and
tooth-brush, with all of which I was but meagerly acquainted. He made me
get up, pull off my socks, necktie, collar, and shirt, and told me I
would rest better without them. I didn't believe him, but I obeyed.
The next morning I saw more activity among Negroes than I had ever seen
before in my life. Not only was everybody at work, but every soul seemed
to be in earnest. I heard the ringing of the anvil, the click of
machinery, the music of the carpenters' hammers. Before my eyes was a
pair of big fat mules drawing a piece of new and improved farm
machinery, which literally gutted the earth as the mules moved. Here was
a herd of cattle, there a herd of swine; here thumped the mighty
steam-engine that propelled the machine which delivered up its many
thousand of brick daily; there was another machine, equally powerful,
turning out thousands of feet of pine lumber every day. Then there were
the class-rooms, with their dignified teachers and worthy-looking young
men and women. Amid it all moved that wonderful figure, Booker T.
Washington.
I began at once a new existence. I made a vow that I would educate
myself there, or I would die and be buried in the school cemetery. When
Mr. Washington stood at the altar in the first service which I attended
and uttered a fervent prayer asking for guidance, and for spiritual and
financial strength to carry on that great work, I felt that the Lord
would surely answer his prayer. Since then I have traveled practically
all over this country, and in one foreign country, without once seeing
anything that made so deep an impression on me.
[Illustration: MORNING AT THE BARNS ON THE SCHOOL FARM.
Teams of horses and cattle ready to start for the day's work.]
Simultaneously with this opportunity for self-education came many real
hardships--to say nothing of imaginary hardships--which nearly resulted
disastrously to my health. I was poorly clad for the extraordinary
winter then setting in. I had only one undershirt and one pair of
drawers. I could not, of course, put these articles in the laundry, and
therefore had to pull them off on Saturday nights, wash them, and get
them dry enough to wear by breakfast on Sunday morning. It followed that
many Sunday mornings found me sitting at the table wearing damp
underwear. I could do no better, without leaving school, and this I was
determined not to do. I was earnest in my work, and was promoted from a
common laborer to be a hostler in charge of all boys dealing with
horses, and then to the much-sought position of special assistant to the
farm manager.
I was beginning to see the mistakes of my former life, the time I had
lost, and now applied myself diligently. I carried a book with me
everywhere I went, and not a second of time would I lose. While driving
my mules with a load of wood, I would read until I reached the place of
unloading. Mr. Washington took note of this, and upon one occasion,
while admonishing the students to make good use of their time, said:
"There is a young man on the grounds who will be heard from some day
because of his intense application to study and diligence in his work."
I listened. I knew he was speaking of me, and the fact that I was to be
"heard from" later made me double my resolutions.
In September, 1891, I had to my credit in the treasury of the
institution $100, and I was now ready to enter the day-school, to
measure arms with the more fortunate students. But, alas! sickness
overtook me, and when I emerged from the hospital, after about two
months' sickness, my doctor's bill was exactly $100. My accumulated
credit went to pay it.
This was the penalty for making the transit from a lower to a higher
civilization. When I went without undergarments at home, my health was
saved because of uniformity of habit. Now it was injured because I could
wear them this week, but might not be able to do so the
next--irregularity of habit. Then, too, Tuskegee gave me such
living-rooms as I had never lived in, or hoped to. I had lived in log
houses, which are self-ventilating. Now I had either overventilated or
failed to ventilate my room. It is a difficult matter to make the
transit from a lower to a higher civilization. There are many obstacles,
and many have fallen by the way.
I went home to recuperate, but returned to Tuskegee in a few weeks, and
as I had no money I was again permitted to enter the night-school and
work during the day. This time I took up the printers' trade. Here I
broke over the conventional rule of acting "devil" six months, and began
setting type after one month in the office. In six months I was one of
the school's regular compositors; and in one term I had sufficient
credit with the treasurer to enter the day-school.
But I was not yet to enter. A letter came from my father, saying, "If
you wish to see me again alive, I think it would be well to come at
once." I went. My father died a few days after I got home, June 27,
1893.
All hope of future schooling seemed now at an end. My only concern was
to do the best I could with the exceedingly heavy load now left on my
hands. I pulled off my school-clothes, went to the field, and finished
the crop father had left. There was a heavy debt, and I began to teach
school to pay this debt. Of course I knew very little, but I taught what
I knew--and, I suppose, some things I didn't know.
I think even now that I did the people some good. I had not learned much
at Tuskegee in books, but I had learned much from Mr. Washington's
Sunday evening talks in the chapel. I had listened carefully to him and
had treasured up in my heart what he had said from time to time. Now I
was teaching it to others. I felt I was to this little community what
Mr. Washington was to Tuskegee. So I made the people whitewash their
fences and fix up their houses and premises generally. They were very
poor, and when the school closed they could not pay me. I told them I
would take corn, peas, potatoes, sirup, pork, shucks, cotton-seed--in
fact, anything with which they wished to pay me.
Wagons were secured and loaded, and for several days all sorts of
provisions were hauled to my mother's house and stored away for winter.
