TUSKEGEfc 
 
 MAX BENNETT THRASHER
 
 TUSKEGEE
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE 
 AMERICAN NEGRO 
 
 BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 1 2 mo. Cloth Decorative. $1.50 
 
 " In respect of distinction alike of style, 
 insight, outlook, spirif, and manner, this 
 discussion of ' The Future of the Ameri- 
 can Negro,' by Booker T. Washington, 
 is as noteworthy as any book which has 
 appeared during the year." Chicago 
 Evening Post. 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS. BOSTON
 
 ft- 
 
 ^TUSKEGEE 
 
 Its Story and Its Work 
 
 BY 
 
 MAX BENNETT THRASHER 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Small, Maynard 5? Company 
 1900
 
 Copyright 1900 by 
 
 SMALL MAYNARD &= COMPANY 
 
 Incorporated 
 
 The Heintzemann Press 
 Boston, U.S.A.
 
 To the young men and women 
 graduates and students of Tuskegee
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 During the last five years I have made several 
 visits to Alabama to study the methods and work of 
 Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for colored 
 students, and to attend the annual sessions of the Tus- 
 kegee Negro Conference, an outgrowth of the Institute. 
 I have visited many graduates and students of the 
 school at work and in their homes, over a territory 
 extending from West Virginia to Louisiana. In 
 doing this work I have had opportunities to hear Mr. 
 Booker T. Washington, the principal of the Institute, 
 address many audiences of people of both races, North 
 and South, and under widely varying conditions. 
 
 As a result of my observations during this time I 
 have brought together here a more comprehensive 
 account of the Institute, and of Mr. Washington's con- 
 nection with it, than has been possible in any of several 
 newspaper and magazine articles which I have written. 
 To the publications in which these articles have ap- 
 peared from time to time I wish to make grateful 
 acknowledgment for any material from them which I 
 may have included in this volume. 
 
 I also wish to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. 
 Wm. H. Baldwin, Jr., of New York, who has read 
 the manuscript, and to whose advice and suggestions 
 I am greatly indebted. 
 
 MAX BENNETT THRASHER. 
 Boston, Mass.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION, by BOOKER T. WASHINGTON . xiii 
 
 CHAPTER I .... -3 
 
 A Negro boy's dream. Booker T. Washington 
 born a slave. His mother's influence. 
 
 CHAPTER II .... . 7 
 
 The news of freedom. Washington's removal to 
 West Virginia. First school. How ambition to 
 learn was aroused. Influence of Mrs. Ruffner. Re- 
 visits old scenes. Makes his way to Hampton. How 
 he left West Virginia and how he returned. 
 
 CHAPTER III . . . . . . . 16 
 
 Washington admitted to Hampton. His opportunity. 
 After graduation taught at Maiden. Returns to 
 Hampton. Alabama Legislature establishes colored 
 normal school at Tuskegee. Mr. Washington en- 
 gaged as teacher. School opens July 4, 1881. 
 Land bought for permanent location and school es- 
 tablished on it. 
 
 CHAPTER IV ....... 26 
 
 Porter Hall built. State appropriation increased. 
 Brick yard established. Industrial department en- 
 larged. Mr. Washington's address at Madison, 
 Wis. Description of the school in 1884.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER V 37 
 
 Tuskegee in 1900. Description of the grounds and 
 more important buildings. How the chapel was 
 built. A village outside the school grounds. Its 
 value as an object lesson. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 52 
 
 Co-relation of moral and religious, mental and in- 
 dustrial training at Tuskegee. Requisites for ad- 
 mission. Courses of study. Blacksmith class an 
 example. . Practical illustration of results of teaching. 
 
 CHAPTER VII . . . . . . . 65 
 
 No charge for tuition. Expenses. Day school and 
 night school. Illustration of work of tinsmith de- 
 partment. The machine shop and foundry. In- 
 direct influences of the school. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII . . . . . . 75 
 
 Change in sentiment among students towards indus- 
 trial education. Instruction practical. Mr. Wash- 
 ington's son at work laying bricks. Work in the 
 harness shop. The chapel service. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 87 
 
 A Sunday evening talk to the students by Principal 
 Booker T. Washington. 
 
 CHAPTER X 93 
 
 Trades taught young women. Courses in needle- 
 work. Laundry. General housework. " The art 
 of scrubbing."
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI ....... 104 
 
 Condition of Negro farmers. Agricultural depart- 
 ment. New building. Instruction both theoretical 
 and practical. The dairy. How buttermilk made a 
 black man white. 
 
 CHAPTER XII . . . . . . .114 
 
 Typical students at Tuskegee. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 123 
 
 The Bible School. Undenominational. Missionary 
 Work. General moral teachings. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV . . . . . . .129 
 
 Number of graduates and undergraduates. Illus- 
 trations of the work of different individuals. " Tus- 
 kegee is everything." Hogs as object lessons. 
 
 CHAPTER XV . . . . . . . 147 
 
 Schools which are " children of Tuskegee." How 
 such schools are started. Mrs. Washington's mis- 
 sionary work. Typical plantation Negro life. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI . . . . . . . 162 
 
 The Tuskegee Negro Conference. Why and how 
 it was established. Its methods. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII . . . . . .174 
 
 The " Workers' Conference." The Conference agent. 
 What some farmers have done. Auxiliary Confer- 
 ences. Letter to the colored farmers.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 182 
 
 Work in the churches. The " Mothers' Meeting " 
 at Tuskegee. Other ways in which the influence of 
 the school is extended. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 186 
 
 Resources of the Institute. Annual expenses. Ex- 
 President Cleveland's opinion. Needs of the Insti- 
 tute. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 191 
 
 Expressions of opinion in regard to Tuskegee. 
 
 APPENDIX ........ 205 
 
 Faculty of Tuskegee, 1899-1900. Present Location 
 and Employment of the Class of 1899. Phelps Hall 
 Bible School Graduates, 1899. 
 
 xii
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON . . . Frontispiece 
 TINSHOP FLOAT IN PROCESSION ... 4 
 
 CLASS IN BRICK MAKING AT WORK . . 28 
 
 WARREN LOGAN, TREASURER .... 30 
 
 LIBRARY BUILDING .... .42 
 
 PARKER MEMORIAL HOUSE . . .42 
 
 SCIENCE HALL 48 
 
 CHAPEL 48 
 
 CARPENTRY CLASS BUILDING ROOF . . 56 
 
 ROBERT L. MARRY .... 64 
 
 JOSEPH L. BURKS 64 
 
 GEORGE F. BAKER ..... 64 
 
 WILLIAM M. THOMAS ..... 64 
 CLASS IN DAIRY WORK ..... 72 
 
 STUDENTS AT WORK IN MACHINE SHOP . 72 
 
 CUBAN PUPILS .... .82 
 
 GIRLS LEARNING PLAIN SEWING ... 94 
 GIRLS LEARNING MILLINERY . . .98 
 
 GIRLS LEARNING FLORICULTURE . . . 102 
 TRADE BUILDINGS AND DAIRY HERD . . 106 
 GRINDING SUGAR CANE . . . . . 112 
 A DEMONSTRATION IN MILLINERY. . . 116 
 
 CHARLES P.ADAMS 116 
 
 BOYS WHO WALKED TO TUSKEGEE . . 120 
 GRADUATES OF BIBLE TRAINING SCHOOL . 126 
 PERDUE BROTHERS ... .130
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 WILLIAM J. EDWARDS . . 130 
 
 JAMES M. CANTY . . . .... . 130 
 
 GROUP OF TUSKEGEE SlNGERS . .138 
 
 A. J. WlLHORN . . . . . . 144 
 
 N. E. HENRY 144 
 
 WILLIAM PEARSON . . . . . . 144 
 
 A. J. WOOD 144 
 
 FIRST SCHOOL HOUSE AT SNOW HILL . 148 
 
 "WASHINGTON HALL" ... .148 
 
 IDA M. ABERCROMBIE . . . 152 
 
 CORNELIA BOWEN 152 
 
 MT. MEIGS INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE 152 
 
 MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON . . . 158 
 DELEGATES FOR FARMERS' CONFERENCE . 162 
 QUARTETTE OF "SISTERS" . . . . 166 
 CONFERENCE DELEGATES . . . . 166 
 INTERIOR OF CHAPEL WITH CONFERENCE IN 
 
 SESSION 
 
 AN OLD " UNCLE ...... 
 
 FATHER AND SON .... 
 
 A SNAP SHOT 
 
 ARGUING THE POINT ..... 
 GIRLS LEARNING BEE KEEPING . 
 EMMETT J. SCOTT .... 
 SLATER-ARMSTRONG BUILDING
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher, the author of this 
 little volume, has exceptional fitness for the 
 work that he has done. For a number of years 
 he has been closely acquainted with the Tuske- 
 gee Normal and Industrial Institute and its 
 work. He has made many visits to the institu- 
 tion and studied its work closely upon the 
 grounds. Besides being a newspaper writer of 
 experience and talent, he has taken the precau- 
 tion to travel carefully through many of our 
 Southern States, and in speaking of the work of 
 the graduates from Tuskegee he tells that which 
 he has actually seen and examined into. Few 
 persons have had a better opportunity to judge 
 of the value of Tuskegee's graduates than Mr. 
 Thrasher. He has not only studied carefully 
 the influence of our students in building up the 
 colored people in the various communities where 
 they are laboring as teachers, farmers, mechanics, 
 etc., but what is equally important, he has noted 
 carefully the influence of these men and women 
 in bringing about a better sentiment between 
 the races. Any one who wants to get first hand 
 information in regard to the work of such institu- 
 tions as Tuskegee and the power exerted through 
 the graduates can find few better sources of in- 
 formation than is contained in Mr. Thrasher's 
 book, and I bespeak for it a careful reading by all 
 who are interested in our great Southern prob-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 lem, which, to be more precise, is not a Southern 
 problem, but a national problem in which North 
 and South should be equally interested. 
 
 Mr. Thrasher's book bears out the statement 
 which I have often made, that the wisest and 
 most economic policy to pursue in lifting up the 
 black race in the South is to equip well certain 
 large central institutions which can send out a 
 constant stream of unselfish, wise, Christian 
 leaders who are well fortified with academic and 
 industrial training, and who will settle in small 
 communities and show the people themselves how 
 to improve their schools and industrial and reli- 
 gious condition. This was the policy which the 
 late General S. C. Armstrong, the Principal of 
 the Hampton Institute, so wisely outlined years 
 ago, and the one which is being so carefully and 
 successfully followed by his successor, Dr. H. B. 
 Frissell. Every black man who is so trained 
 that he can do something better than somebody 
 else, can do a common thing in an uncommon 
 manner, can make himself indispensable in the 
 community where he lives, not only helps our 
 own race but secures at the same time the 
 respect, confidence, and cooperation of the 
 Southern white people in the community where 
 he lives. All who are interested in the proper 
 solution of the problem in the South should feel 
 deeply grateful to Mr. Thrasher for the task 
 which he has undertaken and performed so well. 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. 
 
 Tuskegec Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama, 
 September i, 1900. 
 
 xvi
 
 T U S K E G E E 
 
 Its Story and Its Work
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NOT long after the Civil War had closed, a 
 Negro boy, who had been born a slave and freed 
 by the war, was learning to read in the spare 
 minutes of his work as general chore-boy about 
 a West Virginia farmhouse. Sometimes, late 
 at night, after he had gone to bed in that one 
 of the houses of " the quarters " in which he 
 slept, the boy would tell himself that some day, 
 when he had grown to be a man, he meant to 
 found a school for Negro boys and girls which 
 should grow to be so great and famous that even 
 the President of the United States would come 
 to visit it. 
 
 The dream in the outbuilding among the West 
 Virginia mountains has come true. The boy 
 was Booker Washington. The school which he 
 founded at Tuskegee, Alabama, he has developed 
 until now more than a thousand young Negro 
 men and women are taught there every year to 
 make their lives count for the most possible for 
 themselves and for their race. In the autumn 
 of the year 1898, when President McKinley, 
 accompanied by his cabinet and several promi- 
 nent generals of the United States Army, made 
 a journey through the South, they spent one 
 entire day visiting Tuskegee Normal and Indus- 
 trial Institute. At that time the President, 
 speaking in public, said :
 
 4- Tuskegee 
 
 " To speak of Tuskegee without paying special 
 tribute to Booker T. Washington's genius and 
 perseverance, would be impossible. The incep- 
 tion of this noble enterprise was his, and he 
 deserves high credit for it. His was the enthu- 
 siasm and enterprise which made its steady pro- 
 gress possible, and established in the institute 
 its present high standard of accomplishment. 
 He has won a worthy reputation as one of the 
 great leaders of his race, . widely known and 
 much respected at home and abroad as an 
 accomplished educator, a great orator, and a true 
 philanthropist." 
 
 President McKinley has said that it would be 
 impossible to speak of Tuskegee without paying 
 tribute to Booker T. Washington. It would be 
 equally impossible to write fully and compre- 
 hensively of Tuskegee without giving some 
 account of Mr. Washington's life before he 
 founded the school. The circumstances under 
 which his boyhood and youth were passed, and 
 the obstacles with which he had to contend, 
 were very generally the common lot of the 
 people of his race, to aid whom Tuskegee was 
 established. His own experiences enabled him 
 to understand the needs of others and roused in 
 him an ambition to try and satisfy those needs. 
 
 Booker Washington was born a slave on a 
 plantation near Hale's Ford, in Virginia. He 
 does not know just when, for the coming into 
 the world of one more black baby on a slave 
 plantation was a matter of so little account that
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 frequently no record of the event was kept 
 which would accurately fix the date. Probably 
 Mr. Washington was born in 1857 or 1858, 
 though, as one of his earliest recollections is of 
 hearing the Negroes talk in whispers in their 
 cabins at night about a war which was being 
 fought around them. As he has a quite natural 
 desire to have a birthday, Mr. Washington usu- 
 ally selects Easter Sunday for that celebration. 
 
 The home into which the black baby came 
 was of the humblest a windowless, one-room 
 log cabin, with the earth itself for the floor. Not 
 long ago I heard Mr. Washington say, " My first 
 memory of life is that of a one-room log cabin 
 with a dirt floor that had a hole in the center 
 which served as a winter home for sweet potatoes. 
 Wrapped in a few rags I spent my nights on this 
 dirt floor, and clad in a single garment I often 
 spent my days about the plantation." 
 
 Another memory of those early days I heard 
 him recall to a great audience of his own people 
 in a southern city. He had been speaking of 
 Lincoln, and said, " My first acquaintance with 
 our hero was this : Night after night, before the 
 dawn of day, on an old slave plantation in Vir- 
 ginia, I recall the form of my sainted mother, 
 bending over a bundle of rags that enveloped my 
 body, on a dirt floor, breathing a fervent prayer 
 to Heaven that ' Massa Lincoln ' might succeed, 
 and that some day she and I might be free." 
 
 No one who has seen much of Booker Wash- 
 ington can fail to have been impressed by his
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 affection for his mother while she lived, and his 
 devotion to her memory. I think her influence 
 is often made manifest through him, even now, 
 although, perhaps, he may not be conscious of the 
 fact at the time. I have frequently heard him 
 tell his own students, or those of other schools, 
 " The learning which you acquire is of no use to 
 you unless it makes you better able to live. The 
 knowledge which you acquire from books is of 
 use only as you apply it. Young man, use your 
 knowledge of geometry to help your father lay 
 out his cotton rows, your knowledge of chem- 
 istry to show him how to raise better crops. 
 Young woman, use your knowledge of chemistry 
 to help your mother in her cooking and washing, 
 your skill in embroidery to assist her in the 
 family mending. When you go home from 
 school to-night, or at the end of the term, put on 
 your overalls, young manj and say, ' Father, you 
 have borne the heat of the day in putting in the 
 crops ; go you now and sit in the shade and rest, 
 while I hoe the crop or do the milking.' Young 
 woman, when you go home, tie on an apron and 
 say, ' Now, mother, you must be tired ; sit down 
 and rest while I do the washing or ironing, and 
 get supper.' And, mark my words, the heart of 
 that father and that mother will leap for joy, 
 and they will say, ' Nothing of all the hard work 
 that we have done that our children may go to 
 school has been too hard, for they appreciate our 
 sacrifices and are making the most of their 
 opportunities."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ONE day a Negro woman running through 
 " the quarters " thrust her head inside the door 
 of Washington's mother's cabin, and shouted, 
 " Praise Gawd ! We 's all done sent for to come 
 up to de big house." A little later, to all the 
 slaves, men, women and children, gathered in the 
 yard in front of the house, some one standing on 
 the verandah read a paper. Washington was too 
 young to comprehend the words, or to under- 
 stand why the men and women around him 
 should jump up and down and shout, " Glory Hal- 
 lelujah ! Praise de Lawd ! " But his mother, 
 bending down to where he was clinging to her 
 dress, whispered to him that now they were 
 free. 
 
 When the coming of freedom made it possible 
 for them to seek a new home, Mr. Washington's 
 mother and her family crossed the mountains 
 into the western part of West Virginia, where 
 work which would pay money wages could be 
 had, in the coal mines and salt furnaces of that 
 region. Their destination was Maiden, a little 
 village on the banks of the Kanawha river, five 
 miles above the city of Charleston. Here the 
 children worked to help support the home. 
 Booker found employment in a coal mine as a 
 " miner's helper," at fifty cents a/lay, or drove 
 one of the mules used to drag the coal-laden
 
 8 Tuskegee 
 
 cars out of the mine. At other times he worked 
 at one of the salt furnaces, packing the dry salt 
 into barrels, or shoveling the salt off from the 
 platform above the tanks of boiling brine, where 
 it had been piled to drain, always a dangerous 
 work, since a misstep meant almost certain 
 death. 
 
 In the summer of 1899 I visited Charleston, 
 West Virginia, with Mr. Washington, and we 
 spent one whole day going about among these 
 scenes of his boyhood. The coal mine where he 
 worked had been " blown out," that is, aban- 
 doned, some years before ; but an increased de- 
 mand for coal had attracted attention to it again, 
 and when we were there the gallery was being 
 cleared of debris preparatory to being opened for 
 work. Of the salt furnace at which Mr. Wash- 
 ington worked nothing remained but the ruins 
 of a huge stone chimney rising from a cornfield. 
 
 During the first year that the family lived in 
 West Virginia, a young man by the name of 
 William Davis, who had recently been mustered 
 out of service as a member of the Ohio troops in 
 the late war, came to Maiden and contracted to 
 teach a subscription school there for colored 
 children: Washington's mother was one of the 
 subscribers, and the boy Booker began his edu- 
 cation under this man, from whom he learned 
 his letters. Mr. Davis is now living in Charles- 
 ton, where I went to see him. He told me that 
 Washington was a slow scholar in arithmetic, but 
 quick to learn to read, and always an easy and
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 ready speaker. The account which Mr. Wash- 
 ington gives of how he first came to want to go 
 to school may give a hint as to the reason for his 
 fondness for reading. " One day," he says, " I hap- 
 pened to see a group of colored men gathered 
 around another man who knew how to read, and 
 who was reading aloud to them from a piece of 
 newspaper. The man's hearers gazed at him with 
 mouths and eyes wide open with admiration, as 
 he slowly spelled out the words. He was little 
 less than a god to them. I resolved at once that 
 I would acquire an art which could give a man 
 such a power over his fellows, and from that day 
 I watched for a chance to go to school." 
 
 When Washington was about twelve years old 
 he was hired by a white woman, Mrs. Viola 
 Ruffner, who lived in Maiden, to work for her as a 
 general chore-boy in and about the house. Mrs. 
 Ruffner was a northern woman, a native of Ver- 
 mont, who had married and settled in West Vir- 
 ginia. She was a woman of remarkable force of 
 character and great kindness of heart. When 
 she came to understand the ambitions of her new 
 kitchen boy, she took pains to help him in many 
 ways. Much of this time he remained a pupil 
 in the village night school, but Mrs. Ruffner 
 helped him greatly with his studies. Not long 
 before I went to Maiden I had the pleasure of 
 visiting Mrs. Ruffner at her home. She was 
 then living in Charleston, South Carolina, with 
 her son, Major E. H. Ruffner. From her I 
 heard many personal reminiscences of those early
 
 io Tuskegee 
 
 years of the colored boy, in whose successful 
 later life she has always taken a warm interest. 
 " Booker was always a good boy," she said, " and 
 never wasted his time, as so many servants did. 
 If he had a few minutes of spare time he would 
 sit down in a corner of the kitchen and study his 
 reading lesson ; and more than once I have seen 
 a light between twelve and one o'clock in the 
 out-building where he slept, and have gone there 
 to make him stop studying, put out his light and 
 go to bed, because I knew he had to.get up early 
 the next morning to go to peddle vegetables at the 
 furnaces down the river. He was never satisfied 
 unless he was doing something to help himself 
 ' get on in the world.' I remember he left me two 
 or three times for other work which seemed to 
 offer greater opportunities, once going to work 
 on one of the river steamboats, but he always 
 came back, until he left me to go to Hampton." 
 While Mr. Washington was spending a few 
 weeks in Europe, for a rest, in the summer of 
 1 899, he received an invitation from the governor 
 of West Virginia, the city government of Charles- 
 ton, and a great number of prominent citizens of 
 both races, to visit Charleston on his return to 
 this country, that there might be given him there 
 a series of receptions which would testify the re- 
 spect felt by the citizens of his old home for him 
 and for his work. This invitation was accepted, 
 and it was at this time, in August and Sep- 
 tember, 1899, that I visited West Virginia with 
 Mr. Washington. At that time, speaking in
 
 Tuskegee 11 
 
 public to a great audience of both races assem- 
 bled in the opera house in Charleston, he paid 
 this tribute to Mrs. Ruffner : 
 
 " Not far from here, in the family of a noble 
 white woman whom most of you know, I re- 
 ceived a training in the matters of thoroughness, 
 cleanliness, promptness and honesty, which, I 
 confess to you, in a large measure, enables me 
 to do the work for which I am given credit. 
 As I look over my life I feel that the training 
 which I received in the family of Mrs. Viola 
 Ruffner was a most valuable part of my edu- 
 cation. " 
 
 While we were at Maiden we visited the 
 Ruffner house, which is still in the possession of 
 the family, and I secured several pictures of Mr. 
 Washington amid scenes which were associated 
 with his early life there. The Kanawha valley, 
 at Maiden, is little more than a mountain gorge. 
 The Ruffner house stands facing the river, across 
 which the trains of the Chesapeake and Ohio 
 railroad leave black smoke wreaths against the 
 sky. The house is so close to the bank that 
 one standing at the garden fence can toss a 
 stone into the water. While we stood there 
 looking at the hills which shut the valley in so 
 closely, Mr. Washington said : " When I was a 
 boy these mountains looked so high to me, I re- 
 member I used to wonder what was behind them, 
 and wish I could climb to the tops and see. " I 
 thought to myself at the time that few persons 
 have had their wishes more fully gratified.
 
 12 Tuskegee 
 
 The first house in which Mr. Washington's 
 mother lived when they came to Maiden is gone 
 entirely. This was a log house, and we could 
 find no trace of it, except a few bricks of the 
 chimney buried in a forest of weeds. The house 
 in which the family lived when Booker started 
 for Hampton is still standing, in good repair. 
 We also visited " Father Rice, " the grizzled old 
 Negro preacher who was Washington's first Sun- 
 day-school teacher. He has lived in Maiden all 
 these years. He was delighted to see his former 
 pupil, of whose fame now he had heard rumors, 
 and gladly consented to stand with him in front 
 of the parsonage that they might be photo- 
 graphed together. I asked him how Mr. Wash- 
 ington behaved in Sunday-school, when he was 
 a boy, and he said, " Ah hain't nuffin to say agi'n' 
 him. He was allus a good boy. " 
 
 It was while the boy, Booker, was at work for 
 Mrs. Ruffner that he heard of General Arm- 
 strong's school at Hampton as a place where 
 black boys would be taught, and at the same 
 time be allowed to work to pay their expenses. 
 This was just the chance "to get on in the 
 world, " for which Mrs. Ruffner told me he was 
 always looking. He resolved at once to go to 
 Hampton, although he had almost no money, 
 and did not even know definitely where Hamp- 
 ton was. His mother and brother added what 
 little money they could spare to his savings, and 
 bidding them and Mrs. Ruffner good-by, he set 
 out. Even with what had been given him, the
 
 Tuskegee 13 
 
 boy had money enough to pay his stage fare and 
 car fare for only a portion of the journey over 
 the mountains to the sea. He rode when he 
 could, and walked the rest of the way, working 
 here and there for food and lodging, and fre- 
 quently sleeping in barns or by the roadside. 
 In this way, inquiring the route as he went, he 
 reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, too late 
 one night to find work, and absolutely out of 
 money with which to secure a lodging. 
 
 I once heard him tell the story of that night 
 to an audience in Columbia, South Carolina. 
 " It was nearly midnight, " he said. " I had 
 walked about for a long time, not knowing what 
 to do, and hoping that some opportunity for 
 work might present itself. Finally I found my- 
 self on a stretch of plank sidewalk near the river. 
 I saw a good, dry place under the sidewalk. 
 There was no one in sight. I crawled in, curled 
 up and went to sleep. When I woke it was 
 morning, and I found myself near a vessel which 
 had just come in and which had a cargo to be 
 unloaded. I secured a chance to help at this, 
 and as the work lasted for several days, I came 
 back to the same place under the sidewalk to 
 sleep each night, that I might save the money 
 which otherwise it would have cost me for lodg- 
 ing. In this way, I earned enough money to 
 pay my fare the rest of the way to Hampton, 
 and leave me with fifty cents in my pocket when 
 I got there. " 
 
 The invitation to revisit his old home, to which
 
 14 Tuskegee 
 
 I have referred, and the welcome accorded him 
 there, formed, I am sure, one of the most grati- 
 fying incidents in Mr. Washington's life. He 
 had left West Virginia an untaught, unknown 
 boy ; he returned the honored guest of the state, 
 city and people, with a reputation which is more 
 than national. Ex-Governor W. A. MacCorkle, 
 the last Democratic governor of the state, and 
 Mr. Wm. M. O. Dawson, the secretary of state 
 of the Republican state administration, in office 
 at the time, met Mr. Washington at the train 
 with an open carriage into which he was taken 
 and driven to the place in the city where he was 
 to be entertained. Perhaps only those who have 
 lived in the South can fully realize the signifi- 
 cance of this courtesy. On the evening of the 
 day of his arrival the public meeting, of which 
 I have spoken, was held at the opera house. 
 Rev. D. W. Shaw, D.D., the colored pastor of 
 Simpson M. E. Church, presided at this meeting. 
 Governor G. W. Atkinson, the chief executive 
 of the state at the time, and ex-Governor Mac- 
 Corkle, with many state and city officials, sat 
 upon the platform, along with several prominent 
 Negro citizens. A chorus of Negro children from 
 the public schools furnished music. Ex-Governor 
 MacCorkle, in the preliminary speaking, said 
 that while the white men of the country had 
 been discussing the best methods by which to 
 solve the race problem, Mr. Washington had 
 grasped hold of that problem and done more to 
 solve it than any man living. Governor Atkin-
 
 Tuskegee 15 
 
 son spoke of his life-long acquaintance with 
 Mr. Washington, and closed by saying, " I intro- 
 duce to you Booker T. Washington, formerly of 
 West Virginia, but now of the United States." 
 A reception and banquet were given Mr. Wash- 
 ington at the City Club rooms by the colored 
 citizens ; there were several less formal social 
 functions, and Governor Atkinson gave him a 
 public reception on behalf of the white citizens 
 at the executive rooms in the State Capitol. 
 From out of all this I find that one sentence from 
 the prayer of a colored minister who opened the 
 first meeting in the opera house is going to stay 
 fixed in my mind longer than anything else. He 
 thanked the Lord for having given the race " a 
 leader with such a consecrated character and so 
 muck practical common sense"
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " WHEN I reached Hampton," Mr. Washing- 
 ton has said in telling of his introduction to that 
 institution, " and presented myself as a candidate 
 for admission to the school, the instructors who 
 saw me first were not at all certain that they 
 cared to enroll me as a pupil, a fact at which I 
 do not wonder, as I remember the appearance 
 I must have presented to them. It had taken a 
 considerable time for me to make the journey 
 over the mountains. I had walked a good share 
 of the way, and had often slept in barns before 
 I had occupied my lodging under the sidewalk 
 in Richmond. My clothes had been none too 
 good when I started ; they were much worse 
 when I reached my journey's end. I wanted to 
 stay, and pleaded to be allowed to do so ! I said 
 I would work. They wanted to know what I 
 could do. I told them what I had been doing. 
 Finally one of the instructors took me to a room 
 which needed sweeping, gave me a broom and 
 told me to see how well I could clean the room. 
 I suppose I swept and dusted that room as many 
 as four or five times before I was satisfied with 
 it. Then one of the lady teachers came and 
 inspected my work, and reported that it was 
 satisfactory. That was my entrance examina- 
 tion, I passed it successfully, and was allowed to 
 stay."
 
 Tuskegee 17 
 
 Of his life at Hampton, Mr. Washington has 
 said : " At Hampton I found the opportunity 
 in the way of buildings, teachers, and industries 
 provided by the generous to get training in the 
 class room and by practical touch with industrial 
 life to learn thrift, economy, and push. I was 
 surrounded by an atmosphere of business, Chris- 
 tian influence, and a spirit of self-help that 
 seemed to have awakened every faculty within 
 me, and caused me for the first time to realize 
 what it meant to be a man instead of a piece of 
 property. While there I resolved that when I 
 had finished the course of training I would go 
 into the far South, into the Black Belt of the 
 South, and give my life to providing the same 
 kind of opportunity for self-reliance and self- 
 awakening that I had found provided for me at 
 Hampton." 
 
 The school at Hampton, Virginia, to which 
 Booker Washington found his way over the 
 mountains, was an outgrowth of work begun 
 during the war by representatives of the Amer- 
 ican Missionary Association among the Negro 
 refugees who had flocked to Hampton by thou- 
 sands. In 1868 a regularly established school for 
 colored pupils was opened as a result of this pre- 
 liminary work. In 1870 this school was incor- 
 porated as the " Hampton Normal and Agricul- 
 tural Institute." The first principal of Hampton 
 Institute was the late General S. C. Armstrong, 
 who for some time previous had been an official 
 of the Freedmen's Bureau at Hampton.
 
 i8 Tuskegee 
 
 In General Armstrong were combined a rare 
 personal fitness and unusual preparation for the 
 management of such a school at such a time. He 
 was the son of Rev. Richard Armstrong, D.D., 
 who for forty years had been a missionary in the 
 Sandwich Islands, and for sixteen years minister 
 of public instruction there. General Armstrong 
 was born in the Sandwich Islands, and as a 
 young man served under his father in the Depart- 
 ment of Public Instruction. Later he came to 
 New England, and having graduated from Wil- 
 liams College, in 1862, at once entered the army. 
 He was soon promoted to the position of colonel 
 of a colored regiment, remaining in the service 
 until the close of the war allowed him to under- 
 take the work of the Freedman's Bureau. 
 
 General Armstrong made Hampton a great 
 educational institution. He devoted his life and 
 strength to the work, from the founding of the 
 school until his death in 1 893. He was succeeded 
 by Dr. H. B. Frissell, as principal, under whose 
 administration the high standard of the school 
 has been maintained. Thousands of Negro and 
 Indian students have been trained there, and the 
 influence of the institution for good is incalcu- 
 lable. Its graduates and students are scattered 
 throughout the West and South. While Tuske- 
 gee is the most vigorous offshoot of the Institute 
 there are other important schools in the South 
 which have been established and developed by 
 Hampton graduates. Among them are Calhoun, 
 and Mt. Meigs People's School in Alabama;
 
 Tuskegee 19 
 
 Kittrell, in North Carolina, and Gloucester and 
 Lawrenceville, in Virginia. 
 
 Mr. Washington graduated from Hampton in 
 1875, and the same year went back to his old 
 home at Maiden, West Virginia, to teach the 
 school there, remaining in charge of this for 
 three years. He brought to his work the new 
 methods and practical ideas which he had learned 
 at Hampton, and his reputation as a teacher sur- 
 vives in Maiden to this day. One of the inno- 
 vations which he introduced was that of having 
 military drill by the boys of the school, using 
 sticks for arms, since they had no guns. A man 
 who was his pupil then, told me a story of this 
 drill when I was in Maiden. That the first man- 
 oeuvres of his raw recruits might not attract 
 undue attention, the young teacher was accus- 
 tomed to assemble his company in a secluded 
 spot back from the village, among the hills, 
 where they would be out of sight. One day 
 they were studiously drilling there, keeping step 
 to the " hip ! hip ! hip ! " of their instructor, when 
 there came around a turn in the mountain path, 
 squarely in their faces, a half -grown boy coming 
 into town from his country home. He gave one 
 frightened look on the advancing company, and 
 then, throwing down whatever burden he carried, 
 ran back home to spread a report that the war 
 was on once more, and that he had met a com- 
 pany of advancing soldiers. 
 
 In 1878 Mr. Washington took a course of 
 study in Wayland Seminary, Washington, D. C.
 
 2O Tuskegee 
 
 The next year, at the request of General Arm- 
 strong, he returned to Hampton as an instructor 
 there, being given the care of the Indian boys 
 who were then at the school. 
 
 In 1880, the member of the Alabama Legis- 
 lature from Tuskegee, a prominent Democrat, 
 and afterwards speaker of the House, offered a 
 bill which was passed by the General Assembly, 
 appropriating $2000 annually to pay the salaries 
 of teachers in a normal school to be located at 
 Tuskegee, for the training of colored teachers. 
 
 This act of the Assembly being approved in 
 February of the next year, Mr. G. W. Campbell 
 of Tuskegee, one of three commissioners ap- 
 pointed for the school by the legislature, wrote 
 to General Armstrong, asking him if he could 
 suggest a suitable 'per son for principal of the new 
 school. General Armstrong suggested Booker 
 T. Washington, and recommended him so highly 
 that eventually he was engaged. When Mr. 
 Washington arrived at Tuskegee, he found no 
 school house provided for him, and no prospect 
 of any. The state had appropriated money to 
 pay the salaries of teachers, only, and nothing 
 for school building, furniture, books, apparatus 
 and current expenses. All these the colored 
 people themselves must provide if they would 
 take advantage of the state's assistance. 
 
 In the first letter which he wrote to his Hamp- 
 ton friends, after he had arrived at Tuskegee, the 
 new teacher said : " On Friday I rode about four- 
 teen miles into the country to attend the closing
 
 Tuskegee 21 
 
 exercises of the school of one of the teachers. 
 From this trip I got some idea of the colored 
 people in the country. Never was I more sur- 
 prised and moved than when I saw at one house 
 two boys, eight or nine years old, perfectly nude. 
 They seemed not to mind their condition in the 
 least. Passing on from house to house I saw 
 many other children, five and six years old, in 
 the same condition. It was very seldom that I 
 saw any children decently dressed. If they wore 
 clothing, it was only one garment, and that so 
 black and greasy that it did not look like cloth. 
 The colored teachers in this part of Alabama have 
 had few advantages, many of them having never 
 attended school themselves. They know nothing 
 of the improved methods of teaching. They 
 hail with joy the Normal School, and most of 
 them will become its students. If there is a 
 place in the world where a good Normal School 
 is needed, it is right here. What an influence 
 for good ; first, on the teachers, and from them 
 on the children and parents." 
 
 The first session of the Tuskegee Normal and 
 Industrial Institute was assembled in 1881, on 
 the Fourth of July, an auspicious day for the 
 beginning of the enterprise. There were thirty 
 students in attendance, the most of them teach- 
 ers like those whom Mr. Washington had de- 
 scribed in his letter. One of the students was a 
 colored preacher, the pastor of one of the churches 
 in Tuskegee, a man fifty years of age. The prob- 
 lem of a school building was solved by an old
 
 22 Tuskegee 
 
 Negro church in Tuskegee being utilized for that 
 purpose. The number of students increased 
 rapidly, as the news of the establishment of the 
 school spread throughout the state. Pupils kept 
 coming from towns farther and farther away 
 from Tuskegee, finding opportunities for board 
 in the town. An old shanty near the church 
 was occupied .as a recitation room, and Miss 
 Olivia A. Davidson, a graduate of Hampton, 
 and of the Framingham, Massachusetts, Normal 
 School, was secured as an assistant teacher. 
 This second building was so poor that I have 
 heard Mr. Washington say that when it rained 
 the roof leaked so badly that one of the boys 
 was obliged to hold an umbrella over the teacher 
 in order that she might be able to go on hearing 
 the lessons. 
 
 The newly-established school had been in 
 operation only a few months when the " practical 
 common sense," for which the Negro minister 
 at Charleston was so thankful, led the teacher 
 to decide that he could not secure the best results 
 possible from his efforts so long as he was able 
 to influence his pupils only during the hours 
 they spent in the schoolroom. He wrote to a 
 friend : " An institution for the education of 
 colored youth can be but a partial success with- 
 out a boarding department. In it they can be 
 taught those correct habits which they fail to get 
 at home. Without this part of the training they 
 go out into the world with trained intellects, but 
 with their morals and bodies neglected."
 
 Tuskegee 23 
 
 In addition to this, many of the students were 
 so poor that they could not afford to remain at 
 the school long enough to get much real benefit 
 unless they could have some opportunity to work 
 to earn money, or to help to pay their expenses. 
 One after another would come to the teacher, after 
 a time, to say that his little store of money was 
 exhausted, and that he must go. I quote a pas- 
 sage from a letter of Mr. Washington's written 
 at that time, in which he said : " I remember the 
 day I came to Hampton with but fifty cents in 
 my pocket, and was given a chance to help my- 
 self. Oh, that it were possible to give such a 
 chance to these students." 
 
 Just at this time an old plantation, about a 
 mile from Tuskegee village, was offered for sale. 
 It contained one hundred acres of fairly good 
 land, and on the land were a few small buildings. 
 Five hundred dollars was asked for the place, 
 but of this only two hundred dollars need be 
 paid down. The young teacher of the struggling 
 school saw the opportunity, and a bold idea came 
 to him. He wrote to the treasurer of Hampton 
 Institute, and asked him if it would be practic- 
 able to lend two hundred dollars to plant a 
 Hampton seed at Tuskegee. The answer came : 
 " To lend you Hampton school funds, No. To 
 lend you at my own risk, Yes, and here is my 
 check, and God speed you." 
 
 The two hundred dollars clinched the bargain 
 for the land, and within two months were returned 
 to the sender. In less than three months more
 
 24 Tuskegee 
 
 Mr. Washington was able to write to this 
 friend : 
 
 " TUSKEGEE, DEC. 18, 1881. 
 " Four months and a half ago, without a dollar 
 of our own, we contracted to buy a farm of a 
 hundred acres, at a cost of five hundred dollars, 
 on which to permanently locate our school. To- 
 day the last dollar has been paid." 
 
 How was this money raised ? Over a hundred 
 dollars was secured in Tuskegee, by entertain- 
 ments, and by subscriptions from both whites 
 and blacks. A friend in Connecticut gave three 
 hundred dollars. The vacation students at Hamp- 
 ton, the young men and women who remain at 
 school through the long summer vacation to 
 work to save money enough to go to school the 
 rest of the year, gave nearly a hundred dollars 
 from their hard-earned savings. About this time 
 a friend gave one hundred dollars, with the stip- 
 ulation that it should be used to buy a horse to 
 work on the land, something the school greatly 
 needed. This money was put into the hands of 
 Mr. Lewis Adams, a colored man at Tuskegee, 
 to expend. Mr. Adams had been prominent 
 in helping to get the school established, and 
 was one of the three commissioners originally 
 appointed by the state to act for the school, a 
 position which he has ever since held. He was 
 a shoemaker and tinsmith by trade, and as soon 
 as those branches of industrial work were estab- 
 lished at the school he took charge of them.
 
 Tuskegee 25 
 
 He still remains at the head of the tinsmith 
 department, and it was in the school's tin-shop 
 that he told me about this first horse, on the 
 occasion of my being in Tuskegee in 1899. " I 
 took that one hundred dollars," said Mr. Adams, 
 " and made it go so far that when I came back 
 to the school I had a good horse, a second-hand 
 lumber wagon, a harness, a plow, and a sack of 
 corn to begin to feed the horse on. That horse 
 did all our work for a long while." Now the 
 Institute has six hundred head of stock, 
 horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and hogs. 
 
 So the new departure was made. The farm 
 was deeded to a board of trustees who included 
 representative men of the North and the South, 
 white and colored, with a majority of no one 
 sect. The preparatory class of the increasing 
 school took possession of the old farmhouse on 
 the plantation, and, as soon as the early southern 
 spring made work on the land possible, the boys 
 went to work with happy hearts to plant their 
 first crops of corn and cotton.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE accommodations for the school were much 
 greater on the plantation than they had been in 
 the town, but they did not keep pace with the 
 demands made upon them. Before the first 
 school year was completed it was necessary to 
 make plans for a new and larger building. The 
 corner stone of this building was laid March 30, 
 1882, at the celebration of the close of the first 
 session of the school. The address on this occa- 
 sion was delivered by Hon. Waddy Thompson, 
 county superintendent of education. From a 
 report of this celebration I quote a paragraph. 
 This report, speaking of Mr. Thompson's address, 
 adds, " With eloquent words he bade the workers 
 Godspeed, trusting that their labors might prove 
 a blessing to their race. A colored pastor pres- 
 ent, feelingly exclaimed, ' I thank God for what I 
 have witnessed to-day something I never saw 
 before, nor did I ever expect to see, one who 
 but yesterday was one of our owners, to-day lay 
 the cornerstone of a building devoted to the 
 education of my race. For such a change let us 
 all thank God ! ' ' 
 
 The report from which I have quoted says : 
 " During the year, one hundred and twelve 
 students from various parts of the state have 
 attended the school, and now, during vacation, 
 many of them are doing good work as teachers,
 
 Tuskegee 27 
 
 by which to obtain money to return next year. 
 By the aid of the people in Tuskegee, in money 
 and labor, and by help from northern friends, 
 the lumber is now on the ground for a new 
 building, the building is being framed, and we 
 are making every effort to have it completed by 
 the beginning of the next session, Septem- 
 ber i, 1882." 
 
 The new building, placed on the site of the 
 old farmhouse on the plantation, was named 
 Porter Hall ; after one of the chief contributors 
 to the building fund. It was a wooden building 
 three stories high, with a basement, and con- 
 tained six recitation rooms, a large chapel, a 
 reading-room and library, a boarding hall, and, 
 in the third story, dormitories for girls. Porter 
 Hall was dedicated at the school's second anni- 
 versary, in 1883. 
 
 In the summer of 1883 a small frame cottage 
 was put up at the school, containing four rooms, 
 in which sixteen young men were lodged. Three 
 rude cabins near the school were rented the same 
 year, and in these thirty-six more young men 
 found rooms, procuring their meals at the board- 
 ing department. A great advantage which re- 
 sulted from this was that the boys who boarded 
 at the school could work out a portion of their 
 expenses. 
 
 The need for a dormitory building for the 
 boys, which would accommodate at least a hundred 
 students, was pressing. Mr. Washington, with 
 an eye to permanency, decided to erect brick
 
 28 T u s k e g e e 
 
 buildings wherever structures of any consider- 
 able size were contemplated. Fortunately there 
 was a clay pit on the plantation, and he deter- 
 mined to have the young men make the bricks. 
 