I went to the house of one good widow, who said:
"'Fesser, I ain't got nothin' to pay you wid but dis 'ere house-cat, and
he's a good'n. I owes you twenty-five cents, and I wants to pay it. You
done my little gal good--more'n any teacher ever did. She ain't stop'
washin' her face yit when she gits up in de mornin'."
"Very well," I said, "I'll take the cat with thanks and call the debt
square."
Another said: "'Fesser, I heard you was coming, and I hid all my meat
in de smoke-house, and says: 'I'll tell him I ain't got none;' but when
I seed you coming I tole de chillen to go open de smoke-house. Anybody
who do my chillens as much good as you, can get every bit de meat I
got." From that woman I got fifty pounds of meat.
Another good woman wanted me to take her only pair of scissors, and when
I refused to do so, she put them into my coat-pocket, saying the man who
taught her child so much must be paid.
For three years I taught school with one personal object in view--the
support of my mother and her family. Mother was not satisfied with this;
she wanted me educated. Finally she married again, for no higher reason
than to permit me, and the other children growing up, to go to school.
My hope for an education was again renewed, and I went back to Tuskegee.
Nearly everybody had forgotten that I had ever been there.
Notwithstanding I had been out nearly three terms, I had kept pace with
my class, making one class each year, the same as if I had been in
school. Upon a very critical examination, in which I averaged
ninety-three for all subjects, I entered the B Middle class in the
day-school.
Financially I was very little better off than when I left, but I had
learned how to manipulate things in such a way as to make it possible to
remain in school. I knew a trade at which I could easily make a dollar a
day in credit, and I could teach during the vacation. Things went
smoothly for one year. Then my brother came, and I had to support him in
part. Just about the time I was getting myself adjusted to this, my
sister came. I knew I should have to support her almost wholly, so I
felt like giving up under such a triple burden; but I held on. I had to
deny myself many of the pleasures of school life in order to make two
ends meet. I had to wear two pairs of pantaloons and one pair of
drawers; and I remember one Sunday, while the school was enjoying a good
sermon by a great bishop, I was in the shop melting some glue, with
which I glued patches on my only pair of pantaloons, which had reached a
condition where thread would no longer hold the patches on. I will not
tell what happened when the patches had been on for a few days.
But amid all these conflicting affairs of my school-days ran an immense
amount of pleasure, more than I had ever known before. I was gradually
coming to see things as they are in the affairs of men. I thought then,
and I still think, that no sacrifice was too great when there was such
a golden opportunity. To sit and listen to one Sunday evening talk by
Principal Washington was worth all the trouble one had to undergo for a
year.
Two years before I graduated I began to inquire what I was made
for--what calling should I follow? It was hard to decide. Mr.
Washington's teaching had impressed me that I should do something to
help those less fortunate than myself, and that in the very darkest
place I could find. My father had called me to his death-bed and said to
me: "Son, I want you to become a teacher of your people. I have done
what I could in that direction. The people need your services." I
recalled how in his last moments I had promised him I would carry out
his wishes. There was nothing else left for me to do but to go into
those dark places. But there was the rub; and every Sunday evening Mr.
Washington thundered that same theme: "Go into the darkest places, the
places where you are most needed, and there give your life with little
thought of self." I knew about those dark places. I had been born in one
of them. I had been spending my vacations teaching in them.
Once, while teaching in the State of Georgia, I boarded with a family
where there were fifteen besides myself, all sleeping, eating, and
cooking in the same room. There were three young women in the family.
When bedtime came I had to go out of doors and amuse myself with the
stars till all the women were in bed; then they would extinguish the
hearth-light by putting some ashes on it and let me come in and go to
bed. I had to keep my head under the cover the next morning while they
got up and dressed. I used to sleep with my nose near a crack in the
wall in order to get fresh air. One little girl in the family, while
saying her prayers one night, begged the Lord to let the angels come
down and stay with them that night. Her little brother promptly
interrupted her by saying that she ought to have sense enough to know
that there was no room in that bed for angels, as there were already
five persons in it. I was used to the country and its worst conditions.
I prayed over the matter till finally I gave myself, heart and mind, to
whatever place should call me.
During my last year at Tuskegee I was made a substitute salaried teacher
in the night-school. My financial burdens were now lifted and my school
life became one great pleasure. Toward the end of my Senior year I
decided to try for the Trinity Prize of $25 for the best original
oration. I remembered what Mr. Washington had so often said: that a man
usually gets out of a thing what he puts into it. I determined to put
$100 worth of effort into this contest. I was awarded the prize.
A place was offered to me at Tuskegee as academic teacher, but I
declined it. I had settled in my mind that I would go to the State of
Mississippi, which I had found by two years of investigation was the
place where my services were most needed. I could not go to Mississippi
at once. I had not money to pay my way, so I accepted a position with my
friend, William J. Edwards, at his school in Snow Hill, Ala., where I
worked for four years, never losing sight of my Mississippi object.
While at Snow Hill I married Miss Mary Ella Patterson, a Tuskegee
graduate of the Class of '95. We put our earnings together and built us
a comfortable little home. One child, William Sidney, was born to us,
but lived only six months.