 The work of preparation for the new building 
 went forward rapidly ; and the building was 
 needed. The winter proved one of unusual sever- 
 ity, and the temporary shelter provided for the 
 students was not always sufficient. On February 
 fifteenth of that year Mr. Washington wrote : 
 " Not less than ten hands went up in chapel a 
 few nights ago, in answer to the inquiry how 
 many of the young men had been frost-bitten 
 during the cold weather. The teachers were not 
 surprised at this ; on more than one night, when 
 making a tour of the rooms at a late hour to 
 give a' comforting word when there were no 
 more blankets to give, the young men have been 
 found hovering around the fire, while the cold 
 wind poured in through the roof, sides, and floor 
 of the room. While there has been this suffer- 
 ing, so anxious have the students been to remain 
 at school that there has been almost no murmur 
 of complaint. They have shown cheerfulness 
 throughout. Must they be asked to endure the 
 same another winter ? We have faith to believe 
 not. They want nothing done for them which 
 they can do for themselves. They are now dig- 
 ging out the basement for the new building and 
 preparing the clay to begin moulding the bricks 
 as soon as the weather will permit." 
 
 A month later the teacher was able to write :
 
 f*LMU 
 
 &f I * - 
 
 M:-';MF' --V 
 
 '\V:-I '' 
 
 ^Tw^M^ 
 ^^fiVAaPte
 
 Tuskegee 29 
 
 " Our young men have already made two kilns 
 of bricks, and will make all required for the 
 needed building. From the first we have carried 
 out the plan at Tuskegee of asking for nothing 
 which we could do for ourselves. Nothing has 
 been bought that the students could produce. 
 The boys have done the painting, made the 
 bricks, the chairs, tables and desks, have built a 
 stable and are now building a carpenter shop. 
 The girls do the entire housekeeping, including 
 the washing, ironing, and mending of the boys' 
 clothes." 
 
 One beneficial effect of the industrial work 
 which came to be felt very quickly was the 
 friendly intercourse which it brought about with 
 the people of the town and county. When the 
 Institute opened its brick yard it was the only 
 place in the entire county where bricks were 
 made. People who were engaged in building 
 came to examine the bricks which the Tuskegee 
 students made, and when they found they were 
 good bricks wanted to buy them. The school 
 soon found that it could have a market for all 
 the surplus product of the yard. As soon as it 
 was possible to do so a brick-making machine 
 was bought and set up, and, now, for many years, 
 the Institute has been selling several hundred 
 thousand bricks every year to be used in the 
 surrounding country. 
 
 During the first two years of the existence 
 of the school, Mr. Washington had borne the 
 heaviest part of the work alone. He had
 
 30 luskegee 
 
 attended to all the executive details connected 
 with establishing, moving and developing the 
 school. He had taught the scholars during 
 school hours in the schoolroom, and then had 
 taken the young men out on to the farm to clear 
 up the land and get it ready for the crops. He 
 had built fences, and driven the school's one 
 horse. He had directed the planting of sweet 
 potatoes and corn, and had superintended the 
 making of bricks. 
 
 In 1883 the Alabama Legislature appropriated 
 $1000 a year additional for the support of the 
 school, making $3000 in all, and Mr. Warren 
 Logan, another Hampton graduate, came to assist 
 Mr. Washington at Tuskegee. Mr. Logan has 
 been associated with the school since that time, 
 having now for several years held the office of 
 treasurer of the corporation, besides assisting 
 Mr. Washington in the executive work. 
 
 In the fall of the same year the trustees of 
 the Slater fund made their first large donation 
 to the school, $1000, with which to equip the 
 industrial department. Since then the benefits 
 received from this same source have been many 
 and generous. Up to that time the industrial 
 training had been chiefly on the land and in the 
 brick-yard. There was a small blacksmith shop 
 and wheelwright shop, and a printing office had 
 been established in which a small press was 
 worked by "man-power." With the help of the 
 Slater fund gift a carpenter shop was built, and 
 work at that trade begun, a windmill was set
 
 WARREN LOGAN, TREASURER.
 
 Tuskegee 31 
 
 up to pump water to the school buildings, a 
 sewing machine was bought for the girls' indus- 
 trial department, and mules and wagons were 
 bought for the farm. 
 
 The Slater fund is a sum of money left by 
 the late John F. Slater, a wealthy cotton manu- 
 facturer of Norwich, Connecticut. Feeling a 
 deep interest in the welfare of the South, and 
 realizing the value of industrial training to the 
 colored people, Mr. Slater gave one million dol- 
 lars to constitute what should be known as the 
 John F. Slater Fund, the interest of which was 
 to be used in aiding such institutions as were 
 most effective in this kind of work. Dr. A. G. 
 Haygood, of Georgia, was the first agent of the 
 board of trustees to whom the management of 
 the fund was intrusted. Since his death, Dr. J. 
 L. M. Curry, of Washington, has held the posi- 
 tion of agent. 
 
 In an address before the National Educational 
 Association, at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1884, Mr. 
 Washington said, " At the end of our first year's 
 work, some of the white people near Tuskegee 
 said : ' We are glad that the Normal School is 
 here, because it draws people here and makes 
 labor plentiful. ' At the close of the second 
 year several said that the Normal School was 
 beneficial because it increased trade. At the 
 close of the last session more than one said that 
 the Normal School is a good institution ; it 
 is making the colored people of this state better 
 citizens. From the opening of the school to the
 
 32 luskegee 
 
 present, the white citizens of Tuskegee have 
 been among its warmest friends. They have 
 not only given of their money, but they have 
 been ever ready to suggest and devise plans to 
 build up the institution. When the school was 
 making an effort to start a brick yard, but was 
 without means, one of the merchants gave an 
 outfit of tools. Every white minister in town 
 has visited the school and made encouraging re- 
 marks. The president of the white college in 
 Tuskegee makes a special effort to furnish our 
 young men with work, that they may remain at 
 school. " 
 
 Up to this time, Mr. Washington's talents as 
 a speaker had been exercised chiefly during the 
 summer vacation, for the raising of money among 
 the friends of the school in the North. This 
 address at Madison gave him rank as an educa- 
 tor of national reputation, and gave Tuskegee a 
 place among the educational institutions of the 
 country. Its effect in educational circles was, 
 to a great extent, what the address of the same 
 speaker at the Atlanta Exposition, in 1895, was 
 to the country as a whole. Mr. Washington 
 went to Atlanta the comparatively unknown 
 principal of a colored school somewhere in the 
 South. His address before that great audience 
 in the exposition buildings gave him a national 
 reputation and made Tuskegee almost a house- 
 hold word, a word to which interest will always 
 cling. 
 
 The school increased rapidly in size and im-
 
 Tuskegee 33 
 
 portance. Mr. J. H.Washington, the principal's 
 brother, who had followed him to Hampton and 
 had graduated from there, came to Tuskegee to 
 take charge of the industrial work. He now 
 fills the place of director of mechanical indus- 
 tries. Mr. C. W. Greene, also from Hampton, 
 came in 1888 as farm superintendent, and has 
 retained the place ever since. Among others of 
 the early teachers who have been constantly 
 connected with the school since they began their 
 work there, are Mrs. Logan, Mrs. B. T. Wash- 
 ington, who has charge of the industrial work for 
 girls, Mr. J. D. McCall, director of the aca- 
 demic department, Mr. M. T. Driver, the busi- 
 ness agent, Mr. James N. Galloway, the mana- 
 ger of the Marshall farm, and possibly some 
 others of whom I have not been able to inform 
 myself. 
 
 I find an interesting description of the appear- 
 ance, methods and plans of the school in those 
 early days, and of the conditions amid which it 
 worked, in an article written by Mr. Logan in 
 1884. From this sketch, to which the author 
 gave the title, " Life In and Around the School ; 
 from a Teacher's Standpoint, " I quote a few 
 paragraphs : 
 
 " It is sometimes asked, ' Does it pay to edu- 
 cate the Negro ? ' Well, that depends, for him 
 as for others, upon how he is educated. 
 
 " An old colored man in a cotton field, in the 
 middle of July, lifted his eyes towards the heavens 
 and said : ' De cotton is so grassy, de work is so
 
 34 Tuskegee 
 
 hard, an' de sun is so hot, dat I believe dis dar- 
 key am called to preach.' 
 
 " There is no doubt that some of the would-be 
 teachers, as well as the would-be preachers, in 
 their desire for education are inspired, as some 
 of their brothers in white are, by a yearning, not 
 for usefulness, but for ease. Simply to gratify 
 them in this would certainly not pay for gener- 
 rous contribution to their education. 
 
 " But, if along with mental training, the Ne- 
 gro is taught that, as President Garfield told the 
 students at Hampton Institute, ' Labor must be, 
 and labor must be free, ' that in free labor is 
 dignity and prosperity and self-respect ; if with 
 his book learning he learns to respect the rights 
 of others, to do right from a love of right, and is 
 given some useful trade as a start in life, why 
 will it not pay handsomely to educate him ; to 
 make him an intelligent and useful American 
 citizen, instead of an ignorant and dangerous 
 one ? 
 
 " This is the work of the industrial school. 
 This is the work of Tuskegee, the very place for 
 our cotton-field graduates. 
 
 " The great need of the South is competent 
 school teachers and skilled mechanics. The de- 
 mand for both is much greater than the supply. 
 Colored lawyers might perhaps be dispensed with 
 for a while, but colored teachers, able to use 
 both head and hands, are an actual present ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 " The great majority of our Tuskegee students
 
 Tuskegee 35 
 
 hope to become teachers among their people. 
 Almost all of them come from the country and 
 are good material. Visitors are struck with their 
 splendid physical proportions. Most of them 
 are stalwart, robust young people, well able to 
 work their way in the world, and eager for an 
 opportunity. They have had poor home train- 
 ing and it is necessary to teach them correct 
 habits of living, but they evince an eagerness to 
 learn that is as surprising as it is encouraging, 
 undergoing, in many cases, much privation and 
 discomfort to keep in school. It is gratifying 
 to watch the change that gradually takes place 
 in their personal appearance, in clothes and man- 
 ners, and expression of face. 
 
 "The course of study as planned extends 
 through four years, but few can complete it 
 without staying out for as much as a year to earn 
 money. We do not think they will lose by this 
 in the end. We hope to graduate our first class 
 next year. The course is thorough in English 
 lessons, composition and reading, with studies in 
 literature. It extends in mathematics through 
 elementary geometry, and includes geography, 
 history, civil government, with special study of 
 the school laws of Alabama, book-keeping, some 
 study of the natural sciences, mental and moral 
 philosophy, vocal music and the theory and prac- 
 tice of teaching. 
 
 " As an industrial school Tuskegee regards 
 its manual labor department, not merely as a 
 means to secure education, but as a valuable
 
 36 Tuskegee 
 
 part of education. Work is required of all. 
 The boys are taught practical farming, carpen- 
 try, printing, brick-making, blacksmithing and 
 painting; the girls, sewing and housekeeping. 
 The school hopes to add other industries as it 
 becomes able. 
 
 " We do not find that the manual labor inter- 
 feres seriously with the studies. We believe 
 that in the long run it will be found far more of 
 a help than a hindrance, through its influence 
 upon character and habits of industry. Of course 
 it makes a busy day for students and teachers, 
 from the rising bell, at half -past five, and the 
 work bell, calling some after breakfast to their 
 work-shops or cotton fields, and others to the 
 morning study hour, to the bell for ' lights out ' at 
 half past nine at night, when the sleep of the 
 laborer is sweet. A busy day ; but Tuskegee has 
 work to do, and means to do it."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE reports from which I have quoted in the 
 kst chapter, and Mr. Logan's article, written in 
 1884, give a vivid picture of Tuskegee at that 
 time, and an outline of what the school hoped to 
 do. A description of the school, as one visiting 
 it sixteen years later found it, will show what had 
 been accomplished in that time. 
 
 The town of Tuskegee is the county seat of 
 Macon county. It is situated southeast of the 
 centre of the State of Alabama, in what is com- 
 monly known as the "black belt." It is forty 
 miles from Montgomery, the capital of the state, 
 and one hundred and forty miles from Atlanta. 
 It is conveniently reached from the North by way 
 of the Southern railroad, to Atlanta ; and the 
 Atlanta and West Point, and Western of Ala- 
 bama, railroads, from Atlanta to Chehaw, Ala- 
 bama, at which place the Tuskegee railroad, five 
 miles in length, makes connection. Being on a 
 through line of travel from the North to New 
 Orleans, the facilities for reaching Tuskegee are 
 excellent. The Southern railroad runs through 
 cars from New York and Washington. The 
 service is so satisfactory, both as regards time 
 and accommodations, that I have always found it 
 a pleasure to travel there. 
 
 Tuskegee is one of the oldest towns in the 
 state. Its name is said to be from an Indian
 
 38 Tuskegee 
 
 word, Tuskigi, and it is also said that when De 
 Soto marched inland on his famous expedition he 
 found an Indian village by this name on the same 
 site. In Alabama the name of the town is in- 
 variably pronounced Tuskegee, with the accent 
 on the second syllable, and the "g" hard, like 
 the same letter in the word " geese ; " but in 
 other parts of the country I find a tendency 
 to pronounce the word as if it were spelled 
 Tuskyjee. 
 
 The village and school stand on high ground, 
 from which, on almost every side, one may over- 
 look miles of plantation land and forests of oak 
 and pine. The location is attractive and health- 
 ful. The village, through which one passes on 
 going from the station to the school, is typically 
 southern. In its centre is the Court House, a 
 time-stained building in which, if one happens to 
 be in town at court time, may be heard good 
 specimens of that legal eloquence for which the 
 South has always been so justly famous. Around 
 the grass-grown and shaded yard which surrounds 
 the Court House, is a rusty iron fence. Facing 
 the spacious square which surrounds all this, 
 are the banks, stores and other business build- 
 ings of the town. The residence streets lead 
 out from the square at right angles, and, stand- 
 ing back from these, in great gardens, where, 
 at Thanksgiving time, roses and chrysanthe- 
 mums are still in full bloom, are many fine old 
 houses, in front of which lofty pillars support 
 porticos so broad and high that often a more
 
 Tuskegee 39 
 
 modern house might almost be put into the 
 portico entire. 
 
 The grounds of the school are a mile beyond 
 the town. The institute now owns twenty-five 
 hundred acres of land. This is exclusive of 
 twenty-five thousand acres of land donated to 
 the school by the Federal government in 1899. 
 This last-named property is unimproved mineral 
 land, to be retained for rental, or sold, as the 
 school may decide is the most desirable. The 
 value of the property, exclusive of the mineral 
 land, is between $300,000 and $400,000. There 
 are forty-six buildings, counting large and small, 
 ail of which, except three, have been erected by 
 the labor of the students. 
 
 The school grounds proper comprise about one 
 hundred acres. At the right of the main drive- 
 way, as one enters the grounds, is Cassedy Hall, 
 a three-story brick building originally used for 
 the industrial classes, but now, since the most of 
 these classes have been moved into the new 
 Trades School Building, converted into a dormi- 
 tory for boys. Adjacent to Cassedy Hall is 
 another small brick building also used as a dormi- 
 tory. Near these buildings the visitor may often 
 see several piles of logs, oak, pine and poplar, 
 many of them well towards three feet through. 
 They have been cut on one of the school's tim- 
 ber lots, and drawn in for lumber. The building 
 in front of which they have been left is the saw- 
 mill, and the strident " buzz-z-z " of a stout 
 circular saw which comes from the building,
 
 4O T u s k e g e 
 
 shows that the mill is in operation. The young 
 men who are at work there are learning the 
 sawyer's trade as the one which they expect to 
 follow in life. Adjoining the saw-mill, so as to 
 obtain its power from the same engine, is the 
 wood-working shop, fitted with the necessary 
 machinery ; the carpenter shop, with fourteen 
 benches ; and the carpentry and repair shop ; 
 with separate classes in each. 
 
 Back of the saw-mill is a building in which a 
 class of young women are learning mattress- 
 making and repairing, the making of pillows, and 
 upholstery. They find plenty of work in keep- 
 ing the furniture of the school replaced and in 
 repair. Recently the school has discovered that 
 the long, elastic needles of the southern pine, 
 fragrant and healthful, when thoroughly dried 
 are excellent for stuffing mattresses, and this 
 material has been largely used. Adjoining the 
 saw-mill on the other side is the engine-room, 
 electrical plant, machine shop and foundry. In 
 all of these, classes of young men are doing prac- 
 tical work which has a present value, and in 
 doing it are, in most cases, learning the trades 
 which they expect to follow in later years. 
 Eventually all these industries will be moved to 
 the opposite end of the grounds, where they will 
 be accommodated in the Trades Building, when 
 that is completed. 
 
 The first building on the left of the driveway 
 is Science Hall, a handsome three-story brick 
 building containing class-rooms, laboratories and
 
 Tuskegee 41 
 
 several sleeping rooms for the teachers and 
 boys. This building was erected after plans 
 drawn by one of the instructors in the school. 
 Nearly opposite Science Hall is Olivia Davidson 
 Hall, a four-story brick structure in which are 
 recitation rooms and sleeping rooms for the 
 teachers and boys. 
 
 All of the larger buildings have ample grounds 
 around them, shaded by trees and brightened by 
 numerous flower beds. A northern eye is caught 
 at once by the profusion of southern vegetation, 
 the cacti, yuccas and palmettos. The entire 
 care of the grounds, flowers, shrubs and trees de- 
 volves upon the department of floriculture and 
 horticulture. Young men and young women 
 who are learning these arts work regularly under 
 the direction of thoroughly trained men, who are 
 graduates of schools which have made a specialty 
 of such studies. The orchards and vineyards 
 of the school are young, as yet, but it has, in all, 
 several acres devoted to fruit. In this connection 
 it may be interesting to know that, during the 
 summer vacation, the school operates a steam 
 canning plant, for the double purpose of putting 
 up its own stock of fruit, and teaching the art 
 of canning to such students as elect to remain 
 to work at it during the vacation. In a summer 
 when there is a good crop of fruit the canning 
 department puts up about five thousand gallons, 
 using one gallon tin cans made in the school's 
 tin shop. About one-half of this stock consists 
 of blackberries, the berries being bought at an
 
 42 Tuskegee 
 
 average price of twelve cents a gallon from the 
 farmers' families, who bring them in from miles 
 around. The balance of the fruit consists of 
 peaches, pears, plums, apples, grapes and toma- 
 toes, raised on the place. None of the fruit is 
 sold ; it is all eaten in the dining rooms by the 
 teachers and students. 
 
 Next beyond Davidson Hall, on the same side 
 of the driveway, is Porter Hall, a wooden struc- 
 ture, the first building erected. In it now are 
 the principal's and treasurer's offices, and the 
 offices of the heads of some of the departments, 
 several recitation rooms and a large general 
 study room. Back of Porter Hall is a group of 
 smaller buildings used mainly for girls' industrial 
 work ; in them are the cooking classes, plain 
 sewing, dress-making and millinery classes. Two 
 of these buildings are interesting from the fact 
 that they are all that are left of the original old 
 buildings which were on the plantation when it 
 was bought by the school. The little, old, white- 
 washed cabins are very dear to those of the 
 teachers who have been at Tuskegee ever since 
 those early days, and have watched the growth 
 of the school into what is now almost a city in 
 itself. 
 
 A little farther down the driveway, and on the 
 opposite side from Porter Hall, is the Phelps 
 Hall Bible Training School, a large, three-story 
 wooden building with broad verandahs around it, 
 erected as a memorial building by a friend of the 
 school in New York. Near Phelps Hall is a
 
 BUILDING NOW USED AS A LIBRARY. 
 
 PARKER MEMORIAL HOME.
 
 luskegee 43 
 
 wooden house which was the home of the prin- 
 cipal for several years. Mr. Washington has 
 recently moved into a brick house built just 
 across the main road from the school grounds. 
 The building of this house was largely made 
 possible by the kindness of friends of the school 
 in the North. It enables the principal to enter- 
 tain, more conveniently than he could do in his 
 former residence, many of the guests whom the 
 institute's reputation attracts to Tuskegee as 
 interested visitors. The building which Mr. 
 Washington vacated is utilized now for a library 
 and for reading rooms. Scattered about the 
 grounds are several other residences in which 
 other members of the faculty, including the 
 chaplain and the doctor, live with their families. 
 Just in front of the library the driveway divides, 
 and the right-hand section of it leads down past 
 Alabama Hall, a four-story brick building, on the 
 lower floor of which are the dining rooms and 
 kitchens. In this building are the reading room, 
 music room and reception room for the young 
 women, and the rooms of the principal of the 
 young women's department, Mrs. Bruce, the 
 widow of the late ex-senator and ex-registrar 
 of the treasury, B. K. Bruce. The upper floors 
 of Alabama Hall are used for sleeping rooms for 
 the young women. Beyond Alabama Hall are 
 two large wooden buildings used as girls' dormi- 
 tories. One of these is named Hamilton Cottage 
 for the late Robert H. Hamilton who for several 
 years led the famous Hampton quartette, and
 
 44 Tuskegee 
 
 later led the Tuskegee quartette when they went 
 North to sing to raise money for the school. 
 Still farther on in the same direction is the 
 laundry, a large three-story brick building, and 
 Huntington Hall, a commodious brick dormitory 
 for girls, recently erected with money given by 
 Mrs. C. P. Huntington. In design and in finish 
 this is one of the finest buildings belonging to 
 the school. Near Huntington Hall is the girls' 
 hospital, a small wooden building which should 
 be replaced by a larger and better one, and the 
 Parker Memorial Home. The last-named build- 
 ing is the gift of two friends of the school in 
 Brooklyn, who, realizing that a great number of 
 the young women who came to Tuskegee as 
 students need home-training quite as much as 
 any other form of education, provided this oppor- 
 tunity for such training. Many of these young 
 women come from one-room cabin homes ; few 
 of them know anything of practical housekeep- 
 ing. The Parker Home is a neatly designed 
 and well-built wooden dwelling house. It con- 
 tains a reception room, guest room, dining room, 
 kitchen and laundry, all thoroughly and taste- 
 fully furnished. The remainder of the building 
 is divided into sleeping rooms. This building is 
 the home of the young women of the senior class 
 during all of their last year at the school. In it, 
 and from the care of it, they learn practical 
 "home-keeping" with the help of attractive mod- 
 ern accessories. Occasionally, by Mrs. Wash- 
 ington's permission and under her guidance,
 
 Tuskegee 45 
 
 these young women are allowed to give little 
 dinners, teas and receptions, for which they make 
 all the preparations. 
 
 From Huntington Hall the grounds slope 
 down past the pumping station and reservoir, 
 through a beautiful oak grove, to a portion of 
 the farm land. 
 
 Returning to the main driveway in front of 
 Alabama Hall, and passing Willow Cottage, a 
 girls' dormitory, the next large building which 
 the visitor approaches is the Slater-Armstrong 
 Memorial Agricultural Building. This is a 
 handsome brick building containing laboratories, 
 museum, lecture rooms and recitation rooms. 
 In addition to its regular annual appropriation 
 of $3000 the State of Alabama now allows the 
 Institute $i 500 a year additional for the support 
 of an agricultural experiment station, the work 
 of which is carried on by the school's agricul- 
 tural department. Very near the agricultural 
 building are located the practice schools main- 
 tained as an adjunct to the normal department. 
 These schools are in charge of able normal- 
 training teachers. The pupils are the children 
 from the families of the members of the school's 
 faculty, and children from the town and sur- 
 rounding country whose parents are glad to 
 avail themselves of the advantages of so good a 
 primary school. In this school the students in 
 the normal department teach a certain number 
 of hours each week. 
 
 Beyond the Practice School is the Slater-
 
 46 Tuskegee 
 
 Armstrong Memorial Trades' Building for boys, 
 the largest building on the grounds, and one of 
 the best. The outside dimensions of this build- 
 ing are two hundred and eighty-three feet by 
 three hundred and fifteen feet. It is rectangular 
 in shape, built around an inner court. It is of 
 brick, with tin roof, finished throughout in yellow 
 pine, and is heated by steam and lighted by 
 electricity. Except for the rear annexes it is 
 two stories high. The plan after which it is 
 built affords all of the shops ample light and air. 
 The blacksmith shop is a fair sample of the 
 accommodations given the industrial classes. 
 That room is thirty-eight by sixty-one feet square, 
 lofty, lighted on three sides and fitted with an 
 exhaust fan for ventilation. The shop contains 
 nine stationary forges, blowers, anvils, and all 
 the necessary tools. Blacksmithing is a favorite 
 trade with the young men, and the shop's force 
 is always full. An idea of the standard of the 
 work done here may be had from the fact that 
 many of the blooded horses from all over the 
 country are brought here regularly to be shod, 
 because the teacher in charge of the shop is such 
 an expert workman. All of the indoor trades 
 for boys are accommodated in this building with 
 the exception of those which I have described as 
 being located near the entrance to the grounds. 
 On the opposite side of the driveway from the 
 Trades' Building for boys there is now being 
 built a similar building on a somewhat smaller 
 scale in which will be accommodated the girls'
 
 Tuskegee 47 
 
 industrial departments. This building is the 
 gift of two friends of the school in New York, 
 the same who two years before gave the money 
 to enable the chapel to be built. 
 
 Near the trades' buildings stands the chapel. 
 In years past the rapidly increasing number of 
 pupils caused the school to outgrow one after 
 another of the rooms which had been used for 
 devotional exercises. For several years there 
 had been used for this purpose because it was 
 the only building about the school into which all 
 the students could gather at one time a rude, 
 temporary structure built of unplaned boards, 
 with no floor but the earth and no seats but 
 backless benches made by spiking planks upon 
 posts driven into the ground. Recently money 
 was given for a chapel and the students built it. 
 
 The chapel is built of brick, with stone trim- 
 mings. The plan is that of a cross, the dimen- 
 sions being one hundred and fifty-four feet 
 through the nave and choir, and one hundred and 
 six feet through the transepts. The seating 
 capacity of the auditorium is twenty-four hun- 
 dred. All of the devotional services are now 
 held in this building, the annual Negro Con- 
 ference meets here, and it was in this building 
 that President McKinley spoke when he visited 
 Tuskegee. The building of this chapel illus- 
 trates, as well as any one instance can, the 
 methods of the industrial training at Tuskegee. 
 The plans for the building were drawn by the 
 school's instructor in architectural and mechani-
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 cal drawing. The bricks, one million two hun- 
 dred thousand in number, were made by students 
 in the school's brick yard and laid by the men 
 in the brick-laying classes. The lumber was 
 cut on the school's land and sawed in the saw 
 mill on the grounds. The various wood-working 
 classes did the work which came in their depart- 
 ments. The floor is of oak ; all the rest of the 
 finish is in yellow pine, and the use of this wood 
 in the lofty arch of the ceiling gives a particu- 
 larly rich effect . The pews were built after a mod- 
 el designed by one of the students, and another 
 student designed the cornices. The tin and slate 
 roofing was put on by students, and the steam 
 heating and electric lighting apparatus was in- 
 stalled by them, although this was the first 
 building in which they did this work, these two 
 trades being among the last which the school 
 has been prepared to teach. 
 
 It should be remembered that at Tuskegee 
 not only are all of the students Negroes, but 
 also all of the teachers. There is no one con- 
 nected with the school, except some members of 
 the Board of Trustees, and one or two persons 
 not resident at Tuskegee, who is not of the race 
 which the school is designed to educate. With 
 this policy to be followed it sometimes has been 
 difficult for the school to find colored men and 
 women thoroughly trained in the trades for 
 which teachers were sought, a fact which would 
 seem to point towards the need of more general 
 industrial training for the people of the race.
 
 SCIENCE HALL. 
 
 
 THE CHAPEL AT TUSKF.GEE, BUILT BY STUDENTS.
 
 T u s k e g e e 49 
 
 Frequently the entire country has been can- 
 vassed to find capable instructors. Many of the 
 teachers, especially of the older ones, come from 
 Hampton. The director of the agricultural de- 
 partment is a graduate of the Iowa State Agri- 
 cultural College. The teacher of horticulture 
 comes from Ann Arbor. One of the teachers 
 of cooking is from Mrs. Rorer's school in Phila- 
 delphia, and the instructor in gymnastics for 
 girls is a graduate of the Boston Normal School 
 of Gymnastics. 
 
 The Institute's barn having been destroyed by 
 fire, the stock and farming tools were sheltered 
 for several years in temporary buildings on a 
 part of the grounds beyond the Trades' Build- 
 ings. Early in the year 1900, however, a sum 
 of money with which permanent barns should 
 be built was given by friends of the school in 
 Brooklyn, and the erection of the buildings 
 begun from plans drawn by Mr. R. R. Taylor, 
 the same architect who designed Science Hall 
 and the chapel. The buildings in this group 
 are located on both sides of the road which leads 
 from the school grounds to the farm land, and 
 at a considerable distance from the other build- 
 ings. When completed they will comprise a 
 poultry house, dairy house, dairy barn, horse 
 barn, and piggery, on one side of the road, and 
 on the other a slaughter house, and two large 
 shelter barns for farming tools and wagons. 
 Each of these buildings will be separate and 
 at a considerable distance from any other. They
 
 50 I uskegee 
 
 will be modern in style and appointments, and 
 will greatly add to the efficiency of the agricul- 
 tural department and to the ease and profit with 
 which its work can be carried on. 
 
 At some little distance from the grounds is 
 the brickyard, the first industry started, and one 
 of the most profitable. The clay in the pit is 
 good and easy to get out. Improved machinery 
 has been provided from time to time, until now 
 two million bricks are made in a year. I have 
 always remembered the pride with which, on the 
 occasion of my first visit to Tuskegee, a student 
 pointed out to me the difference between the 
 rougher, hand-made bricks of which the older 
 buildings were constructed, and the smooth, ma- 
 chine-made bricks built into the last new building 
 which had been erected then. No artist ex- 
 hibiting a picture which had taken a medal could 
 have shown more pride in his work than did that 
 young man in the neatness of that brick wall. 
 
 Outside the school grounds there has sprung 
 up a good-sized village of dwelling houses, the 
 homes of members of the faculty and their fami- 
 lies. Some of these buildings are owned by the 
 school and rented, but many of the teachers own 
 their homes, with more or less land surrounding 
 them. These houses, in style, furnishings and 
 surroundings, would bear comparison favorably 
 with the houses in the suburbs of any town. 
 The main road of the county passes through this 
 village. Over that road travel during the year, 
 including those who come to Tuskegee at confer-
 
 Tuskegee 51 
 
 ence time, thousands of Negro men and women 
 who live in the surrounding country. These 
 people ride in all kinds of dilapidated vehicles, 
 drawn by steers, neglected-looking horses and 
 mules ; they wear clothes which are apt to be short 
 in quantity and disreputable in quality. The 
 majority of them live from hand to mouth, in one- 
 room cabins built on mortgaged or rented land. 
 Every time they pass through this village, or see 
 Tuskegee 's school buildings, they are obliged to 
 have an object-lesson in what other men and 
 women of their race have done in what they 
 themselves can do if they will but try. A jour- 
 ney back into the country in which these people 
 live shows that some of them, at least, are 
 profiting by the lesson.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BECAUSE Tuskegee affords such excellent fa- 
 cilities for industrial training, it should not be 
 inferred that this side of the educational life of 
 the Institute is emphasized at the expense of 
 academic training. It is the aim of the school 
 to have its system of moral and religious, mental 
 and industrial education so balanced as to secure 
 the best results consistent with the needs of each 
 pupil. 
 
 Mr. Washington's opinion in regard to the 
 relative value of industrial and academic educa- 
 tion I have repeatedly heard him express in words 
 similar to the following, which I quote from an 
 address which I heard him make in Charleston, 
 South Carolina : 
 
 " I would say to the black boy as well as to 
 the white boy, get all the mental development 
 that your time and pocketbook will afford, the 
 more the better ; but the time has come when a 
 larger proportion not all, for we need profes- 
 sional men and women of the educated colored 
 men and women should give themselves to indus- 
 trial or business life. The professional class will 
 be helped in proportion as the rank and file have 
 an industrial education, so that they can pay for 
 professional services. 
 
 " I would not have the standard of mental 
 development lowered one whit, for with the Negro,
 
 Tuskegee 53 
 
 as with all races, mental strength is the basis 
 of all progress ; but I would have a greater 
 proportion of this mental strength reach the 
 Negro's actual needs through the medium of the 
 hand." 
 
 Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Mr. Washington's pri- 
 vate secretary, in a recent magazine article, has 
 said : " Tuskegee seeks to teach the dignity of 
 labor to its students, to afford them the best 
 possible opportunity for the development of their 
 mental faculties, emphasizes systematic industrial 
 training, and fosters the habits of right thinking 
 and right living. There are hundreds of schools 
 where colored students can receive literary train- 
 ing, but those in which young men and women 
 can learn trades, in addition' to their literary 
 training, are very few." 
 
 If I give more space to a description of the 
 industrial side of the work at Tuskegee than 
 to any other, it is not because equal prominence 
 is not given to mental and moral and religious 
 training there, but because there are so few 
 schools where the trades, industries and agricul- 
 ture are taught to colored students so thor- 
 oughly as they are at Tuskegee, and because 
 the industrial work there has as yet much of 
 the interest of novelty to students of educational 
 problems. 
 
 For the school year of 1899-1900, there were 
 enrolled at the Institute over one thousand stu- 
 dents, who came from twenty-eight states and 
 territories, and from Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico,
 
 54 Tuskegee 
 
 Africa and Barbacloes. Naturally, more students 
 come from Alabama than from any other one 
 state ; but nearly three hundred residents of the 
 state of Georgia attended the school in that year. 
 Florida, South Carolina and Texas always have 
 been largely represented among the students, 
 quite as many coming from those states as from 
 Mississippi and Louisiana. To teach and train 
 this number of students requires the services of 
 a faculty of nearly one hundred persons. A 
 visitor to Tuskegee cannot but be impressed by 
 the earnestness with which the teachers under- 
 take their work, and by their devotion to the 
 manifold interests of the institution. 
 
 The requisites for admission to the Institute are 
 a good moral character, attested by recommenda- 
 tions from some reliable person, a good physique, 
 and a fair ability to read, write and cipher. No 
 student who cannot read and write is admitted, 
 and no student is admitted to any department, 
 on any terms, under fourteen years of age. The 
 school year is divided into three terms of three 
 months each. These are practically continuous, 
 as it has been found to be desirable to have the 
 most of the vacation time combined into one 
 long period in the summer. 
 
 The course of study is arranged primarily for 
 four years preparatory, junior, middle and 
 senior ; but because of the great diversity of 
 requirements among so many students, some of 
 whom come with almost no preparation, the pre- 
 paratory grade is divided into three classes, A,
 
 Tuskegee 55 
 
 B and C, and the middle grade into two classes, 
 A and B. 
 
 The members of the C preparatory class, the 
 lowest, in their first year take arithmetic as far 
 as common fractions, grammar, geography as far 
 as the study of the United States, reading, 
 spelling, music and drawing. The B and A 
 classes of this grade continue these branches. 
 
 In the junior year the pupils have advanced 
 in arithmetic to interest ; they continue the same 
 studies as in the year previous, and begin United 
 States history. 
 
 The members of the B middle class finish 
 arithmetic and begin algebra, finish history and 
 begin civics, and add physiology. Those in the 
 A class of the same grade finish algebra and be- 
 gin geometry, take book-keeping, geology, phys- 
 ics and chemistry. 
 
 The studies taken by the members of the sen- 
 ior class depend upon whether they elect to take 
 the normal or trades' course. In the former, 
 the studies of the final year are psychology, rhet- 
 oric, English and American classics, ethics, peda- 
 gogy, and a review of the English studies of the 
 previous year. The trades' seniors have advanced 
 chemistry, mechanical drawing, geometry, phys- 
 ics and trades' work. 
 
 The agricultural and mechanical work is car- 
 ried on in connection with a four years' course 
 in the academic department. Training is given 
 in thirty industries, special effort being made to 
 teach those which are most likely to be available
 
 56 Tuskegee 
 
 in the South. The courses of study in the 
 trades are as carefully graded and as consistently 
 followed as are those in the academic depart- 
 ment. It would make this chapter of inconven- 
 ient length if I were to give a full outline of the 
 courses laid down in all these trades, and I there- 
 fore select only a few as samples : 
 
 CARPENTRY First Year. 
 
 Names and uses of tools ; sharpening and 
 setting for use. Working out pieces of timber 
 to various gauges and lengths ; straightening, 
 squaring, beveling. Forming angles by halving 
 pieces together, as applied in framing. Plain 
 dovetailing, as applied in framing. Sketching 
 and making plain brackets. Lectures on gener- 
 al topics. Study and construction of problems 
 in carpentry. Observation lessons. 
 
 Second Year. 
 
 Framing. Inspection of brick work. Straight- 
 ening, squaring and plumbing. Bracing, tying 
 and bridging. Sizing studs, joists, etc. For- 
 mation of cornices. Setting window frames. 
 Shingling and flooring. Weather boarding and 
 boxing. Lectures and supplementary studies. 
 Problems in carpentry. Selection of building 
 sites and examination of building soils. 
 
 BLACKSMITH SHOP First Year. 
 
 First Term : Cleaning the shop. Making 
 fires. Names of the tools and their uses. Care
 
 Tuskegee 57 
 
 of the tools and their places. The importance 
 of keeping water and coal in the troughs, also 
 economy. Striking. The different size drills 
 and how to run a drill press. The different size 
 stocks and dies, also how to cut threads. How 
 to keep shop in order. Compositions are writ- 
 ten on these subjects weekly. 
 
 Second Term : The use of the hand ham- 
 mer and tongs. The figures on the rule and 
 measurements. The different sizes of iron. 
 The formation of iron and steel. Welding iron, 
 also the different kinds of welds, viz. : Plain, jump, 
 dovetail, and also long and short laps and their 
 effects, and scarifying. The use of sand. Prac- 
 tice in making lap links, lap rings, staples, hasps, 
 S-hooks, gate hooks, hame hooks and round 
 rings. Resetting tires, and the use of the trav- 
 eler. Compositions are written on these sub- 
 jects monthly, and monthly examinations are 
 given in all work. 
 
 Third Term : The use of welding com- 
 pound. Welding steel, viz. : Spring, tire, axle 
 and tool. How to get the measurement on jobs 
 without the bed. Welding and setting axles. 
 Measurement of the track of axles. Welding 
 and setting tires, also dish of new wheels. Mak- 
 ing clips, nuts, brace ends ; also welding braces 
 the proper length. Putting work together. 
 Bench work, viz. : Filing, clipping, jointing and 
 fancy work. The effect of sand and emery 
 paper on finished work. Compositions on these 
 subjects each month.
 
 58 Tuskegee 
 
 Second Year. 
 
 First Term : Horseshoeing. The condition 
 of a shoeing floor. How to make a shoer's fire. 
 The name and use of shoeing tools. What a 
 mould is and how to make it ; also how to 
 strike on a shoe. The names and sizes of shoes 
 and nails, also the different kinds of shoes. 
 How to file a shoe, how to pull off a shoe, how 
 to trim a foot and clinch a shoe. The different 
 parts of a foot and how to drive a nail. The 
 different kinds of shoes that are used for horses 
 with different ways of traveling ; also different 
 shaped feet. Special lessons in fitting for special 
 cases. Monthly compositions. 
 
 Second Term : Wagon work, such as farm 
 wagons, express wagons and platform wagons. 
 Dash and rail work, and the different kinds and 
 names. Fender work. Make different kinds of 
 tools, also tempering. Work from drawings. 
 Repairing different parts of buggies. Estimat- 
 ing cost of different articles, and jobs. Trim- 
 ming up of jobs. Compositions monthly on these 
 subjects. 
 
 Third Term: Buggy gear work. Body 
 and hoop work. Practice in truck and carriage 
 forging. Different kinds of traps and their 
 names. Talks on general work are given each 
 day. Repair work of an advanced order is done 
 by the students while this course is being 
 taught. 
 
 During one of my first visits to Tuskegee, I
 
 Tuskegee 59 
 
 happened to be passing the blacksmith shop late 
 one afternoon, and looking in through the door 
 saw all of the young men in the shop gathered 
 in a group, and so intent upon something in 
 their midst, that I went in to see what it was 
 that interested them. I found that they were 
 gathered around an anvil which the teacher was 
 using as a demonstration table, and on which he 
 had placed the lower joints and hoofs of the hind 
 legs and forward legs of a dead horse. With 
 them he also had the articulated skeletons of 
 similar members. Each hoof was dissected be- 
 fore the class, and while this was being done, it 
 was easy to show the students just how a shoe 
 should be nailed on in order to get the best 
 effects, and how driving even one nail wrongly 
 or carelessly might do great harm. It seemed 
 to me as if this was a very desirable exercise for 
 a young blacksmith to have, and yet I doubt if 
 many apprentices in shop work get such lessons 
 as this. At the time, I supposed that this was 
 an exceptional occurrence which I had happened 
 on by chance, but as I became more familiar 
 with the methods of instruction at Tuskegee, I 
 found that this was only a regular " theory les- 
 son," such as is held in all of the trades' classes 
 during the last hour of every afternoon, four or 
 five days in the week. 
 
 The question may be asked, " Does the teach- 
 ing of trades in such a school as Tuskegee give 
 practical results ? " It seems to me that it does, 
 and I happen to have an illustration of what the
 
 60 Tuskegee 
 
 blacksmith class docs in this line, which seems 
 to me to be interesting, and which came under 
 my observation entirely by chance. 
 
 I had gone to the town of Greensboro, Ala- 
 bama, to see a young man who had graduated 
 from the tinsmith department at Tuskegee and 
 gone into business at Greensboro. When I 
 called at the house where this man boarded, he 
 was not at home, but a young colored man at the 
 same house, who heard me state my errand, 
 came forward and said, " I am from Tuskegee, 
 too. Won't you come in ? I am so glad to see 
 any one who has been at the school." Greens- 
 boro is between one hundred and one hundred 
 and fifty miles from Tuskegee. 
 
 I found on talking to this young man that he 
 had learned his trade in the blacksmith class at 
 Tuskegee, leaving the school the year before, 
 and had been in business for himself at Greens- 
 boro for very nearly a year. His name is William 
 M. Thomas, and his shop in Greensboro is on 
 Tuscaloosa street. As a boy, he had wanted to 
 learn to be a blacksmith, and a family of white 
 people in Greensboro, with whom he had lived 
 for several years, told him of Tuskegee, and 
 advised him to go there. He entered the school 
 in 1894, and remained four years, paying his 
 way by work while he was there. At the end 
 of four years he left school to go into business 
 for himself, and returned to Greensboro, where 
 the same friends lent him twenty-five dollars with 
 which to open a shop. From what he had earned
 
 Tuskegee 61 
 
 during the year he had paid this money back, 
 had supported himself, and had bought and paid 
 for a small house and lot of land. I might add 
 here, what he did not tell me, but what I learned 
 afterwards at the school, that he regularly sends 
 a sum of money to the school as a gift, to help 
 along the work. This, by the way, a great many 
 of the graduates do, however cramped their means 
 may be. This young man has a good shop, had 
 two apprentices working for him when I was 
 there, and had all the work he could do, almost 
 all of it from white customers. 
 
 I happened to ask this blacksmith some ques- 
 tion about the relative amount of work which he 
 had done in two different months. "Wait a 
 minute," he said, "and I will tell you exactly." 
 He brought out an account book, and from it 
 was able to give me, not only each month's busi- 
 ness, but each day's, and could tell just what 
 part of this was from shoeing, and what part was 
 from repairing. From this he was able to explain 
 why a falling off of forty dollars from September's 
 work to October's did not mean that the regular 
 work of the shop had suffered, but that the fact 
 that the farmers were getting their wagons ready 
 for the cotton crop had temporarily swelled the 
 amount of work done in September. 
 