It took me just two years to convince my wife that there was any wisdom
or judgment in leaving our little home and going to Mississippi, where
neither of us was known. But finally she gave herself, soul and body, to
my way of thinking.
The way was now clear for me to make the start. Just before I left for
Mississippi, one of my old teachers from Tuskegee visited me. He
inquired about my going to Mississippi, and when I explained the scheme
to him, he said jestingly, "You know there is no God in Mississippi." I
simply replied that then I would take "the one that Alabama had" with
me.
I could not take my wife, for she was under the care of a physician at
that time. I decided to leave nearly all my ready cash with her. I did
not take quite enough for my railroad fare, for I had expected to sell
my wife's bicycle when I reached Selma, the nearest town, and thus
secure enough money to finish my trip. But when I got to Selma the wheel
would not sell, so I boarded the train without money enough to reach
Utica, the place in Mississippi to which I was bound.
I had not got far into the State of Mississippi when my purse was empty.
I stopped off at a little town, late at night, where there were no
boarding-houses, and no one would admit me to a private house to sleep.
I wandered about until I came upon an old guano-house, and crawled into
this and slept until the break of day. Then I crawled out, pulled myself
together, jumped astride my bicycle, and made my way toward Utica,
through a wild and unfrequented part of Mississippi. But before I could
reach Utica my wheel broke down, whereupon I put it upon my shoulder,
rolled up my trousers, and continued the journey to Utica. I soon met a
young man who relieved me of my burden by trading me his brass watch for
the wheel and giving me $2 to boot.
I had previously got myself elected principal of the little county
school, which, if I could pass the State examination, would pay me a
little salary, which would be a great help to me while I worked up the
Industrial and Normal School which I had come to build. Much depended on
my ability to pass the examination. Tuskegee's reputation was at
stake--my own reputation was at stake; for, if I failed, the people
would certainly lose confidence in me, and make it impossible for me to
accomplish my purpose.
I was out of money, and this was the only way I could see to get any for
a long time. If I failed, my wife--who was still in Alabama, and who
believed in my ability to do anything--would perhaps lose respect for
me, and, most of all, the failure to pass the examination might upset
all my plans and blast all my hopes. I confess I went to that
examination with a sort of anxious determination. I did not, however,
find it half so difficult as I had expected. I soon succeeded in
obtaining the necessary license to teach in the public schools of the
State.
The little schoolhouse where the school had been heretofore was so much
out of repair that we could not risk having pupils under its roof. I had
hoped to open in the church, but the good deacons would not permit this.
So the few pupils who came the first day were gathered together under an
oak-tree, and there were taught. After some time a temporary cabin was
fixed up, and in this we taught the entire winter. The cabin was
practically no protection against the rain, and less against the winter
winds. The wind literally came through from all directions--from the
sides, ends, above, and beneath.
We soon had the floor stopped up with clay. This brought about another
disadvantage: when it began to rain through the roof, the water would
collect on the floor until it was two or three inches deep. Two young
women were helping me to teach. They often amused me by trying to
maintain their dignity and keep out of the water at the same time. They
would stand upon stools and fire questions at their pupils, who were
standing in the water below while answering them. On such days as this
I usually wore my overcoat and rubber shoes. I would then stand in the
water and teach with as much indifference as possible. We bored holes in
the floor to let the water out, but it usually came through the roof
faster than it could escape. There was much suffering at this time on
the part of both teachers and students, but it was all a joy and
pleasure to me, for I felt that I had found my life-work.
I was a stranger to the people, and they had very little confidence in
me. Some of them questioned my motives in every direction. At the first
meeting of the patrons for the purpose of raising money, seventy-five
cents were collected and were turned over to me to hold. In a couple of
days some one demanded that the collection be taken out of my hands. I
quietly turned it over to them. Then they got up a scramble as to which
one should hold it. They settled the quarrel by selecting a white man in
the town of Utica, in whom all of them had confidence. I then went out
canvassing and got $10, which I promptly turned over. Immediately they
wanted to turn it back to me to hold, together with what the white man
had. They never again questioned my sincerity.
My wife, who was still in Alabama, kept writing me to let her join me.
Explanations would do no good. She laid aside all the comforts of home
life and came to live in a hovel. We rented a little room, bought a
skillet and a frying-pan, a bed and two chairs, and set up housekeeping.
I did the cooking, for my wife was a city girl and did not know how to
cook on the open fireplace. We never contrasted our condition in
Mississippi with that in Alabama; we simply made the best of what we
had.
At first there was difficulty in securing land for a location, and many
of the patrons began to feel that nothing would be accomplished. To
offset this idea I purchased lumber for a building, had it put in the
churchyard, and cut up ready for framing. The enthusiasm had to be kept
up. Land was soon bought and the building started. Everybody felt now
that something was going to be done. At the end of the first year's work
I was able to make to the trustees a creditable report, from which the
following is taken:
As soon as we secured a cabin to teach in, the young people came in
great numbers. We soon had an attendance of 200. One teacher after
another was employed to assist, until seven teachers were daily at
work. After three months in our temporary quarters conditions were
very trying. There was no money to pay teachers or to meet the
grocery bills for teachers' board. The winter was well on, and the
structure in which we were located was little protection against
it. The rain easily came through the roof, and water was often two
inches deep on certain parts of the floor. Several teachers and
students were suffering with pneumonia or kindred disorders, as a
result of all this exposure. I confess that during this dark period
only a carefully planned system and much determination prevented
despair.