 What impressed this on my mind was his say- 
 ing, as he closed the book, " I shouldn't have 
 known how to do this if I hadn't been to Tus- 
 kegee. That is one of the things they taught us 
 there."
 
 62 Tuskegee 
 
 " How do I feel towards Tuskegee? " he said, 
 repeating my question, as if he wondered why I 
 should ask it. "I feel towards Tuskegee as 
 towards a father." 
 
 In the course of study for blacksmithing, 
 quoted near the beginning of this chapter, it will 
 have been noticed that at the end of each term's 
 course there is added : " Compositions on these 
 subjects each month." Some one may have 
 said, on reading that, "What use?" While I 
 was at Greensboro, talking with Mr. Thomas, 
 who, by the way, was only a little over twenty 
 years old when he went to work for himself, he 
 said : " When I came back here and opened a 
 shop a good many folks thought I was too young 
 to know my trade ; so I wrote a piece about 
 horseshoeing, and had it printed in the local 
 paper." At my request he procured for me a 
 copy of this paper, the Greensboro Watchman, for 
 April 19, 1899, in which the advertisement was 
 printed. I imagine the advertisement paid for 
 itself, without any doubt. I found it so inter- 
 esting, for many reasons, that I quote it 
 verbatim. It should be remembered that this 
 man had very little education when he went 
 to Tuskegee, that he paid his way by work dur- 
 ing the four years that he was there, much of 
 the time attending the academic classes only at 
 night, and that he did not remain to complete 
 the academic course. He is only one of many who 
 have learned the same trade at Tuskegee, and 
 are now doing equally good work for themselves.
 
 Tuskegee 63 
 
 HORSESHOEING. 
 
 "Among the many trades of man these two 
 stand high blacksmithing and horseshoeing. 
 Horseshoeing has been done ever since the horse 
 has been trained to the use of man. The first 
 shoeing that was known was made of rawhide, 
 and tied to the foot. I do not know where it 
 was tied, but anyway, it was used as a protection 
 to the foot. Later on, when man advanced to a 
 higher circle of civilization, science and art, he 
 found, by the examination of a dead horse's foot, 
 that the shoe could be made of iron and nailed 
 on. I suppose the first man that discovered it 
 was the first to nail it on. 
 
 " Now, up to this age of the day we have 159 
 kinds of shoes ; and out of this number of shoes 
 I have made forty-six kinds for one foot for 
 calking, ankle-skinning, knee-hitting, over-reach- 
 ing, knuckling, corns, founder, stumbler, runner, 
 keel-joint, dropped sole, seedy toe, and others 
 which I shall not take the time to mention. For 
 a man to be a successful shoer, he must know 
 the shoes mentioned above, and their use. Many 
 men call themselves horseshoers, but they do 
 not know what a careful piece of mechanism a 
 horse's foot is, and the least awkward lick will 
 get it out of gear. 
 
 " A horse's foot has over two hundred different 
 parts to it, and for you to shoe a horse right you 
 must have them located. 
 
 " The bars of a horse's foot should not be cut ;
 
 6 4 
 
 T 
 
 u s K e er e e 
 
 g 
 
 but nine-tenths of our smiths cut them away, not 
 knowing what use they are. They answer the 
 same purpose to the foot that joists do to a house. 
 Many other things I would like to mention, but 
 space will not allow me. 
 
 " I shall give you a light sketch of heavy shoes, 
 and their abuse. 
 
 " For an example : Suppose a horse shod with 
 shoes weighing two pounds each, and traveling 
 at such a jog as to require him to lift his feet all 
 around, once a second, or sixty times a minute, 
 keeping up his speed for five hours, how much 
 work does he perform that is, how much does 
 he lift ? Lifting one foot sixty times a minute 
 for four feet, 60 x 4 equals 240, lifting two pounds 
 each time, in one minute he will lift 480 pounds, 
 which multiplied by 60, will make in one hour, 
 28,800 pounds, and in five hours, 144,000 pounds, 
 or 72 tons. This calculation is based upon the 
 scientific experiments of thinking men of to-day. 
 Hence it will be seen at a glance that these 
 heavy shoes cause a great waste of energy, and 
 further, that the weight of the shoes should be 
 determined by the size of the horse. 
 
 WM. M. THOMAS." 
 
 Greensboro, Ala., April 10, 1899.
 
 ROBERT L. MABRY, TAILOR. JOSEPH L. BURKS, GROCER. 
 
 GEORGE F. BAKER, 99, 
 SHOEMAKER. 
 
 WILLIAM M. THOMAS, 
 BLACKSMITH.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EXCEPT for a small entrance fee, there is no 
 charge for tuition in any of the departments 
 of the Institute, because, almost without excep- 
 tion, up to this time the students have been too 
 poor to be able to come to school if they were 
 obliged to pay tuition. It is this which 
 makes it necessary to look to generous friends 
 outside the institution for a large share of the 
 money required to meet the running expenses. 
 The charge for furnished room, board and laun- 
 dry, is only eight dollars per month. Small as 
 this would make the aggregate expense in a 
 year, fully half of the students are obliged 
 to attend the night school for the first one 
 or two years they are at Tuskegee, in order 
 to obtain money with which to complete the 
 course. 
 
 The day school is designed for those students 
 who pay for their board, study in the day, and 
 have six work days in a month one day in 
 each week and every other Saturday. Students 
 are compelled to work on these days. Day stu- 
 dents are given an opportunity to work out a 
 part of their expenses, if they wish. With a 
 good outfit of clothing, forty-five or fifty dol- 
 lars is sufficient money to carry an industrious 
 student through a school year of nine months. 
 The rate of wages depends upon the amount
 
 66. Tuskegee 
 
 of work a student can perform, and the cash 
 value of the same. At the end of each month 
 a bill is given to every student, showing what 
 he may owe the school, or what the school owes 
 him. 
 
 The night school is designed for young men 
 and women who wish to educate themselves, but 
 who are not able to pay even the small charge 
 made for board in the day school. No student 
 is allowed to enter the night school who is under 
 sixteen years of age, or who is physically unable 
 to perform an adult's labor. Students will not 
 be admitted who are known to be able to enter 
 the day school, and whenever a student has 
 fraudulently secured admission he is dismissed 
 from the night school and must enter the day 
 school or leave the institution. When students 
 enter the school they are assigned work by the 
 director of industries. Frequently students wish 
 to be given work at some special trade, and when- 
 ever this is possible it is done. In assigning 
 students the director is guided by the individual's 
 natural ability, intelligence to grasp the trade, 
 and physical ability to perform the necessary 
 duties. At the beginning of the school year it 
 often happens that certain industrial departments 
 are quickly filled, and students wishing to enter 
 these departments after that are given miscella- 
 neous work to perform until the desired vacan- 
 cies occur. 
 
 That their lack of money obliges so many of 
 the students to enter the night school, and to
 
 Tuskegee 67 
 
 work during the day, is probably no disadvantage 
 to them in the end. Although nearly all of the 
 young men and women who come to Tuskegee 
 have been accustomed to work, and to work 
 hard, before they come to the Institute, very 
 few of them have had any knowledge of those 
 methods of labor by which the best results may 
 be obtained. The months which these young 
 persons spend in systematic labor, under the 
 careful direction of instructors who are skilled 
 in the best modern methods of work, form as 
 much a part of their education and as valuable a 
 part, I believe, as anything they will learn from 
 books. 
 
 Students having no previous knowledge of the 
 trade at which they work are allowed to work 
 out their board bill during the first six months. 
 As their work becomes more valuable their 
 wages are increased proportionately. No stu- 
 dents except those who work at Marshall Farm 
 are paid cash for their labor ; what they earn 
 goes to their credit, to be drawn upon for their 
 expenses after they enter the day school. 
 
 I mentioned in the last chapter a visit which I 
 made to Greensboro, Alabama, to see a graduate 
 who is in business there as a tinsmith and roofer. 
 This man's name is William Pearson, and he has 
 a shop on the main street of the town. He was 
 a native of Lafayette, Alabama, who heard of 
 Tuskegee through a student who had been at 
 the school, and went there. The first year he 
 worked on the farm and attended night school.
 
 68 Tuskegee 
 
 The next year he entered the tinsmith depart- 
 ment. He graduated from Tuskegee in 1897, 
 and after working in Opelika, Alabama, for a 
 time, came to Greensboro and opened a shop 
 for himself. He had already built up a good 
 trade, nearly all of it from white customers. 
 Among other work he had just completed a job 
 on the roof of the Southern University there, 
 one of the most successful white schools in the 
 state. Greensboro, by the way, is the home of 
 Lieutenant Hobson, and Mr. Pearson had not 
 long before completed a job of repairs on the 
 roof of the Hobson mansion, a beautiful old 
 house surrounded by magnificent grounds. I 
 asked this young man, also, how he felt towards 
 Tuskegee. He said, " I feel that I owe all that 
 I am to Tuskegee." 
 
 The course of study which this young man fol- 
 lowed at Tuskegee, in common with all the 
 members of the tinsmith class, was as follows : 
 
 First Year. 
 
 First Term : How to keep the shop. Names 
 of machines and how to use them. How to stop 
 holes in old tin, and how to hold soldering cups 
 to^solder. How to turn burs and put on spring 
 bottom. How to turn locks on folding machines. 
 
 Second Term : To cut and make small cups 
 and such other small vessels as can be made 
 from scraps. How to do the soldering on neat 
 and small vessels. Review work of first term. 
 
 Third Term : To do heavy repairing, such
 
 Tuskegee 69 
 
 as putting in bottoms with double seams. How 
 to make larger cups. How to make small pans. 
 How to do important repairing. 
 
 Second Year. 
 
 First Term : The difference in soldering 
 heavy and light seams. How to make small 
 buckets, large buckets, and flared buckets. 
 Special attention given to the art of using the 
 shears. 
 
 Second Term: How to cut simple patterns. 
 How to make large pans, such as milk pans, 
 round cake pans and wash pans. How to make 
 dish pans, slop cans, foot-bath tubs and coffee 
 pots. How to make pans, buckets and cans in 
 different shapes. The fluids used in soldering 
 different metals. 
 
 Third Term : The use of square and com- 
 pass. How to get the different angles. How 
 to cut patterns. How to put on tin roofs. How 
 to make and put on conductor pipes. How to 
 get the cost of work. How to work zinc, as in 
 lining bath tubs and boxes. 
 
 In this course, as in most of the metal work- 
 ing classes, the last hour in the afternoon 
 alternates between theory lessons and drawing. 
 The wood-working classes also have practice in 
 wood turning. 
 
 One of the departments which I have always 
 found particularly interesting is the machine 
 shop and foundry. At the time of my last visit 
 to Tuskegee there were thirty-two young men
 
 jo Tuskegee 
 
 at work in this department. Six of these were 
 seniors, and were working their third and last 
 year in the shop ; the others had been there a 
 shorter time. These men, when they go from 
 the shop after a three years' course of instruc- 
 tion and labor, will be thoroughly well able to do 
 general machine shop and foundry work, and to 
 act as engineers up to a rather high grade of 
 engine. In the latter branch of the work they 
 get a good deal more drill than do apprentices 
 in most machine shops, as the boys in the senior 
 class at Tuskegee take all the care of the engine, 
 each being in charge a week at a time. Several 
 graduates from this department hold excellent 
 positions, in different parts of the South, and a 
 large number of others are doing good work at 
 their trades. 
 
 The boys in the machine shop have built the 
 two engines which furnish the power in the 
 Institute's printing office, and also the two which 
 run the machinery in the laundry. The young 
 man who was running one of these engines in 
 the printing office, at the time, was a good ex- 
 ample of the typical Tuskegee student. Two 
 years before he "had come out of the bush," as 
 they say there that is, he had come to the 
 school from back on a plantation where he had 
 grown up with no opportunities whatever ; had 
 never even seen an engine of any kind. Already, 
 two years had made a capable workman of him. 
 
 In addition to building the four engines which 
 I have mentioned, the students had recently
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 built a large steam pump which had just been 
 sold to be used in the country, and while I was 
 there they were repairing the broken machinery 
 of a large cane mill, the parts of which had been 
 brought several miles to the shop. In- making 
 such repairs as this the Institute's shops are a 
 great convenience to the surrounding country, 
 as there are no other shops within thirty miles 
 which have facilities for doing such heavy work. 
 A part of- the class were employed at that time 
 putting the plumbing into the bath rooms in a 
 girls' dormitory then in course of construction ; 
 and the theory classes in the machine shop when 
 I attended their sessions were occupied with a 
 discussion of the questions which had come up 
 in connection with that work. 
 
 The course of study in the machine shop is as 
 follows : 
 
 Students entering this department begin with 
 practice and theory in steam and water piping. 
 Instruction is given daily on the proper manner 
 of piping sinks, ranges, steam boilers, engines 
 and residences. Each student will have several 
 hours each week during work time for practice 
 in foundry work preparing moulds for castings 
 of all kinds, making cores, drawing patterns and 
 cupola management. The course in machine 
 work will then begin with work on the bench 
 with vise tools ; chipping, riling, brazing, scrap- 
 ing and the laying off of work for power ma- 
 chines is practiced on the bench. The students 
 are then given work on an improved, back-
 
 72 Tuskegee 
 
 geared and self-fed drill, and instruction is given 
 on the grinding of the various tools used on the 
 machine. Work in centering, reaming, facing, 
 counter-sinking and drilling to line is taken up. 
 The use of the boring-bar, also the measurements 
 and sizes of the standard United States taps, 
 dies and drills for same, are taught on this ma- 
 chine. 
 
 Instruction is next given on the shaper, con- 
 sisting of grinding shearing tools, and of plain, 
 square, round and fancy shaping, with the use 
 of the surface gauge, straight-edge, bevel square, 
 micrometer, etc. Instruction on planer work, 
 the management of belts, the- use of various 
 planing tools, planing straight, taper and angle 
 cuts, the use of the boring-bar and center in 
 planer work. Instruction in lathe work begins 
 with the feeds, speeds, and the various tools in 
 turning straight, taper, bevel and round work, 
 drilling, reaming, centering, milling, grinding 
 and screw-cutting. The use of the lathe tools, 
 such as rests, back-gears, cross feeds, boring- 
 bars, mandrels, arbors, center-indicators and 
 micrometers, will be given. 
 
 Students will have an opportunity to design 
 and construct some tool or piece of mechanism, 
 and experiments will be made in steam engineer- 
 ing, the management of steam boilers, heaters, 
 steam pumps, etc. Each class in the machine 
 and engineering departments will be expected 
 to design and construct, ready for use, some 
 machine, pump, or engine, such as may be used
 
 CLASS IN DAIRY WORK. 
 
 STUDENTS AT WORK IN MACHINE SHOP.
 
 Tuskegee 73 
 
 in the trade, during each term of their study, 
 the drawings and specifications for the same to 
 be submitted to the instructor for approval. 
 
 Something which one of the young men in 
 the machine shop said one day amused me, and 
 at the same time impressed me as an illustration 
 of the great indirect influence which the school 
 is all the time exerting, and which I believe is 
 destined to be almost as great a power for good 
 as the more direct results of the school. 
 
 Deficient in the conveniences for proper train- 
 ing as are so many of the homes from which the 
 students come, it is essential that Tuskegee 
 make a special effort to inculcate habits of per- 
 sonal cleanliness. Abundant bath rooms with 
 an ample supply of hot and cold water are pro- 
 vided, and all of the students are obliged to bathe 
 twice a week, and advised to bathe daily. Mr. 
 Washington is an earnest advocate of what he 
 calls the " gospel of the night shirt and the tooth 
 brush," and many are the practical talks which 
 the students hear, under suitable conditions, 
 upon these and similar topics. 
 
 I was talking one day in the machine shop 
 with a young man who was then in his first year 
 as a student at the school. He had come from a 
 home a considerable distance away in .another 
 state, in fact and had been telling me about 
 his life at home and his present plans. 
 
 "But, say! " he broke out, after a moment's 
 pause, " I had worn a night shirt, nights, for 
 over a year, before I came here. It was like
 
 74 Tuskcgee 
 
 this, " he explained, " " A fellow whom I had 
 always known, who was a student here, came 
 home for vacation. He was telling me about 
 the school, and among other things, he told me 
 that all of the fellows here wore night shirts, and 
 told me what good things they were. After he 
 was gone back, I thought to myself that if night 
 shirts were such good things, I'd better try 
 them. So I went and bought me a pair and be- 
 gan to wear them, and say ! I wouldn't have 
 been without t-hem since for twice the money. "
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FOR some time after the Institute was estab- 
 lished the students as a general thing were not 
 anxious to learn trades. They were glad to work 
 while at the school, but it was as a means to an 
 end and not for the sake of what the work would 
 teach them. Often the parents who sent them 
 wanted their children " taught books." The last 
 five or six years have seen a change in this 
 respect. Now, almost without exception, the 
 students wish to learn a trade, and the applica- 
 tions for places in the trades classes are often 
 more than the school can accommodate. 
 
 I asked Mr. J. H. Washington, the director 
 of industries, what he thought had brought 
 about the change. He said : " Formerly the 
 majority of the students wanted what they called 
 ' a nice job,' one in which they could be, as they 
 said, ' gentlemen.' Money was no object. Now, 
 partly from the teachings of the school, I think, 
 and partly from observation, they are coming to 
 have a very different idea with regard to work. 
 They have found that it is not necessary for a 
 man to be dirty, simply because he works at a 
 trade or on the farm. They are coming to see, 
 too, that a man can hope to have little recogni- 
 tion unless he has some tangible results to show 
 for his labor." 
 
 The favorite trade at present seems to be
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 tailoring ; at least there are more applications for 
 entrance into this class than to any other. About 
 thirty young men and ten young women can be 
 given instruction in this department. The course 
 of study requires two years. Wheelwrighting, 
 machine-shop work and blacksmith ing are also 
 trades which attract large numbers. 
 
 One only needs to see the work to know that 
 it is practical. Hearing a sound of hammers one 
 day, as I was passing a building which was being 
 converted into a boys' dormitory, I went in to 
 see what work was being done there. Four 
 young men were laying floor laying a good 
 floor, too, Three of these were in their first 
 year at the Institute. They were working under 
 the oversight of the fourth, a young man in his 
 second year of study. While I was in the build- 
 ing, one of the instructors in carpentry came in 
 to see how the work was going on. He had 
 squads of men at work like this, in half a dozen 
 places, and divided his time among them. 
 
 In the carpenter shop, a little distance away, 
 several members of the class were at work mak- 
 ing the door frames and window frames to be 
 put into Huntington Hall. The brick masons 
 had completed their work on this building a few 
 days before, and the carpenters had taken it in 
 hand. Just at that time the men in one squad 
 were engaged in putting on the roof, and when I 
 went through the yard in front of the carpenter 
 shop, late that afternoon, I found the theory 
 class in that department taking up for their lesson
 
 Tuskegee 77 
 
 that day the laying out of a roof pitch, length 
 of rafters, and similar problems. The young men 
 were gathered around the instructor, where he 
 had placed some boards upon a pair of wooden 
 horses in the yard, and first one and then another, 
 with try-square and pencil, would lay off a plan 
 of a roof from the dimensions given him. 
 
 These theory classes are utilized in all the 
 trades, for the answering of questions which may 
 arise during the day's work, and for the instruc- 
 tion which these questions suggest. I have al- 
 ways found these classes extremely interesting. 
 In the saw mill, that afternoon, I found the class 
 practising grading lumber, learning to see quickly 
 the various imperfections in a stick and to dis- 
 tinguish into what grade they would require that 
 the lumber be sorted. There were seven young 
 men in the class, all of them of such superb 
 physique that I was divided in my admiration 
 between the ease with which they handled the 
 heavy timbers and the interest which they took 
 in the classification of the lumber. 
 
 In the foundry the class twelve young men, 
 all beginners were having a lesson in the mak- 
 ing of " cores " for castings. The South is very 
 generally a country of fireplaces, and one of the 
 simplest problems for these new students in the 
 foundry is to cast " andirons." The students in 
 the machine-shop take founding in their first 
 year's work. It falls to the lot of some of the 
 members of this class to work in turn at firing 
 the boiler and running the engine at the pump-
 
 7 8 
 
 T u s 
 
 e e 
 
 ing station, a building some little distance from 
 the rest of the school buildings. I was return- 
 ing from a walk, one morning, and passing near 
 the station saw the boy whose business it was to 
 work there, and another boy, so absorbed in the 
 contents of a skillet which they were heating at 
 the door of the fire-box that they were quite un- 
 conscious of my approach to see what they were 
 cooking. When they did see me it was to greet 
 me with a welcome so hearty that it showed 
 they were not doing something which they ought 
 not to do, and they at once set to work to show 
 me how they were making the castings for a small 
 very small steam-engine which they were 
 planning to build. They had whittled out the 
 patterns, and made their moulds in a little box 
 of sand, and now were melting " Babbitt metal " 
 with which to make their castings. I remained 
 long enough to see the liquid metal poured into 
 the moulds, and although I had a fear that this 
 particular engine would never "run," I have 
 little doubt that some day these same young 
 machinists will build one which will. 
 
 Coming in from the same walk, I found near 
 Huntington Hall a rough " practice " fireplace, 
 which one of the beginners in bricklaying had 
 been building there. The teacher of brick ma- 
 sonry had let the boy build it there, where he 
 could instruct him while he was overseeing the 
 more advanced students at work on the walls of 
 Huntington Hall. The ways like this in which 
 time and opportunities are utilized are endless.
 
 Tuskegee 79 
 
 Prom Ocober to March of each year one of the 
 most skillful students in brick work goes to Tus- 
 kegee town three evenings in a week to teach 
 the trade to such colored men there as may wish 
 to learn, but who have not time to spare except 
 in the evening. The class meets in a room 
 which Mr. Washington hired for that purpose, 
 and usually from eight to ten men avail them- 
 selves of the opportunity. 
 
 That Mr. Washington practices what he 
 preaches in regard to industrial education may 
 be seen from the fact that his own son is learn- 
 ing the brick mason's trade. When this boy was 
 ten years old he began regular work, a certain 
 number of hours each week, with the mason's 
 class. I saw him when he was fourteen years 
 old laying brick in the walls of the new Hunting- 
 ton engine and boiler house, and I had seen, pre- 
 viously to that, an excellent job of repairing a 
 break in a plastered wall which he had done in 
 the house in which his father then lived. I 
 heard Mr. Washington say, in a public address in 
 New Orleans, in referring to this : "I do not 
 know that my boy will be a mason when he 
 grows up ; he may be a doctor or a lawyer or a 
 minister, for all I know ; but this I do know 
 he will have a good solid trade to fall back on if 
 he needs it." 
 
 One of the very practical departments of the 
 school is that which teaches harness making, 
 saddlery and carriage trimming. In a country 
 where nearly a half of the going about is done
 
 80 Tuskegee 
 
 on horseback and on muleback, as is the case in 
 many parts of the South, the trade of saddle 
 making acquires an importance which in the 
 North it does not know. This shop not only 
 makes and repairs all of the school's harnesses 
 no small task where between fifty and a hundred 
 horses and mules are driven and worked but 
 has a good trade in making harnesses and sad- 
 dles for sale. The school's carriages, too, of 
 various patterns, are trimmed in the same shop. 
 The course of instruction which the pupils have 
 in this department here includes : 
 
 First Yeat. 
 
 First Term: Care of shop. Names and 
 care of tools. Thread-making and practice 
 stitching. 
 
 Second Term : Quality and preparation of 
 leather. Names and dimensions of straps. Re- 
 pairing all grades of harness. 
 
 Third Term : Cleaning and oiling harness. 
 Making odd parts of harness such as hame 
 straps, shaft tugs, bridle fronts, side straps, crup- 
 per docks, girths, etc. Fitting and finishing up 
 harnesses. 
 
 Second Year. 
 
 First Term : Review of work of first year. 
 Names and grades of trimmings. Names 
 and grades of leather. Economical cutting of 
 leather. 
 
 Second Term : Care of patent leather.
 
 Tuskegee 81 
 
 Stitching of patent leather. Cutting patterns. 
 Making fancy harnesses such as coach, buggy, 
 truck, and all grades of express harnesses. 
 
 Third Term : Review of work done in first 
 and second years. Finishing work. Making all 
 grades of cart and gig saddles. Inspection and 
 criticising by the students of all work done in 
 the shop. The course in carriage trimming is 
 entirely separate from this. 
 
 I went into the harness shop one afternoon 
 when the theory class was in progress, intending 
 to remain only a few minutes ; but I found the 
 work there so interesting that I spent the whole 
 hour there. A part of the class, beginners, 
 were having what might be called a competitive 
 examination in blacking and polishing pieces of 
 straps, to see which had best mastered the art. 
 Another boy was making a crupper dock, and 
 showed me how he stuffed it with flax-seed, so 
 as to make it at the same time flexible and solid. 
 The crupper dock this boy was making was to 
 replace one which had been eaten by a rat with 
 a tooth for flax-seed, and the spoiled part of the 
 harness was utilized to show the members of the 
 class the need of keeping a harness hung up 
 when not in use, and the danger of throwing it 
 down upon the floor of a stable. Other boys 
 were called on to demonstrate how to make a 
 " turn back," for a driving harness. Three boys 
 were called up for this before the teacher was 
 satisfied with the result. The third boy's expla- 
 nation was as clear as could have been any stu-
 
 82 Tuskegee 
 
 dent's demonstration of a problem in geometry. 
 The strip of leather must be of just a certain 
 length and width, to begin with, and then split, 
 trimmed, and stitched in certain places in just 
 such a way. All of the demonstrations were 
 practical, the students in their heavy aprons 
 standing around one of the large work benches 
 in the shop. 
 
 One of the members of the harness-making 
 class was a young Cuban, one of ten students 
 from that island who had then been at the Insti- 
 tute about four months. When these students 
 came only one of them could speak any English, 
 but they had learned rapidly. They all were 
 enrolled in some of the industrial classes of the 
 school, getting an English education and a trade 
 at the same time, with a view to returning to 
 Cuba, fitted to meet the new conditions of life 
 in that island. Mr. Washington said to me 
 about these Cubans at the school, in reply to a 
 question which I asked him : " My idea is to 
 give these students industrial training, with the 
 thought that they will return and become leaders 
 in industrial work among their people." 
 
 What the director of industries had said to 
 me about the students coming to understand 
 that a man can work at a trade or on a farm 
 and still keep himself neat, frequently came back 
 to my mind in the evening, as I watched the 
 students in chapel. The chapel services are 
 held in the Institute church every evening at 
 8.20. All students attend, unless previously
 
 Tuskegee 83 
 
 excused, and the members of the faculty attend 
 very generally also. 
 
 Imagine a lofty, spacious church, beautifully 
 finished in native woods, and brilliantly lighted 
 with electric lights. A thousand young colored 
 men and women sit facing the platform. On 
 the platform are the teachers, and in the gallery 
 just behind is a choir of over a hundred voices, 
 with an organ, a piano, and an orchestra for in- 
 strumental accompaniment. Professor Charles 
 G. Harris, the school's instructor in music, di- 
 rects the choir. The service is simple : music, 
 a prayer, a Bible selection, and a text for the 
 day, recited by the leader and repeated by the 
 school in concert. When Mr. Washington is at 
 Tuskegee he conducts the service. His Sunday 
 evening talks to the students have always been 
 a feature of the school ; they have been heard 
 now by thousands of young men and women, 
 and treasured up, to be used as guides in later 
 life. When Mr. Washington is not at the school 
 Mr. Logan takes his place. If there are visitors 
 at the Institute they frequently speak to the 
 students at this time for a few minutes. Some- 
 times there are announcements to be made or 
 some general instruction to be given to the 
 school as a whole. This opportunity is also 
 utilized to drill the students in a body in chorus 
 singing. Tuskegee has always striven to main- 
 tain and teach the beautiful, old-time plantation 
 hymns, and there is hardly ever a service at 
 which one or more of these is not sung.
 
 84 Tuskegee 
 
 I have sometimes heard Mr. Washington say 
 at chapel : " Has not some one a new song to- 
 night, which we can learn ? " Sometimes he has 
 to repeat the request two or three times before 
 anyone has courage to respond. Then, far back 
 in the house, some single voice chants, half tim- 
 idly at first, the words of a hymn which per- 
 haps had never been heard before outside the 
 backwoods church or cabin home where the 
 singer had learned it. The quaint, high-pitched 
 melody rises and falls a voice alone until a 
 dozen quick ears catch the theme and a dozen 
 voices are humming an accompaniment. The 
 second time the refrain is reached a few voices 
 join in boldly, a hundred follow, and then a 
 thousand, sending up into the arches of the roof 
 such a volume of sound as one is rarely permit- 
 ted to hear. Mr. Horace White, the editor of 
 the New York Evening Post, wrote of this music, 
 after he had visited Tuskegee and heard the stu- 
 dents sing : " Nowhere in the world, in non- 
 professional ranks, have I heard their equals in 
 musical gifts and training." 
 
 At the chapel services the young men sit on 
 one side of the house and the young women on 
 the other. The two main entrances to the 
 church are at the front corners. The pews are 
 so arranged that a broad aisle leads from each of 
 the entrances down to the ends of the platform. 
 These aisles are connected by one which passes 
 directly in front of the platform and by another 
 parallel to this, in the rear of the room. When
 
 Tuskegee 85 
 
 the service is finished the leader nods to the 
 young woman at the piano. She strikes a chord 
 as a signal for attention ; another, and the young 
 women rise ; another, they turn to position, and 
 then, keeping step to the music of the orchestra, 
 begin to march out. It is not a simple matter, 
 though, this marching out, for the line starts far 
 back by the door and the young women come 
 slowly, two by two, down the long aisle to the 
 stage, across in front of the stage, up the other 
 side aisle, across the room again at the rear, and 
 then, having completed a square, out at the 
 entrance by which they came in to the service. 
 Meanwhile, as if it were not a sufficiently trying 
 ordeal to file slowly around the room in this way, 
 with the eyes of all the rest of the audience fixed 
 upon them, the young woman who teaches the 
 girls gymnastics takes her station at the foot of 
 the first aisle, as the column starts to move, and 
 inspects each student as she passes before her. 
 If a girl does not carry herself erect, or if any 
 detail of her dress or general bearing is not 
 absolutely satisfactory, the hand of the teacher 
 stops her and she has to fall out of line and 
 stand there in the eyes of all, embarrassed and 
 humiliated. 
 
 When the girls have marched out the piano 
 is struck again, and the boys rise and begin to 
 march in the same way, going around the audi- 
 torium in a direction opposite to that taken by 
 the girls. Major Ramsey, the instructor in mili- 
 tary drill, meets the boys at the foot of their
 
 86 Tuskegee 
 
 aisle, and perfect indeed must be the deport- 
 ment and dress of the boy who gets past him. 
 Untidy hair, unbrushed clothes, dirt, unblacked 
 shoes, a button off or even a button of a coat 
 left unfastened, and out of the line the unhappy 
 culprit comes. Even after the teacher is passed 
 the ordeal is not over, for Mr. Washington or 
 Mr. Logan conducts a second inspection of the 
 line as it passes his place on the platform. 
 
 The result of this is that one will see nowhere 
 a neater or more neatly dressed company of 
 young people than the students at Tuskegee 
 Institute. In whatever work they may have 
 been engaged during the day, its traces have 
 been removed before they come to chapel, or, 
 for that matter, before they come to their supper, 
 two hours earlier in the evening. 
 
 I think that a prominent southern white man, 
 who understood Negro character thoroughly, 
 expressed the best comment on this when he 
 said to me, not long after watching for the first 
 time that nightly march in Tuskegee chapel : " I 
 am impressed by the philosophy of it all. Here 
 are a thousand Negroes, and not one of them 
 with a button missing or unfastened. I never 
 saw its like before."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I QUOTE a portion of one of Mr. Washington's 
 Sunday evening talks, selecting the one which 
 he gave on the evening of February 4, 1900. 
 He chose for his subject that night : 
 
 WORK 
 
 " It is an important thing to learn to get hap- 
 piness and even information out of what one 
 often calls the common and rather repulsive 
 things of life. One of the most interesting books 
 that I have ever seen was a book written describ- 
 ing the beautiful things which a person can find 
 in a common mud-puddle in a common hole of 
 water, such as you see on the roadside, during 
 the summer time especially. Now you would 
 be surprised if you were to make a careful inves- 
 tigation, to make a careful study, how many 
 really charming things one can find in a stagnant 
 pool of water. The individual who has really 
 the supreme art of getting happiness, getting 
 useful information, out of everything that is in 
 nature is a very happy individual ; and that is 
 what education is meant to accomplish to en- 
 able one to get that which is beautiful, to get 
 inspiration, to get real happiness out of the com- 
 mon things of life everything : out of grass, 
 out of trees, out of animals everything. 
 When a person can learn to get happiness, in-
 
 88 Tuskegee 
 
 formation, out of what we term the common 
 things of life, that person has learned a great 
 deal, and it is one of the last things that an 
 individual, one of the last things that races, are 
 inclined to learn. Now, I am going to speak 
 to you to-night about one of the common things 
 of life. It is common because it occupies so 
 large a proportion of our time. I am going to 
 speak about work a very common word. 
 
 " You will find that the average individual 
 spends, or is supposed to spend, perhaps about 
 one-third of his time in some form of work. 
 There are some individuals who spend ten hours, 
 some twelve hours, or rather some think that 
 they spend ten or twelve hours in some form of 
 labor. Now, here is a thing that occupies our 
 energy, our mental activity, in so large a degree 
 that we ought not to count it an insignificant 
 thing. A thing that occupies one-third or one- 
 half of our life is something that should be im- 
 portant to us as individuals it is something 
 that we cannot lay lightly aside, it is something to 
 be looked closely into. Now the question that 
 would arise in the mind of any individual who 
 thinks on the subject is, how to get the greatest 
 benefit, the greatest amount of happiness, the 
 greatest amount of that which adds to real life 
 to permanent growth out of work. You can 
 plainly see, if you are engaged in something that 
 occupies such a proportion of your life, and you 
 are not getting real growth, it is a serious mat- 
 ter. You spend a very large proportion of your
 
 Tuskegee 89 
 
 time in sleep. Perhaps about one-third of your 
 time is spent in this way, and you spend one- 
 half of the remainder of your life in work, and 
 if you are not getting real strength when I 
 speak of strength I do not mean only mental 
 and physical ; I mean strength of the soul as 
 well, for it is the real object of all labor you 
 should find out the reason. 
 
 " If you are not gaining strength you are get- 
 ting weaker, and the question I want to ask is, 
 Are you getting real happiness are you getting 
 growth out of your work ? Whether it is purely 
 mental, or partly mental and partly physical, or 
 whether it is both mental and physical, are you 
 getting growth, are you getting strength out of 
 your work are you getting strength of soul ? 
 If you are not getting happiness out of your 
 present work, there is something wrong, and you 
 want to stop and examine yourself, and see if 
 you cannot so shape your life that you can get 
 i eal happiness out of every day you put in work, 
 whether you are a student or whether you are 
 engaged in any other form of labor. 
 
 " In the first place, there are two kinds of 
 workers. There is the one class that is con- 
 stantly seeking how little it can do, day by day. 
 The first thing this individual thinks of before 
 he gets out of bed in the morning is : How many 
 things can I shirk to-day ? What is the least 
 number of hours that I can possibly seem to be 
 engaged to-day and still get my pay ? How can 
 I leave off this thing and still get my pay ?
 
 90 T u s k e ge e 
 
 Now that is one class. The other class is the 
 one that is constantly asking : How much time 
 can I put in this day? How much of real 
 work, of real effort, can I put in to-day? I 
 shall take it for granted that all of you belong to 
 the latter class, because it is the individual who 
 belongs to the first class who is constantly dis- 
 satisfied who is constantly without a position. 
 It is impossible for an individual who is con- 
 stantly studying to find out the least amount 
 of work that he can do, to get any happiness out 
 of any kind of labor. The happiest people I ever 
 saw are the people who find that the day is too 
 short. I heard a man say the other day that he 
 was going to see if the jewelers could not con- 
 struct a clock that registered thirty hours instead 
 of twenty-four hours. He could not find time 
 enough in one day to do all the good things 
 he wanted to do. He belongs to the latter 
 class to which I referred. Now you want to 
 consider, in order to get happiness out of your 
 work, that whatever has fallen to your lot to do 
 is just as important as the work being done by 
 anybody else. No matter whether it is seen 
 by the outside world or not whether anyone 
 knows of it except yourself or not whether 
 it is scrubbing or plowing or making an axe- 
 handle you want to consider that work just as 
 honorable, just as ennobling as any' work that 
 can be done ; do not consider that work any less 
 important. I believe that the work the latter 
 individual is doing is just as important as the
 
 Tuskegee 91 
 
 work of any other individual. The work that 
 every one of you is doing is important, and you 
 want to consider it important, and you cannot 
 get satisfaction out of your work unless you 
 decide that it is important. The world will 
 not be as complete to-morrow as it would be 
 without the work being done for which you 
 are responsible. You cannot get real happiness 
 out of work unless you put intelligence and 
 thought into it. See if you cannot improve 
 to-morrow on the work that you did yesterday, 
 and improve on it the day after to-morrow. 
 Put earnestness into it ; be sure to see that it 
 is done as well or better than anyone else can 
 do it ; do it so well that no one can improve 
 upon it ; forget yourself in it. That is one of 
 the ways to get the greatest happiness out of 
 your work. Get so baptized in your work, so 
 immersed in it, that you will forget yourself. 
 Those are the people who get real satisfaction 
 out of their work. Then, put your conscience 
 into it. Do it just as well at midnight, if your 
 work falls at twelve o'clock in the night, as you 
 would at four o'clock in the morning do it 
 just as well as if it came twelve o'clock in the 
 day, whether you are doing it in the sight of 
 one hundred persons or doing it in a corner. 
 
 "Now, again, to get happiness out of your 
 work you must prepare for it. You must begin 
 to-night to think about the work that you are 
 going to do to-morrow. The more perfect you 
 do your work to-morrow the more perfect the
 
 92 Tuskegee 
 
 world will be. Plan for your work to-morrow ; 
 see how far you can put your mind into it. You 
 will find, if you will go on working in the 
 way that I have tried to advise you to-night, 
 that the most of the troubles that now confront 
 you will disappear. How am I going to find a 
 position, or keep that position, will cease to be a 
 question with you. If you will follow the advice 
 that I have given you there will be no trouble 
 about you getting or keeping a position, because 
 you will put yourself in demand the world 
 cannot do without you ; so valuable will be your 
 occupation that the world will feel that it cannot 
 get along without your services. Such a person 
 need not be bothered about his position. 
 
 " Now if you are not getting happiness out of 
 your work it is your own fault ; it is because you 
 are not putting inspiration into it because 
 you are not putting your conscience into it. 
 
 " The point I want to leave with you is, that 
 you will not only get physical strength out of 
 your work, but mental strength as well ; because 
 the people who are the strongest physically and 
 mentally are the people who get the most happi- 
 ness out of their work. Above all, you will get 
 soul's growth out of work if you will only put 
 happiness into it, and you will only get happiness 
 out of it by following the plan that I have tried 
 to lay down to you to-night."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ABOUT one-third of the students at Tuskegee 
 are young women. In the academic department 
 they attend classes with the young men. In the 
 industrial department type-setting, tailoring, car- 
 ing for the sick, market gardening, poultry rais- 
 ing, bee-keeping, horticulture, and floriculture are 
 taught to both men and women. Among the 
 industries taught only to the young women are 
 mattress making, plain sewing, dressmaking and 
 millinery, cooking, laundry work, and general 
 housekeeping. 
 
 Caring for the sick is work for which the 
 students have shown a marked preference and 
 in which they have been very successful. In 
 one year, when I was at Tuskegee, there had 
 been sixty applications to enter this class, and 
 only sixteen pupils could be accommodated, the 
 Institute's hospitals being smaller and less con- 
 venient than the buildings in almost any other 
 department. The full course of study requires 
 three years, and is very thorough. During 
 their senior year in the nurse-training depart- 
 ment the students are frequently employed by 
 the physicians at Tuskegee to take charge of 
 cases for them, obtaining much valuable experi- 
 ence in this way. This department has at no 
 time been able to supply all the demands made 
 upon it, especially during the months of the
 
 94 Tuskegee 
 
 Cuban war. One graduate is now in charge of 
 the surgical ward of a hospital in Montgomery, 
 another is head nurse in a hospital in Mississippi, 
 and a third is employed as nurse in the white 
 young ladies' seminary in Tuskegee, one of the 
 most successful institutions of learning in Ala- 
 bama. While I was at Tuskegee a request was 
 received for a nurse to accompany a young 
 white woman on a two years' voyage around the 
 world. 
 
 Very many of the girls, when admitted to the 
 sewing classes, are absolutely ignorant of the 
 simplest principles of needle work. The first 
 year's work consists of the most common kinds 
 of stitches, patching, darning, and general mend- 
 ing. A large number of girls work in the vari- 
 ous divisions of the seamstress classes. They 
 not only make the girls' uniforms, and all the 
 sheets, pillow cases, table cloths, napkins, towels 
 and such articles as the school needs, but they 
 also mend the boys' clothes, no small task. The 
 housewife of an ordinary home is often . said to 
 sit dismayed before the mending for the family. 
 Think of being responsible for the mending of 
 the clothes of several hundred stout and vigor- 
 ous young men ! 
 
 The course in plain sewing requires two years. 
 In the second year of the course the students 
 make simple garments, such as skirts, under- 
 clothing, overalls, and colored shirts. Students 
 who complete this course satisfactorily, or pass 
 an examination in plain sewing and the ability to
 
 Tuskegee 95 
 
 make simple garments, are admitted to the dress- 
 making classes. The course in dressmaking is 
 carefully graded, and requires three years to 
 complete. It is as follows : 
 
 v First Year. 
 
 First Term : Choice of materials. Drafting 
 and cutting foundation and outline skirts from 
 measurement. 
 
 Second Term : Making, hanging, draping, 
 and trimming the skirt. Talks on forms ; line 
 and proportion in relation to draping and trim- 
 ming. 
 
 Third Term : Drafting, cutting, and fitting 
 plain basques, and the general finish of these gar- 
 ments. 
 
 Second Year. 
 
 First Term : Drafting basques, sleeves, and 
 the different accessories to the basque from 
 measurement. Drafting basques with extra 
 seams for stout figures. 
 
 Second Term : Cutting and fitting close 
 and double-breasted garments. Cutting and 
 matching striped, plaid, and figured basques and 
 skirts. Talks on forms, including artistic and 
 hygienic principles of dress. Talks on the sub- 
 ject of color and textiles as applied to dress. 
 
 Third Term : Advanced work in making 
 complete dresses from different materials. 
 
 Third Year. 
 First Term : Cutting, fitting, and pressing.
 
 96 Tuskegee 
 
 Practice in the use of colors. Talks on the 
 manufacture of cloth. 
 
 Second Term : Drafting jackets of various 
 styles ; making various styles of collars and 
 pockets ; lining and finishing pockets. 
 
 Third Term : Draping garments of every 
 kind. Making and finishing garments of every 
 kind from different materials. 
 
 In these departments, as in those in which the 
 young men work, the students are paid accord- 
 ing to the value of their work. The uniforms 
 for the young women, made by the dress-making 
 class, consist of a plainly cut, dark navy blue 
 dress, trimmed with three rows of red braid about 
 the skirt, and a red belt. Ties, ribbons, or other 
 adornments about the throat must harmonize 
 in color with the braiding on the dress. A 
 black sailor straw hat with a white band com- 
 pletes the uniform. 
 