During all this time I was trying to secure the interest of the
people. I went from door to door, explaining our efforts; then I
made a tour of the churches; after riding or walking five or ten
miles at night I would return, and then teach the next day. After a
protracted struggle of this kind, and after visiting almost
everybody for many miles, I found that I had secured about $600.
This greatly relieved us. Forty acres of land were purchased, and a
part of the lumber for a good, comfortable building was put upon
the grounds. Some of our trustees in New York city and Boston now
came to our assistance, and with this, and contributions from a few
other friends, we were able to get through the year. Although it
was a great struggle, I found in it some pleasure. To know that
you were doing the work that the world needs, and must have done,
is a pleasure even under trying difficulties.
Starting last October without a cent, in the open air, we have
succeeded in establishing a regularly organized institution
incorporated under the laws of the State of Mississippi, with 225
students and seven teachers, and with property valued at $4,000.
Forty acres of good farm-land about a mile from town have been
secured. A model crop is now growing on this farm. We have erected
a building--a two-story frame--at a cost of something over $2,000.
I hope you will not get, from what I have said, an idea that I am
measuring the success of my efforts by material advancement. I am
not. There are forces which our labors have set to work here, the
results of which can not be measured in facts and figures. One year
ago religious services were held once a month, at which time the
day was spent in singing, praying, and shouting. The way some of
the people lived for the next twenty-nine days would shock a
sensitive individual to read about it. Young people would gamble
with the dice, etc., in a most despicable way, within a short
distance of the church, during services; others would discharge
revolvers at the church door during services; ignorance,
superstition, vice, and immorality were everywhere present,
notwithstanding the handful of determined Christian men and women
who were trying to overcome these evil tendencies. I do not
maintain that these evils have been crushed out. They have not. But
what I do maintain is that the general current has been checked.
The revolution is on; and if we continue the work here, as we
surely will, these evil tendencies will soon be crushed out.
During this year the people themselves furnished $1,000 toward the
support of the school. They have never before spent a tenth as much for
education. The second year eleven teachers were employed and 400
students were admitted. The cost of operations was $10,000, all of which
was raised during the year. We are now entering into our third term.
Fifteen teachers have been employed, and the expenses of operation will
be about $15,000, all of which I must raise by direct effort. Our
property, all deeded to a board of trustees, is valued at $10,000.
I can not feel that I have accomplished much here in Mississippi,
because I see all around me so much to be done--so much that I can not
touch because of lack of means. But, being in the work to stay, I may,
in the end, contribute my share to the betterment of man. If I have
suffered much to build up this work, I can not feel that it is a
sacrifice. It is a colossal opportunity. The greater the sacrifice, the
more extensive the opportunity. Whatever may have been accomplished
already is certainly due more to my wife's superior judgment than to my
own activity. Whatever I have been able to do myself here in Mississippi
for my people has been due, first, to the teachings of my mother, and,
second, to the all-important life-example and matchless teachings of
Booker T. Washington.
III
A LAWYER'S STORY
BY GEORGE W. LOVEJOY
I can give no accurate date as to my birth, as my mother was a slave and
thus it was not recorded, but I think I was born in the month of
February, 1859. I was born in Coosa, one of the middle counties of
Alabama.
I am the third child and the second son of eleven children, seven of
whom are still living.
My father I do not remember, as he died when I was very young, but I
most vividly remember my stepfather, the only father I ever knew.
Childhood to me was not that long season of "painless play" of which
Whittier so beautifully sings, but I do remember that I was early
impressed that my feet must have been made for the express purpose of
treading "the mills of toil." When seven years of age my stepfather put
a hoe in my little hands and bade me go and help my mother weed the
cotton-patch, and from that day to the present time I have been
constant in my application to some form of labor.
When my mind reverts to that early period of my life I become my own
photographer and get various pictures of myself, either as picking,
hoeing, or planting cotton, of pulling fodder or splitting rails, for
these were the things I did from childhood to manhood.
My stepfather had been the foreman, or "driver," for his master when he
was a slave, and I am persuaded to believe that he must have been an
excellent one, for I can not remember in all my life when a day's work
had been so full, so complete, so well done, that he would not press for
a little more the next day.
Mortgaging of crops was then in vogue, as it is to-day, and my mind
revolts when I think of how my young life and the lives of my mother,
sisters, and brothers were burdened with the constant grind of trying to
eke out a living and, if possible, get even a little ahead.
Some years, when conditions had been favorable, we were able to clear
ourselves of debt and begin anew. But, seemingly, this prosperity was
not for us, for these years of plenty were almost invariably followed by
one or two less fruitful ones that came and "swallowed up the whole,"
leaving us as forlorn and as wretchedly poor as we were before. This
failure of the crops because of drouths unduly long, wet seasons, the
ravages of worms, caterpillars, and other uncontrollable circumstances,
not only meant that the whole of that year's labor was to bring no
tangible rewards, but that much property accumulated in more prosperous
times was to be dissipated as well. I can recall repeated instances when
all of my stepfather's live stock was taken for debt under this crushing
system. And thus it was that my stepfather, and my mother, and the rest
of the farmers for miles around existed!
During all these years my brothers, sisters, and myself were growing up
in ignorance. Until I was ten years old I had never heard of a school
for colored children. Even after the privilege of attending school two
months of the year--July and August--had been accorded me, I am certain
that the instruction received was of that kind that hinders more than it
helps. Year after year the course of study would be repeated. Perhaps
this repetition was necessary for more than one reason:
First, ten months' vacation does not tend to firmly impress upon one's
mind the knowledge acquired in two.
Second, the teachers themselves had such limited knowledge that two
months were ample time in which to exhaust their store of knowledge,
and, as examinations were so easy, it was not imperative that they do
more than "keep school."
I remember quite distinctly that when I did go to school we used the
proverbial Webster's blue-back speller. The majority of the pupils began
with the "A, B, C," the alphabet, and went as far as "horseback," while
apt pupils might be able to reach "compressibility." And so for years we
went from "A" to "compressibility" on "horseback."
In those days the three "R's" were not confounded. Only one of them was
given to us, and that in broken doses, for I reached manhood without
being able to write a single word or to work a problem in mathematics.
Neither my mother nor stepfather could read or write a line; not a book,
newspaper, or magazine was ever seen in our home. It was most unusual to
see a colored man or woman who could either read or write.
When a mere boy I inwardly protested against this manner of
bringing-up. I determined to make my life more useful, to make it better
than it was. But how long these years were! However, the day came when I
was twenty-one, and I began to create a "life" for myself.
I immediately went to work doing farm labor, and saved my earnings until
I had twenty-five or thirty dollars ahead. I then decided to go to
school somewhere and to learn something. I found my first opportunity in
Montgomery, Ala. I went there in November, 1883, and entered the Swayne
School.
Everything was new and strange to me. I had never seen so large a
schoolhouse before. I was dazed, bewildered. There I was, a great, grown
man, in the class with little children, who looked upon me as a
curiosity, something to be wondered at. I, too, looked at them with
amazement, for it seemed next to impossible for young boys and girls to
know as much as they seemed to know.
I can not say that I was heartily received by the pupils. I was awkward,
and I discovered that the city children did not find me pleasingly
companionable.
It is probable that at this point I should have grown discouraged and
given up had I not met that great and good man, Rev. Robert C. Bedford,
who is now, as he has been for many years, secretary of the board of
trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, and who travels among and reports
upon the work of Tuskegee graduates and former students, but who was at
that time pastor of the First Congregational Church in Montgomery. I
regularly attended his church and the Sunday-school connected therewith,
and received such help and encouragement from him as but few men can
impart to others.
It was he who first told me of Tuskegee and advised me to enter there. I
felt that this advice, if heeded, would work for my good. I was admitted
to Tuskegee for the session beginning September, 1884, three years after
the school had been opened.
When I entered Tuskegee I was filled with loathing for all forms of
manual labor. I had been a slave to toil all my life and had resolved
that, if it were possible for a colored man to make a living by doing
something besides farming, splitting rails, or picking and hoeing
cotton, I would be one of that number. I was compelled at the school,
however, like the others, to work at some industry. I did some work on
the farm and was one of the school's "boss" janitors.
[Illustration: STUDENTS PRUNING PEACH-TREES.]
Though I had no real inclination to learn a trade or to perform any kind
of manual toil, I did desire to be useful, and throughout my whole
school life at Tuskegee I had visions of myself seated in an office
pondering over Blackstone, Kent, and Storey, with a "shingle" on the
outside announcing my profession to all passers-by.
After spending some time in Tuskegee and diligently applying myself, I
was much gratified to find that I was able to pass the State examination
for a second-grade certificate, and to teach, during the vacation
period, the very school in which I had so long before learned to spell
"horseback" and "compressibility."
I spent four years in the Tuskegee Institute, graduating with the class
of 1888.
Before graduating, I divulged to Mr. Washington my long-cherished
ambition, and was somewhat chagrined to find that he did not think much
of my dreams. He apparently sympathized with this larger vision, but
seemed to think I ought to have more education. I suspect he was right.
However, I was determined to make an effort to realize my ambitions. I
insisted that he must help me to find a place to read law. After a
while it was decided that I should begin in the office of Mr. William M.
Reid, of Portsmouth, Va.
With this end in view, I taught in the State of Alabama from May, 1888,
until April, 1889. I then left for Portsmouth.
Though I had worked for eleven months, I had but $1.25 when I reached
Portsmouth. My salary had been meager, I had paid every cent I owed the
school, and had met the many obligations necessary to living in a
decently comfortable manner.
I found Mr. Reid to be an intelligent, studious, hard-working young man,
with a fairly good practise, and in that hour of uncertainty and
embarrassment he proved himself to be "the friend in need." With his aid
I was not long in finding work by which I earned enough to pay my board
and buy books to help me in my study of law at night.