 All of the girls except those in the two lowest 
 classes have at least two lessons each week in 
 cooking. These lessons are practical work, the 
 numbers allotted to each division being small 
 enough so that each member of the class gets 
 individual instruction. Special courses are 
 arranged to teach the preparation of food for the 
 sick. Particular attention is given to the cor- 
 rect arrangement of the table for different meals, 
 to the proper methods of serving food and wait- 
 ing on the table, and to table manners in 
 general. 
 
 Not long ago I heard Mr. Washington say in
 
 Tuskegee 97 
 
 public : " How often has my heart been made 
 to sink as I have gone through the South and 
 into the homes of the people, and have found 
 women who could converse intelligently on 
 Grecian history, who had studied geometry, 
 who could analyze the most complex sentences, 
 and yet could not analyze the poorly cooked and 
 still more poorly served corn bread and fat meat 
 which they and their families were eating three 
 times a day. It is little trouble to find girls who 
 can locate Pekin or the Desert of Sahara on an 
 artificial globe, but seldom can you find one who 
 can locate on an actual dinner table the proper 
 place for the carving knife and fork or the meat 
 and vegetables." The course of study in cook- 
 ing as taught at Tuskegee aims to meet the 
 needs of such conditions as these. 
 
 Fifty young women work in the laundry. 
 Three hundred thousand pieces are washed and 
 ironed in this department each year. The build- 
 ing has excellent modern machinery, much of 
 which it may be interesting to know was bought 
 with money contributed for that purpose by 
 young women who have graduated from the 
 school. As it is realized, however, that few of 
 the young women will have the assistance of 
 machinery in their laundry work after they have 
 left the school, the girls are trained in all the 
 methods of hand work. The work which the 
 laundry does is proving to be among the most 
 practical and helpful of that done in any of the 
 departments. There are many cases similar to
 
 98 Tuskegee 
 
 that of a young woman who found herself at the 
 close of the school year obliged to borrow money 
 with which to get home for the vacation. She 
 had had one year's instruction in the laundry. 
 When she reached the village where her home 
 was she found that she could have all the regular 
 work at washing and ironing that she wished to 
 do. Before the summer vacation was over she 
 had paid back the money she had borrowed, and 
 saved quite a sum towards her expenses during 
 her next year at the school. Another young 
 woman, who when she came to the school and 
 was assigned to work in the laundry was so 
 ignorant that she did not even know how to fold 
 a pocket handkerchief properly, came to the 
 teacher when she returned to the school after 
 her first vacation and said, " Oh, Miss Mabry, 
 when I was put to work in the laundry I didn't 
 like it a bit, at first, but I am so glad now that 
 I stayed there. When I reached home this 
 summer I found that I could have all the work 
 that I could do, at good pay ; and in this one 
 vacation I have earned more money than I ever 
 did before in my whole life." 
 
 It is intended that every girl who comes to 
 the school, whatever her regular work may be, 
 shall have as much training in general house- 
 work as is possible. One needs only to observe 
 the majority of Negro country homes as they 
 may be seen from the car windows of a train 
 passing through almost any part of the South 
 to realize the wisdom of this. All of the young
 
 luskegee 99 
 
 women at the school are divided into three 
 classes, and each class does practical housework 
 for three months in caring for the buildings of 
 the school. I quote a paragraph from the course 
 of study, which speaks for itself : 
 
 " Spring house cleaning ; when to do it. How 
 to do general weekly cleaning ; care and clean- 
 ing of lamps. Bed room ; where it should be 
 located ; how to ventilate, light, and heat ; when 
 and how to clean ; decorations suitable to be 
 used. Beds ; when and how to clean ; when 
 and how to air them ; why aired ; when and how 
 to change bedding ; how to keep it through sum- 
 mer season. Sweeping and dusting; how to 
 sweep and dust properly ; how to build a coal 
 fire ; when and how to burn out chimneys ; use 
 of dust brush and pan, and trash box. Scrub- 
 bing ; how to use the brush ; advantages of 
 brush ; how to remove paint ; how to polish 
 window panes." 
 
 The provisions for teaching scrubbing recall 
 Mr. Washington's address before the White 
 Rose Mission, in New York, where he said : " I 
 have often thought, especially when traveling 
 from city to city in the North, what a good thing 
 it would be to establish a chair in some strong 
 university for the science of scrubbing yes, 
 the common, homely art of scrubbing. Seldom 
 do we see clean floors ; the art seems to have 
 passed away." 
 
 The training of young women in poultry rais- 
 ing, market gardening, bee-keeping, horticulture,
 
 ioo Tuskegee 
 
 and similar arts is in a measure a result of a 
 visit which Mr. Washington made to the famous 
 Woman's Agricultural College at Swanley, 
 England, when he was abroad, although he had 
 for some time previous to that desired to broaden 
 the Institute's course of instruction in outdoor 
 work for women. He has said in regard to this : 
 " In our Southern climate there is no reason why 
 women cannot be trained to do successfully many 
 things which come under the head of agriculture, 
 just as is true in many parts of Europe. 
 These courses are designed to fit the girls for 
 earning a pleasant and profitable living, and 
 making the home tie more sacred by the appli- 
 cation of the knowledge obtained. The courses 
 of study are given in connection with academic 
 training, and when satisfactorily completed cer- 
 tificates will be issued in connection with the 
 academic diplomas." These courses of study 
 are so interesting and so practical that I quote 
 the first year's work in several of the classes : 
 Dairying. Fall term. The home dairy is 
 taken up and a clear knowledge obtained of the 
 kind, use, and care of dairy utensils, and of gravity 
 creaming. A study of stone, wooden, and tin 
 churns, ripening of cream, churning, working and 
 salting the butter, preparing it for the market 
 and marketing it. The feeding and care of dairy 
 cows. Winter term. The distinctive features 
 of the commercial dairy are taken up. Separa- 
 tors, of which the school has two varieties ; 
 churns, of which there are several patterns.
 
 Tuskegee 101 
 
 Feeding and care of the dairy herd. Breeds of 
 dairy cattle and their selection. Butter making 
 in larger quantities ; salting, packing, and pre- 
 paring for the market. Spring term. Milking. 
 A study of pastures. How to destroy lice and 
 other parasites. The care of calves. The utiliza- 
 tion of waste products of the dairy. Library 
 work. 
 
 Poultry Raising. Fall term. The economic 
 value of poultry on the farm. Pure and mixed 
 breeds. Plain poultry-house construction. The 
 making of nests, yards, and runs. Winter 
 term. Special study of breeding and feeding. 
 What kinds of eggs to set, and when and how 
 to set them. The best breed of fowls to set. 
 Management of the incubator. Period of incu- 
 bation. An introductory study of young chick- 
 ens. General poultry keeping and the saving of 
 eggs for market. Spring term. A more ad- 
 vanced study of young poultry. Brooders, 
 Sanitation of the poultry house. Egg testing. 
 Moulting and its effects upon different breeds. 
 
 Horticulture. Fall term. The importance 
 of an orchard and of small fruits. Varieties best 
 suited to the localities in which particular stu-- 
 dents live. Selection and preparation of 
 ground. Setting out and trimming. Extermi- 
 nation of borers, lice, scale, etc. Kinds and pro- 
 portionate number of peach, pear, apple, plum, 
 and fig trees, and of grape vines and strawberry 
 plants which should be planted in home orchards. 
 Spring term. Spring planting. Trimming,
 
 102 Tuskegee 
 
 budding, grafting, spraying. Care of grape vines. 
 The vine and post system of supporters. Spring 
 layering and cutting. 
 
 Floriculture and Landscape Gardening. Fall 
 term. A study of common door yards, laying 
 out and beautifying the same. The kind, care 
 and use of tools used in floriculture and land- 
 scape gardening. Trimming and shaping of 
 beds and borders, and the general care of shrub- 
 bery and flowers. The gathering and saving of 
 seeds. Special treatment of rose bushes and 
 shrubbery. Winter term. Trimming of beds 
 and borders. Mulching, tying, wrapping, and 
 preparation of plants for the winter. Winter 
 decoration of grounds. The decorative value of 
 native shrubbery. A study of window plants, 
 their value in the home, in halls, and in public 
 buildings. Their economic value. Spring 
 term. Renewing of beds and borders. Sow- 
 ing of seeds. Propagation by layers, cuttings, 
 and divisions of roots, bulbs, corms, etc. Kinds 
 of fertilizers for this special season and how to 
 use them. 
 
 Market Gardening. Fall term. The value 
 of the home garden. Selection and preparation 
 of the ground. Kinds of tools, their use and 
 care. Planting, gathering, and marketing of fall 
 vegetables. Gathering of seeds. Drying pump- 
 kins, cushaws, okra, and fruits. Winter term. 
 The selection of suitable sites for hot beds ; 
 making of beds, cold frames ; planting and car- 
 ing for the same. The raising and marketing of
 
 Tuskegee 103 
 
 winter vegetables. Spring term. Preparation 
 of the ground at this season. What seeds to 
 plant and how to plant them. Particular atten- 
 tion given to the production of early vegetables 
 both for the home and for market. Reproduc- 
 tion of plants by seed and by division of mem- 
 bers. 
 
 These studies mean practical work. In the 
 dairy the girls make butter. In the poultry 
 raising department the girls do all of the work, 
 even to whitewashing the hen house and fences. 
 They feed the fowls, tend the incubator, and 
 feed and care for the chickens and ducks. The 
 school has about fifty swarms of bees. The girls 
 take care of these. In the market -gardening 
 class they have proved especially expert in 
 transplanting seedlings, and in gathering and 
 sorting seeds. They learn to handle a hoe 
 lightly and skillfully, to prune trees and shrubs, 
 and to care for the flower beds. Along with 
 this practical work they have class-room instruc- 
 tion, with a special view to bringing them to 
 understand the economic details of the work. 
 They are taught to distinguish between breeds 
 of fowls and varieties of plants which can be 
 raised with the most profit under certain condi- 
 tions and in certain places. They have their 
 account books, and keep track of what profit or 
 loss there is in raising different breeds of fowls 
 and different varieties of vegetables.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 FROM the time when industrial education was 
 first established at Tuskegee, agriculture has 
 been looked upon as one of the most important 
 industries to be taught there. Probably eighty- 
 five per cent of the several millions of Negro 
 men and women living in the South must of 
 necessity continue to live on the plantations and 
 obtain a living from the cultivation of the soil. 
 Mr. Washington, I know, believes it best that 
 they should do so. I have frequently heard 
 him say to audiences of his race : " Stay on the 
 plantations. There is room there and a chance 
 to work. Too often the young men and women 
 who leave the farms to crowd into the cities find 
 it very difficult to get work there. The idleness 
 which results is almost sure to cause poverty 
 and disease, if not immorality and crime." 
 
 The conditions under which a majority of the 
 Negro farmers and a large part of the white 
 farmers in the South labor are often pitiable. 
 In many cases the farmer owns no land, and as 
 a result must rent a "patch " on such terms as 
 he can make with the landlord, to whom he con- 
 tracts to deliver a certain portion of the crop for 
 rent. He has little or no money with which to 
 purchase supplies in advance, and so, before his 
 crop is even planted, he has to mortgage the bal- 
 ance of it to some merchant in town for food for
 
 Tuskegee 105 
 
 himself and family to live on through the spring 
 and summer. As cotton is the readiest cash 
 crop in the country, neither landlord nor mer- 
 chant wishes to make an advance on any other 
 crop. As a result, the farmer too often is 
 forced to plant only cotton buying even his 
 corn meal and bacon of the storekeeper, and of 
 necessity obliged to pay almost any price which 
 the dealer may demand. The farmer knows noth- 
 ing of the best methods of farming. Often he 
 works hard, and makes his family work hard, too, 
 but he does not understand how to make the work 
 count. Instead of concentrating his time and 
 strength upon a small area, on which he could 
 raise a paying crop, he struggles to half -till 
 twenty, thirty, or even forty acres with one 
 mule, and fails to raise a profitable crop on any 
 part of the ground. Even if the rent account 
 and the store bills are kept with absolute fairness 
 and sometimes it is possible they are not 
 the farmer frequently cannot figure them ; when 
 they get tangled he is helpless. The result in 
 too many cases is that when fall comes and the 
 crop is harvested the farmer finds that it is 
 already eaten up, and even if he and his family 
 are not "closed out"- that is, turned out of 
 their miserable cabin, and their few belongings 
 sold for debt they have nothing left to live 
 on through the winter, and must exist as best 
 they can until the coming of another spring 
 makes it possible to mortgage another implanted 
 crop.
 
 106 Tuskegee 
 
 In many cases it is the sons of such men as 
 these who come to Tuskegee. What are some 
 of the things which the school aims to teach 
 them ? To get to own land, even if it be ever 
 so little, on which a man can raise such crops as 
 he chooses, and from which he need not move 
 from year to year. To cultivate a little land 
 well, instead of much poorly. To raise every 
 article of food possible, and to go without all 
 those not absolutely essential which he cannot 
 raise, until he has the money to pay for them. 
 To learn to utilize the natural resources of the 
 country fruits, nuts, and forage now almost 
 wholly neglected, and to improve the dairy, 
 poultry yard and hog pen. To acquire sufficient 
 education so that he may be able to plan out 
 what he wants to do, to keep account of what he 
 is doing, and to understand if he has done what 
 he ought. 
 
 The school owns in round numbers twenty- 
 five hundred acres of tillage land, pasture, and 
 wood land. About six hundred acres of this are 
 cultivated by student labor. A large number of 
 students are employed upon the land regularly, 
 while others work there a part of the time. 
 The greater part of these work there because 
 they expect to be farmers later in life, but it 
 frequently happens that students assigned to the 
 farm at first, because there is no other work 
 available at the time, and who then have no 
 intention or wish to become farmers, are so 
 attracted to the work as it is carried on at Tus-
 
 Tuskegee 107 
 
 kegee that they decide to remain in the agricul- 
 tural department, and to make farming their life 
 work. 
 
 In 1897 an excellent building was erected to 
 accommodate the agricultural department, largely 
 through the assistance of Mr. Morris K. Jessup, 
 and an increased allowance from the Slater Fund 
 enabled the work to be broadened. This build- 
 ing is named the Slater-Armstrong Memorial 
 Agricultural Building. At its dedication there 
 were present Hon. James Wilson, the Secretary 
 of Agriculture, Hon. Joseph F. Johnston, the 
 Governor of Alabama, and Dr. J. L. M. Curry, 
 of the Slater Board of Trustees. The director 
 of the agricultural department is Prof. George 
 W. Carver, a graduate of the Iowa State Agri- 
 cultural College. 
 
 The laboratory work which the department 
 does is simple, and easily understood by the stu- 
 dents. It consists largely in an analysis of the 
 different soils, for the purpose of learning what 
 elements need to be supplied in order to make 
 them more productive and better fitted for the 
 crops which the farmers of the South wish to 
 raise. Fertilizers and feeds are tested in the 
 same way, to determine which of them can be 
 used to the best advantage. The average yield 
 of sweet potatoes from an acre in that locality is 
 less than fifty bushels. Experiments made by 
 Professor Carver have shown that two hundred 
 and sixty-six bushels of these vegetables can be 
 raised from an acre, proper fertilizers being used.
 
 io8 Tuskegee 
 
 The same acre of land the next year, with no 
 fertilizer, produced a bale of cotton, whereas a 
 third to a half a bale to the acre, as cotton is 
 raised in that part of the country, is often 
 reckoned a fair yield. One of the most promis- 
 ing experiments has been that of feeding acorns 
 to stock. The school now buys a thousand 
 bushels of acorns each year to feed out. The 
 orchard and market garden are maintained for 
 practical results. Budding, grafting, trimming, 
 and the care of trees and plants are taught with 
 a view to supplying the school with fruit and 
 vegetables. 
 
 All of the scientific knowledge is carried daily 
 into the fields and into the practical work of the 
 various departments of the farm. Mr. C. W. 
 Greene, who for almost the entire period of the 
 school's existence has had charge of the work in 
 practical agriculture, superintends the young 
 men in the actual work of raising food supplies 
 required by the needs of the school, and thus 
 the technical instruction which they get in the 
 laboratory and lecture rooms is worked out on 
 the land. I have repeatedly been impressed by 
 the interest which many of these young men 
 take in the different branches of the farm work. 
 It is no unusual thing for a student to come and 
 ask to be allowed to work over-time in some 
 other department than that in which he is 
 regularly employed, for the sake of the experi- 
 ence which he can get. Mr. Greene and the 
 men who are at the head of the various divisions
 
 luskegee 109 
 
 of farm work, such as stock raising, the care of 
 the dairy herd, the dairy, and horticulture, have 
 their regular theory classes, as in the other 
 trades, and one has only to attend one of these 
 classes and note the eager questions of the 
 students and the attention which they pay to the 
 instructors' explanations, to decide that they are 
 getting benefit from their studies. 
 
 Stock raising, and the care of stock of all 
 kinds, is a branch of the work in which the 
 students have careful instruction. The school 
 owns a herd of about one hundred excellent 
 cows, and all the details of dairy work are care- 
 fully taught. A visitor to the school has only 
 to have eaten the miserable white butter which 
 is so common in country districts in the South, 
 and then compare it with that which the Insti- 
 tute's dairy makes, to realize the value of this 
 course of instruction. The dairy when first 
 established was situated in the basement of the 
 agricultural building. I have been in the habit 
 of going into the dairy frequently in the morning 
 to watch the classes at their work. The stables 
 to begin with are kept scrupulously neat 
 and clean. Young men milk the cows, weigh 
 the milk, and deliver it at the dairy. Others, 
 in spotlessly clean white overalls and jackets, 
 separate the cream from the milk, using one of 
 the latest improved separators for this purpose. 
 Instruction is also given in the care of milk and 
 cream in small quantities, as in a country dairy, 
 where a separator would not be available. Other
 
 i io Tuskegee 
 
 young men and young women do the churning, 
 wash, salt, and pack the butter. Then they 
 wash, scour, and dry the utensils, and clean the 
 dairy. On any sunny day and most of the 
 days in Alabama are sunny there may be 
 seen put out in the open air on a platform back 
 of the agricultural building an array of shining 
 dairy ware which it would do a housewife's heart 
 good to look at. 
 
 A story which Mr. Washington is fond of 
 using as an illustration in his talks has to. do with 
 this dairy : 
 
 " It came to our knowledge," Mr. Washington 
 says, " that the owners of a certain creamery 
 wanted to hire a superintendent. We had re- 
 cently graduated a man who was perfectly capable 
 of filling the place in every way, but he was just 
 about as black as it is possible for a man to be. 
 However, we sent him on to apply for the position. 
 
 " When he made his appearance before the 
 owners of the creamery, they said, ' A colored 
 man ? Oh, that would never do, you know.' 
 
 " The applicant for the position said, very 
 politely, that he had not come to talk about his 
 color, but about making butter. His hearers 
 said it was out of the question to think of hiring 
 a colored man for the place. 
 
 " Our graduate still declined to talk about any 
 color except butter color, and similar details of 
 dairy work. Finally something which he said 
 attracted the attention of the owners of the 
 creamery, and they said he might stay for a two
 
 Tuskegee 111 
 
 weeks' trial, although they still assured him that 
 there was no possibility of a colored man being 
 hired. 
 
 " Well, the first week's make of butter was 
 shipped, and when the returns came back 
 would you believe it ? that butter had sold for 
 two cents a pound more than any product of 
 that creamery had ever before sold for. 
 
 " The owners said to each other : ' Now this 
 is very singular ; ' and waited for the next week's 
 returns. When that week's product was heard 
 from it was found that the butter had sold for a 
 cent a pound more than that for the week before 
 three cents more than the creamery's best 
 record before our man had taken hold of it ! 
 
 " This time the owners of the establishment 
 did not stop to say anything. They just put 
 that extra and unexpected dividend into their 
 pockets and hired that colored man to run the 
 creamery for a term of years. Three cents a 
 pound extra on the price of the butter which he 
 could make had knocked every particle of black 
 out of his skin, so far as they were concerned." 
 
 The dairy furnishes all the butter, cream, 
 milk, and buttermilk which the school and fami- 
 lies of the teachers consume. Cheese is made 
 at certain times in the year, so that the members 
 of each class can have instruction in the art of 
 making it. One experiment which Professor Car- 
 ver made with cheese interested me. It has been 
 rather commonly believed that the climate of 
 Alabama is unfavorable to the keeping of cheese,
 
 112 Tuskegee 
 
 and that therefore this branch of dairy work 
 cannot be profitably carried on there. To see if 
 this is true Professor Carver once, when making 
 cheese, set aside a ten-pound full-milk cheese to 
 experiment with. No especial care was taken 
 of this cheese, except that occasionally it was 
 turned over and brushed off. It was kept on a 
 shelf in one of the lecture rooms. Several times 
 it was carried out to farmers' institutes as an 
 object lesson. One day I was in the lecture 
 room and happened to notice it. It was then 
 two years and two months old. I said : " I wonder 
 what it would taste like," and Professor Carver, 
 remarking that it seemed to have been kept long 
 enough to satisfy the requirements of the experi- 
 ment, proposed that we cut it. We did so, and 
 found it delicious. Such work as this has a 
 very practical value. The Negroes of the South 
 as yet get little real benefit from dairying ; and 
 yet in Alabama cows can be bought very cheaply, 
 and can be pastured out of doors for almost the 
 entire year. 
 
 Only a part of the Institute's land adjoins the 
 school grounds. Marshall Farm, a plantation of 
 about eight hundred acres, is three miles dis- 
 tant. Thirty young men are employed on this 
 farm, under the direction of the farm manager 
 and two resident teachers. The young men 
 work upon the land during the day and attend 
 regular night school in the big old house which 
 was once the " mansion-house " of the planta- 
 tion. When I was at the farm in the fall of
 
 Tuskegee 113 
 
 1899 the men were finishing the digging of 
 thirty acres of sweet potatoes, and were piling 
 the crop in the field to be kept -for winter con- 
 sumption. They had also raised twenty acres 
 of sugar cane. The cane had been harvested from 
 this ground and grinding was to begin immedi- 
 ately. About fifty barrels of syrup would be 
 made that year the season has been too dry 
 for a good crop. The syrup would be consumed 
 at the school, as, in fact, are all the products of 
 the farm. 
 