I worked during the daytime at the United States Navy-Yard in
Portsmouth, receiving $1.25 per day. I had never before earned so much
money. I was able not only to meet my regular bills but to save
something, and soon began to collect a law library. I worked at the
Navy-Yard for three years. It was my privilege to work upon the
second-class battleship Texas, and upon the steel-protected cruiser
Raleigh, both of which rendered admirable service in the
Spanish-American War.
In the spring of 1892 I felt that I had sufficient knowledge of law to
begin practising. I left Virginia and returned to Alabama. The tug of
war had now begun. I found it exceedingly difficult to get examined.
After trying for five months, I succeeded in getting a lawyer, a Mr.
Thompson, of Macon County, Ala., to recommend me to the chancery court
of that county for examination. I was examined in open court before all
the practising attorneys of that bar, and was given license to practise
law in the State of Alabama.
I was elated, overjoyed--my dream was nearing its realization!
I selected Mobile, Ala., a city of about fifty thousand inhabitants, as
my field of labor. I opened my office on September 8, 1892, and have
practised law there from that time to the present date. Though I have
met many obstacles and have had many difficulties to surmount, I have
never had to close my office, or seek other employment to make a living.
I have done well.
I have experienced no embarrassment because of prejudice. The judges and
juries have discussed cases with me in the same manner that they would
with any other lawyer at the bar. I have even had a few white clients.
To get the confidence of my own people is the hardest problem I have had
to solve, for I find that men are still sometimes without honor in their
own country.
I am daily confronted with many petty difficulties. I sometimes find
that even a religious difference will come between me and a probable
client. Some think I should be a Baptist, others would have me a
Methodist, and others still suggest that I should embrace the Catholic
faith. I should also belong to every secret society in the city, and
attend every public gathering no matter what the hour, whether it be
called at high noon or at dawn of day.
Despite these things to be expected of a people but forty years free,
and used to white judges, and juries, and lawyers, and unused to dealing
with one of their own, I feel that I am still winning my way. It is my
desire to help my fellow men, and in return receive an appreciable
share of their help.
After practising my profession for nearly two years, I was married to
Miss Sarah E. Ogden, who was at that time a student at the Tuskegee
Institute. We have been happily married for ten years and have been
blessed with six children, only three of whom, I am sorry to state, are
living.
I feel that I can not close this short sketch without paying a closing
tribute to my _alma mater_--Tuskegee. Those lessons of thrift, industry,
and integrity dwelt upon by Principal Washington and his coworkers, I
shall never forget. My heart thrills and its pulses beat whenever I
think of what it has meant to me to come in contact with the quickening
influences of that school.
I lift up my voice and call her blessed, my Tuskegee!
IV
A SCHOOL TREASURER'S STORY
BY MARTIN A. MENAFEE
I was born on a plantation in Lee County, Ala., and, as my parents were
very poor, I was placed in the field and did not see the inside of a
schoolroom until I was twelve years old. I then had a chance to attend a
three months' school for six months, or for two years, as we usually
called it. Before this I had had one of my shoulders dislocated through
an accident and have been able to use but one arm since.
At this period I made up my mind to secure an education, and a gentleman
who was teaching school at my home took me to an Alabama college,
thinking that he could perhaps get me in school there. I told the
president of the college that I wanted an education, and offered him my
services in return for such opportunities as he would open to me, but
seeing my condition, he soon concluded that I could render but little in
the way of services. I pleaded with him for a trial, but he refused me
admittance, albeit in a very nice and polite manner.
I returned home, then at Oakbowery, Ala. Very soon after my return I
heard of the Tuskegee Institute, and I think it was in July of that year
when I made up my mind that I would start for this school, which was
about forty miles from where I lived. After walking to Auburn, Ala.,
twelve miles, I waited for the train and, as she glided up, I walked in
and took my seat. Before I left home I knew some walking would be
necessary, and preferred doing it at the beginning of the journey. I was
admitted on my arrival, after some parleying, and was promptly assigned
to work in the brick-yard. After I had been there for two days I found
that the sun had no pity on, or patience with, me; it seemed to blister
me through and through. I finally concluded that the sun, together with
the brick-yard, was blasting the hopes I had entertained and the
determination I had fostered, of securing an education. I tried to get
my work changed, but the Director of Industries did not see it as I did,
and would not do it.
The next thing that I settled upon for relief was to get sick, but a
day's trial of that showed that would not work. I decided that I would
return home, where I was sure I would at least find no brick-yard to
harass or disturb. My stay at the school was just about seven or eight
days. I would like to add just here, however, that I am very glad that I
was put on the brick-yard, as it certainly left in me the spirit of work
after I got over that first affliction of heat.
Very soon after I had returned home I received a letter from one of the
teachers of Talladega College, a Miss S. J. Elder, who met me when I was
there seeking entrance, asking me to go to Jenifer, Ala., and attend a
school there conducted by two white ladies; she said she would "foot"
all of my bills. This greatly relieved me, and I considered it a great
thing. Very soon thereafter I had my clothes ready, and was at Jenifer.
I was there for one year, but Tuskegee was constantly on my mind; in
fact, I had made up my mind to give it a second trial.
On October 29, 1894, I again went to Tuskegee and asked for admission. I
was admitted with the understanding that I should stand up in the Chapel
and make a public acknowledgment of the wrong I had done in leaving the
school without permission. This seemed like a great humiliation, as I
could hardly talk to one person, to say nothing of the thousand
students and teachers then there, as I stammered so much. Mr. Washington
seemed to understand the situation and was kind enough to help me out by
asking questions.
I was given work on the farm, and started out again with renewed vigor
and determination to complete a course of study. The farm manager, Mr.
C. W. Greene, was very kind to me and gave me work that I could do.
After I had been on the farm about two weeks he placed me at the gates
to keep out the cows and hogs that might be tempted to walk in on the
school-lawns. This work I enjoyed, and very soon established an "office"
under a tree near the gate. I held this position and kept this "office"
for two years.
I was then taken from there and placed in Mr. Greene's office to help
him. It was at Tuskegee that I first saw a typewriter and shorthand
writing. I made up my mind that I would be a stenographer and
typewriter, and thought that if I could learn this, that would be as
high up as I cared to go in life. I borrowed a book on shorthand, not
being able to purchase one, and began the study without a teacher. Very
soon I realized that I had learned a little, and my ambition grew. I
wanted a typewriter.
I got up enough courage to go to the Rev. R. C. Bedford, who often
visited the school, and who was one of my best friends, and, in fact, is
largely responsible for my being able to stay at Tuskegee as long as I
did, and told him I wanted a typewriter; I repeatedly told him that my
success in life largely depended upon my securing it. Mr. Bedford said
he would see what could be done, and, in a very short time, he came from
the North and brought the machine. When he informed me that he had
brought it, it did seem that I could not stay on the grounds. I felt
then that I had all that was necessary to make me a stenographer, and
very soon declared myself a member of the stenographic world.
I advanced very well in these new studies and was given some work to do
in the offices. The regular school stenographers helped me all they
could.
The saddest experience I ever had in connection with the Tuskegee
Institute was at the end of my second summer. I was very anxious to
remain in the employ of the school, as my people were very poor and I
did not care to be home on them unless I could become a full field hand,
and I felt that the school had much work that I could do. I appealed to
the Director more than once to let me remain, but he replied each time
that the work department was closed; that he could not take any more,
and furthermore, that it was best that I return home. Mr. Bedford
encouraged me all he could and told me that I might find something to
do; that I should launch out for myself. I went to Opelika, and Mr.
Bedford was on the same train. He and I were in Opelika together for
about a half day. He was on his way to Beloit, Wis., his home, and I was
on my way home to Oakbowery. About thirty minutes before it was time for
my train to leave, I noticed a man who was very busy superintending the
hauling of some lumber. This man asked my name, what I could do, and
where I was from. For a moment I hesitated to tell him, but finally did.
I found that he was the principal of the colored city school at Opelika,
Professor J. R. Savage. Mr. Savage proved to be a true friend. He gave
me work at once in the Summer Normal School he was conducting. I went to
my home that evening, rejoicing that I had found work. When I returned
to Opelika Mr. Savage asked me to take charge of the business department
of the Summer Normal and teach shorthand and typewriting. I worked with
him in this way for three summers, my vacation periods, with much
success. We worked well together and in perfect harmony.
At the opening of each school year at Tuskegee I would be among the
first to get there to begin my studies. I found that, in order to remain
at Tuskegee, students had to have a real purpose. I had one, and I think
so impressed the Faculty before leaving there.
I did not have all smooth sailing, and, at times, I would all but give
up.
I was at Tuskegee for six years, and I recall those years with much
pleasure and satisfaction. During my stay there I made many friends, and
I can not refrain from mentioning the Rev. R. C. Bedford, who has helped
me in so many ways; Mr. Warren Logan, the Treasurer of the school; Mrs.
F. B. Thornton, the Matron, who took me as her son, and my dear friend,
the farm manager, Mr. C. W. Greene. Many others were also very kind to
me.
I completed my course of study in 1900. By this time Mr. Bedford had
secured a position for me at Denmark, S. C., as stenographer to the
principal, Miss Elizabeth E. Wright, a Tuskegee graduate. I did not hold
this position very long before it was decided in a meeting of the board
of trustees to have me act as the school's treasurer. On being asked to
take this place, I answered that I would do my best. I have now been
here since the fall of the year of my graduation. I like the work
immensely.
A word about the school: It is known as the Voorhees Industrial School,
and is located in the midst of an overshadowing Negro population. It has
just completed the seventh year of its existence. Miss Wright, the
principal, founded it on faith. She is a delightfully spiritual woman,
and was at first greatly opposed in her efforts by both the black and
white people of this section. She persevered, however, and all the
people are now her friends. Her work here has been but little short of
marvelous. The pride of the grounds is a splendidly arranged Central
Building, which cost $3,000. It contains offices, class-rooms, and a
chapel that will seat 600 persons. A large building for girls, costing
$4,000, has also been erected. A Tuskegee graduate drew the plans for
both of these buildings. A barn which cost $800 we have also been able
to complete, and are now using.
In our Faculty, in addition to Miss Wright, who is of the Class of 1904,
Tuskegee Institute, we have six other Tuskegee graduates: a farm
superintendent, a carpenter, a teacher of drawing, a principal of the
primary department, a sewing and cooking teacher, a millinery teacher
and industrial helper, and a treasurer and bookkeeper, myself.
The day- and boarding-pupils number 300.
Voorhees is one of the sixteen larger "offshoots" of Tuskegee Institute,
manned and controlled by Tuskegee graduates. It is a chartered State
institution, and has on its board of trustees white and colored persons,
Northern and Southern. One of its very best and most helpful supporters
and friends is a Southern white man who has helped it in ways
innumerable, and has backed it when the courage of all of us has all but
faltered.
By precept and example the school is helping the black masses of rural
South Carolina to help themselves. The work we do is far different from
that done by any other school in the State; we provide the way for our
students, as at Tuskegee, because of their poverty, to work on the farm
and in the shops during the day and attend school at night. Without this
help most of them would be without any chance to attend school. Our
students are learning to dignify labor. None have yet graduated, as our
school is young and most of those who come to us can not read or write a
word. They are wofully ignorant, but so willing to learn, so earnest,
and so persevering.
During the last school year, 1903-'04, we received from all sources
$18,310.43. This will give some idea as to the scope and importance of
our work, and of my work in disbursing this large sum as the treasurer
of the school.
Our present property valuation is $25,000, and consists of 300 acres of
land, 3 large buildings, a large barn, a schoolhouse for primary
children, 4 cottages, an industrial building, 10 mules, 6 horses, 30
cows, 3 wagons, 3 buggies, etc., all free from indebtedness of any
character. We stay out of debt; that for which we can not pay we do
without.
We afford instruction in the following industries: Farming in its
various branches, shoemaking, carpentry, cooking, sewing, housekeeping,
laundering, millinery in a small way, printing, and blacksmithing.
The training received at Tuskegee has been of so much help to me since
leaving there. I made up my mind after graduation that I would urge my
parents and relatives to cease paying five and six bales of cotton each
year for rent, and instead take the same amount of cotton and buy a
place of their own. I am glad to say, through my efforts in this regard,
they have been placed on a tract of 160 acres of good land, and it is
practically paid for, they paying four bales of cotton a year. They are
doing well and are making something for themselves. This project seemed
a little strange to them for the first two years, but they are now used
to it.
"He that hath a trade," saith Franklin, "hath an estate, and he that
hath a calling, hath a place and honor." Since being out in the world I
have learned not to wait for a higher position or a better salary, and
have steadily sought to enlarge the ones I have had. I have tried to
fill such positions as I have had as they were never filled before, by
doing better work, by being more prompt, by being more thorough, more
polite, and, in fact, I have filled them so completely that no one else
could slip in by me. I have always laid great stress on work as a means
of developing power; I am called by some of my friends a fanatic on this
subject. My experience at Tuskegee taught me that our racial salvation
is to come through hard, earnest, intelligent, sincere work. I owe a
world of gratitude to the Tuskegee Institute for the training I received
there and for the great work it is doing for the Negro people.
I repeat, if I accomplish anything in life that is worth while, it will
be due wholly to the Tuskegee Institute, to its officers and teachers.
No true graduate of Tuskegee ever forgets the lessons learned there. I
am sure I shall not.
V
THE STORY OF A FARMER
BY FRANK REID
I am glad to be able to give some facts regarding what my brother Dow
and I have been able to do since leaving the Tuskegee Institute.
We did not graduate, I am sorry to say, but the lessons given us have
not been forgotten. These lessons started us on the way to our present
success. I do not use the word "success" boastfully, but because it
really states a fact: we have done much more than we ever hoped to do,
and have been the means of contributing in some slight measure toward
the uplifting of the immediate community about us.
We are located at a place called Dawkins, not more than twelve miles
from the Tuskegee Institute, and immediately within its sphere of
influence.
Our mother and father were born within a few miles of where we now live.
Both of our parents, at the time I write, are living, and are each
about sixty-five years of age; they were, for twenty-five years each,
slaves. Neither can read or write. My brother and I each spent about
three years at Tuskegee, and, in addition, he attended school for two
years at Talladega College.
I had a very thorough course in carpentry, and my brother worked on the
Institute farm. We married two sisters, Susie and Lillie Hendon. Shortly
after my marriage my beloved wife Susie died, leaving me with one child.
My brother's wife still lives; they have three children.
Until ten years ago we, with our father, were renters, all of us working
together. But the Sunday evening talks at Tuskegee by Principal
Washington, and his urgent insistence, at all times, that Tuskegee
graduates and students should try to own land, led us to desire to
improve our condition. We were large renters, however; for twenty-three
years our father and his relatives had leased and "worked" a tract of
1,100 acres of land, having leased it for ten years at a time. We still
lease this tract, and, in addition, rent an additional 480 acres in the
same way, ten years at a time. We subrent tracts of this total of 1,580
acres to thirty tenants, charging one and one-half bales of
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