 All food crops which can be grown profitably 
 in the South are raised by the school. Many 
 acres are devoted to vegetables and garden prod- 
 uce. Students who remain in this department 
 for the two years' course become familiar with 
 all the essential details of farming and are com- 
 petent to take charge of almost any plantation. 
 Those who remain for the full scientific course 
 of four years add to this the ability to teach the 
 science of agriculture, while even those who are 
 not able to complete a year at the school carry 
 back to their farm homes new ideas and habits 
 of systematic, intelligent work which cannot but 
 be of great benefit to them.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 I HAVE always found it interesting to talk 
 with individual students at Tuskegee to learn 
 something of their history, how they happened 
 to come to the Institute, what they were doing, 
 and what their plans were for the future. A 
 few pages from one of my note books, repeating 
 the substance of some of these conversations, 
 will give a good idea of the average Tuskegee 
 student. These are not exceptional cases in 
 any way, or picked students, except as I picked 
 them up anywhere and began to talk with them. 
 My experience has been that something of inter- 
 est could be written about almost every one of 
 the students at the school. 
 
 Charles P. Adams, of West Baton Rouge 
 Parish, Louisiana about one hundred miles 
 from New Orleans : " I heard of Tuskegee from 
 a young man who had received a catalogue. I 
 was twenty-one years old. I could read and 
 write a little, and had learned to do a few ' sums.' 
 I lived with an uncle and worked with him. We 
 had bought one hundred and sixty acres of land 
 one hundred and ten of it cleared land, and 
 the rest cypress swamp. This cost us $2800, 
 and we were allowed four years in which to pay 
 for it. We paid for it in the required time, by 
 hard work on that portion of it which we culti- 
 vated, and by renting some parts of the balance.
 
 Tuskegee 11 
 
 One-third of this land is mine. It is good land, 
 suitable for raising cane and corn. 
 
 " We got the last payment made on the land 
 just after I came of age. Then I made up my 
 mind that I wanted to get a better education 
 before I settled down. At first my uncle dis- 
 couraged me. He said I owned a good planta- 
 tion ; what more did I need ? But when he 
 found that my mind was set on it he agreed that 
 I had better go, and gave me $70 to start with. 
 That is all the money I have had, except what I 
 have earned here. This is my fourth year at 
 the school. I have stayed and worked all of the 
 vacations, and have also had work on the farm 
 and as a janitor. 
 
 " I cannot begin to make anyone understand 
 my delight when I first saw Tuskegee the 
 beauty of it ; and then later, when I began to 
 understand and appreciate the system which 
 prevails here. Then it was that I came to real- 
 ize the needs of my folks at home. I shall stay 
 five years in all. The thing constantly before 
 me now is to go back, and in some way help the 
 people around my home, and at the same time 
 build myself up. My uncle is glad now that I 
 came. I had a letter only a little while ago from 
 him, in which he urged me to make the most 
 of my opportunities here, ' because,' he wrote, 
 ' when you come back a great deal will be ex- 
 pected of you.' 
 
 " One great thing which I have learned here 
 is the value of ' system ' in farming to know
 
 16 T u s k e g 
 
 e e 
 
 just what you want to raise and how much land 
 to cultivate. Then take that much land and 
 make the most of it. Then I have learned to 
 experiment. If one of two pieces of corn in dif- 
 ferent soils does the best, try and find out why, 
 and from this know what to do the next year. 
 Then I have learned economy. Our people at 
 my home have a good chance to save. Any 
 colored man can buy land down there, and the 
 land is of the very best quality. They always 
 raise more than they need, but they don't take 
 care of the surplus. We can have a good school 
 there just as well as not." 
 
 This man's studies at that time were physics, 
 algebra, grammar, ancient history, geometry, and 
 bookkeeping. I asked him what advantage some 
 of these would be to him if he were going back 
 to the bottom lands to be a farmer. 
 
 "They give me general development," he 
 answered promptly. " To put it briefly : ' They 
 help me to catch hold of things.' 
 
 " Tuskegee has done a great deal for me," he 
 concluded. " It showed me how little I knew. 
 I was so ignorant when I first came here that I 
 just didn't know how ignorant I was." 
 
 Isaiah Hardeman, of Clinton, Kentucky, five 
 hundred and fifty miles from Tuskegee, had just 
 $5.10 when he decided to start for the school. 
 " My father is dead," he told me. " My mother 
 has one other boy, younger. She owns a house 
 and a little land, and could spare me. She 
 wanted me to come.

 
 Tuskegee 117 
 
 " I was at the railroad station one day, trying 
 to think of the best way to start, when a man 
 came along whom I had once worked for in 
 another town. He asked me what I was doing 
 there, and I told him I was trying to go to Tus- 
 kegee. He was in some way connected with 
 the railroad. He was going about a hundred 
 miles on the line and took me with him. He 
 left me at Jackson, Tennessee. I got some rail- 
 road maps there, studied out the way, and began 
 to walk. I had walked about forty-five miles 
 when I came to a place in Bethel, Tennessee, 
 where there had been a smash-up on the railroad. 
 They wanted all the help they could get to clear 
 away the wreck. I took hold and worked, and 
 for what I did I got a ride to Artesia, Missis- 
 sippi. From there I walked again, making about 
 twenty miles a day, until I had gone over a hun- 
 dred miles. I had the bad luck to strike a 
 locality which was quarantined on account of 
 sickness, and had to walk around it. 
 
 " Then I got a job cording wood for a railroad 
 agent, and worked for him until he gave me a 
 ticket to Montgomery. I had money enough 
 left to pay my fare from Montgomery to Che- 
 haw, from which place I walked to the school. 
 I got there so late at night that everyone had 
 gone to bed, and as I did not know where to go 
 I slept on the steps of the agricultural building." 
 
 I can imagine the first men out in the early 
 morning probably the milkers going to the 
 barn finding the newcomer asleep on the
 
 i8 Tuskegee 
 
 steps, and saying as they passed him : " Here's 
 another." 
 
 " After I woke up," this young man continued, 
 " I inquired where I could find Mr. Washington 
 and was directed to the office. He had not 
 come then, and so I waited for him. My clothes 
 were not very good. While I was waiting for 
 Mr. Washington one of the young men at work 
 in the office gave me a suit of his own old clothes, 
 and two shirts." 
 
 It has always been a mystery to me how the 
 teachers at Tuskegee manage to retain a reason- 
 able amount of clothing. Such cases as this are 
 constantly occurring, to appeal to their sympathy, 
 and just as constantly the wants of the needy 
 ones are supplied by some one. 
 
 This young man was nineteen years old at the 
 time I was talking with him. He worked the 
 first year and went to the night school. In the 
 first vacation and by some extra work he made 
 enough money so that during his second year 
 he could enter the day school. For three 
 months he worked in the dairy, getting up at 4 
 A. M., so as to learn that work. During the va- 
 cation he cultivated a "practice garden," in 
 order, as he said, " to see if I had learned any- 
 thing in the class room about gardening." This 
 garden proved so successful that the department 
 was credited with several dollars' worth of prod- 
 uce which came from it. He expected to stay 
 at the school two more years. I asked him what 
 he meant to do after he left the school.
 
 Tuskegee 119 
 
 " I intend to be a farmer," he said. " I think 
 now of going to Oklahoma. Of course I've got 
 to work somewhere, at first, to get the money to 
 start with for myself. I don't know just where, 
 yet ; but I'm going to do it somewhere." 
 
 The distance this young man walked to get to 
 Tuskegee was nothing unusual. A great many 
 of the students walk long distances to get there. 
 December 23, 1899, two young men Clarence 
 C. Jeter and Thorney Evans arrived at Tuske- 
 gee after having walked from their homes in San- 
 tuck, South Carolina five hundred miles distant. 
 
 Augustus Neely, of Newberry, South Caro- 
 lina : "I came to Tuskegee in 1895. I was 
 nineteen years old then. My father was a 
 blacksmith, and I came to the school with the 
 intention of learning the machinist's trade. I 
 had no money, and for the first two years I had 
 to work days and go to the night school. In 
 that time I saved $103. That, and what I could 
 earn in vacation and by odd jobs, has been 
 enough to keep me in school these two last 
 years. In the winter I have charge of the steam- 
 heating apparatus for heating the chapel. 
 
 " I expect to stay here six years in all, be- 
 cause my education had been so limited before I 
 came here that I was very backward. After I 
 get through here I want to work somewhere a 
 year, so as to earn money enough to enable me 
 to spend one more year as an apprentice in 
 some very large shop. Then I will be ready to 
 go to work."
 
 i 2 o Tuskegee 
 
 This man already had a certificate as a steam 
 engineer, and Mr. Thomas, the instructor in 
 charge of the machine shop, told me that he was 
 a capable workman. 
 
 I asked this man when he found time to get 
 his lessons, when he was working all day and 
 going to school at night. He said : " It is hard 
 work to find time enough to study. You have 
 to pick your time nights, mornings, in the 
 dining room, whenever you can get a minute." 
 
 This man is the oldest of a family of eleven 
 five brothers and five sisters. His next oldest 
 brother had followed him to Tuskegee, and was 
 a student there at the time of which I write. I 
 asked him if all of the eleven were coming, and 
 he said, " I hope so. I'm going to do all I can 
 to help send them, after I get to work." In this 
 he was only carrying out the thought which seems 
 to influence nearly all of the students at Tuske- 
 gee. A great many of the students and of the 
 teachers have younger brothers or sisters there 
 whom they 'are helping or looking out for. One 
 young man, a member of the faculty, who has no 
 one of his own family needing help in this way, 
 I happened to learn, is paying all the expenses 
 of a young boy who otherwise would not have 
 been able to remain. I have no doubt there 
 are other similar cases. 
 
 What the young man of whom I have just 
 been writing said about the students being 
 obliged to look out for the spare minutes for 
 study recalls to my mind two illustrations which
 
 THESE BOYS WALKED OVER FIVE HUNDRED MILES TO GET TO 
 TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE.
 
 luskegee 121 
 
 I had of their methods for doing this. I was 
 walking back to the school from town one day, 
 when I saw coming towards me a lumber wagon 
 drawn by two mules, with a young colored man 
 driving. The day was very hot and the road so 
 sandy that the driver was very properly letting 
 the animals walk. The driver, though, was so 
 intent on something in his lap that I was led to 
 wonder what it was. When he came abreast of 
 me I saw that he had a common-school geogra- 
 phy spread out on his knees, and was hard at 
 work learning a lesson. I should not. have felt 
 so sure that he was an Institute boy, even then, 
 except that he happened to look up and, recog- 
 nizing me, brought his hand to his head in the 
 military salute which all of the boys at the 
 school are taught to use. 
 
 Another day I had gone down into a field 
 back of the houses in which a number of the 
 teachers live, to watch the operation of grinding 
 sugar cane and boiling down the syrup, which 
 was going on there. One of the faculty who 
 owns a good deal of land raises a field of cane 
 each year and has his stock of syrup made at 
 home. Syrup boiling is an operation which 
 always attracts the children and sometimes 
 older people. There were a dozen small chil- 
 dren about, all gloriously happy in various degrees 
 of stickiness. The youngest, not more than a 
 year old, was in charge of a young woman whom 
 I had seen among the students. They were sit- 
 ting down on a pile of the leaves which had been
 
 122 Tuskegee 
 
 stripped from the cane stalks and I had -not 
 noticed them particularly, until I heard the girl 
 say, as she propped the baby up comfortably 
 and gave him a fresh piece of cane to suck : 
 " There, now, be a good baby, so that can 
 get her lesson." Then she produced a grammar 
 and exercise book and went to work. 
 
 James M. Flake, Salem, Alabama : " I came 
 to Tuskegee first in 1894, and stayed between 
 two and three years. I was in day school first, 
 and then, as times got hard, in night school. 
 Then I had to go out to work. I went to Bir- 
 mingham, and after going about for a while was 
 surprised to find that although I was educated, 
 as I supposed, I could get no work except with 
 day laborers in a foundry. I decided then that 
 a man needed some trade. As soon as I could 
 do so I came back to Tuskegee and began to 
 learn farming. Now, when I get through, I will 
 know how to really do something."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE Bible School at Tuskegee was opened as 
 a distinct department of the Institute in January, 
 1893. This is not in any sense a theological 
 school. It is so undenominational, or, rather, if 
 the expression may be allowed, so omni-denomi- 
 national, that among its students may be found 
 not only Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and 
 Congregationalists, but Zion Methodists, Afri- 
 can Methodists and Colored Methodists, Cov- 
 enanters, Campbellites, and representatives of 
 various other minor religious sects common in 
 the South. It is not necessary to have a special 
 " call " to the ministry to enter the Bible School 
 at Tuskegee. Women, as well as men, are ad- 
 mitted. Many of those who attend are persons 
 who desire only to do missionary work or to be- 
 come intelligent teachers of the Bible in the 
 Sunday schools. The need of the struggling 
 little country churches among the Negro popula- 
 tion of the South is not so much for preachers of 
 a high grade of mental ability as it is for conscien- 
 tious, earnest teachers of a wholesome life. Such 
 teachers this department of the Institute aims to 
 train. 
 
 Mr. Washington has outlined the purposes of 
 the Bible School in the following words : " What 
 we desire and aim at is to give men and women 
 a thorough knowledge of the English Bible, and
 
 124 Tuskegee 
 
 to give them ideas of doing right for right's sake 
 to inspire them to go out to work for the 
 race, to help in uplifting the race and in teach- 
 ing it right principles." 
 
 The Bible School is located in Phelps Hall, 
 an excellent three-story wooden building erected 
 expressly for this school by a friend of Tuskegee 
 in New York. A bronze tablet in the entrance 
 hall bears this inscription : 
 
 THIS BUILDING COMMEMORATES A MOTHER'S IN- 
 TEREST IN THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 
 OF THE COLORED PEOPLE 
 
 CAROLINE PHELPS 
 
 DAUGHTER OF 
 
 ANSON GREENE PHELPS 
 
 AND WIFE OF 
 
 JAMES STOKES 
 
 OF NEW YORK 
 ERECTED BY HER AFFECTIONATE DAUGHTER 
 
 OLIVIA EGLESTON PHELPS STOKES 
 
 1892 
 
 The building was dedicated in January, 1893, 
 and among those who were present then and de- 
 livered addresses were General Armstrong and 
 Dr. Lyman Abbot. 
 
 The Bible School is in charge of Rev. Edgar 
 J. Penney, A. M., the chaplain of the Institute, 
 a graduate of Atlanta University and Andover 
 Theological Seminary, who is assisted by a corps 
 of regular instructors and lecturers. In addition
 
 Tuskegee 125 
 
 to lecturers from a distance who come to Tuske- 
 gee each year to deliver courses of addresses 
 before the students of this department, the pas- 
 tors of the three white churches in Tuskegee 
 deliver courses of six lectures each every year. 
 As is the case in the other departments of the 
 Institute, there is, except for a small entrance fee, 
 no charge for tuition, on account of the limited 
 means of the students ; and the expenses con- 
 nected with the administration of the Bible 
 School therefore must be provided for from out- 
 side sources. A charge of eight dollars a month 
 secures a furnished room, board, fuel, lights, and 
 washing. The sessions of the Bible School are 
 held only in the forenoon, so that the students 
 can have the afternoons for work, and in this 
 way pay a part or all of their expenses. The 
 students are of all ages. I noticed one woman 
 who must have been more than fifty years old, 
 I learned that she had been for many years at 
 work as a licensed missionary of the Methodist 
 church, but that she had come to the Bible 
 School with a desire to get a more thorough 
 training for her work. She had paid her way 
 while there by doing duty as night watch in the 
 girls' dormitories. 
 
 Frequently the students in the Bible School 
 retain their positions as pastors of churches near 
 the Institute while they are at the school. 
 There are four colored churches in Tuskegee, 
 and at times the pastors of all of these have 
 been students. Those who do not have regular
 
 126 Tuskegee 
 
 employment in this way do missionary work in 
 the surrounding country, some of the men walk- 
 ing out as far as twenty miles each Sunday for 
 this purpose. For several years the students 
 have sustained a regular Sunday service in the 
 county jail at Tuskegee. One Sunday afternoon 
 I was walking in the country near the Institute 
 and came unexpectedly upon one of the country 
 churches just as a service conducted by one of 
 these students was in progress. The church 
 was a weather-beaten little building of unplaned 
 boards, standing in an opening in the oak forest, 
 with no other houses in sight. It stood on posts 
 driven into the ground ; the door step was a 
 soap box, the windows had never been fitted 
 with glass, the pews were backless benches, and 
 the pulpit was made by nailing three boards 
 together to form a stand on which a Bible could 
 be laid. It is in such churches as this, and in 
 school houses even less well fitted for their work, 
 that much of the colored population of the South 
 must get its instruction for the present. The 
 need of putting into these buildings the best 
 possible teachers and preachers is all the more 
 necessary. 
 
 I have always found it interesting to attend 
 the sessions of the Bible School. Two fore- 
 noons each week are devoted to preaching exer- 
 cises, and two members of the class speak on 
 each of these mornings. These two men have 
 selected their text and subject a week in advance 
 and have prepared an abstract which has satisfied
 
 Tuskegee 127 
 
 the dean of the school. Before they begin to 
 speak they place upon the blackboard an outline 
 of their sermons, and woe be to them if they 
 wander from the line of thought which they 
 have mapped out . There are regularly appointed 
 critics for various details, in addition to general 
 criticisms from the members of the class. I have 
 heard some excellent sermons preached there. . 
 The number of students in the Bible School 
 in a year is usually about seventy-five. A large 
 number of men and women who have come to 
 Tuskegee primarily to attend the Bible School 
 become so favorably impressed with the teach- 
 ings in the other departments that they remain 
 to enter the academic or industrial classes. 
 Many colored clergymen in the South find it 
 desirable to combine a trade with the profession 
 of preaching, and one of the principles which the 
 Bible School especially endeavors to inculcate is 
 the dignity of such labor, and its value, not only 
 as an aid to the personal support of the preacher 
 himself, but as an example of industry and right 
 living to the people in his community. Among 
 the graduates of the Bible School who are preach- 
 ing are a tailor, a painter, and several farmers, 
 who learned their trades at the Institute. One 
 undergraduate is a brick mason. One of the 
 graduates of the school is now a presiding elder 
 of his denomination, and graduates from the 
 school have later gone to Morris Brown College, 
 Gammon Theological School, and Yale Divinity 
 School.
 
 128 Tuskegee 
 
 The general moral and religious training of 
 the Institute is constant and thorough. There 
 is a regularly appointed chaplain to consider the 
 religious interests of the students. In addition 
 to the chapel services which I have already de- 
 scribed, there is a regular preaching service, a 
 Sunday School, a Christian Endeavor Society, 
 a Young Men's Christian Association, a Mission- 
 ary Society, a Young Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union, a Humane Society, and various 
 other similar organizations.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WITH the close of the school year in May, 
 1900, the graduates from the three departments 
 of the Institute numbered several hundred. A 
 canvass made by the Institute not long before 
 that date showed that there were also over three 
 thousand students who had taken only a partial 
 course who were doing commendable work. 
 While I was in Alabama in the fall of 1899 I 
 took occasion to visit a number of graduates and 
 students whose homes I could reach conveni- 
 ently, that I might see for myself what kind of 
 work they were doing, and how they were doing 
 it. A few pages quoted from my note books 
 will give the results of these visits. The men 
 and women whom I saw were not in any way 
 a specially picked lot. A few names were taken 
 from the Institute's catalogue, of graduates re- 
 ported to be living in the places through which I 
 was to pass, and I selected those which I could 
 reach most easily, obtaining from those upon 
 whom I called the names and addresses of others 
 of whom I had not heard before. Some of those 
 I saw I have spoken of already. I judge that in 
 this way I obtained a fair impression of the gen- 
 eral results of the school's work. 
 
 The idea of making such a series of visits as 
 this was suggested to me by accident. While in 
 Charleston, West Virginia, with Mr. Washing-
 
 130 luskegee 
 
 ton, I happened to be told that there was a 
 graduate of Tuskegee who was doing excellent 
 work as a teacher of industries at the West 
 Virginia State Agricultural, Mechanical and Nor- 
 mal School, six miles below Charleston. I went 
 down to call on this man, Mr. James M. Canty. 
 What I saw of his work, and what he told me of 
 the work of others of his fellow-students of 
 whom he had kept himself informed, interested 
 me, with the result I have mentioned. I give 
 names and addresses, that any one who may de- 
 sire to do so may be able to verify my observa- 
 tions. 
 
 James M. Canty is a native of Marietta, 
 Georgia. He graduated from Tuskegee in 1890, 
 having been there four years. His story as he 
 told it to me is briefly this : " I had worked some 
 in a blacksmith shop in Marietta as a blacksmith, 
 and wanted to learn the trade more thoroughly. 
 A student whom I knew at Tuskegee sent me a 
 copy of a paper containing an article about the 
 school. As a result I went there. When I reached 
 Tuskegee I had just seven dollars in money, all 
 my worldly possessions. I paid all my expenses 
 by work while I was there, and came out with a 
 balance in my favor. For three years after I gradu- 
 ated I worked at jny trade in Marietta. I also 
 worked at my trade during the long summer vaca- 
 tions at Atlanta and at Birmingham. At no time 
 did I have trouble getting work or keeping it, al- 
 though I was always in shops with white men. 
 I came here six years ago to take charge of the
 
 PERDUE BROTHERS, CONTRACTORS AND BUILDERS. 
 
 WILLIAM J. EDWARDS, 93, 
 
 PRINCIPAL SNOW HILL 
 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE. 
 
 JAMES M. CANTY, 90, 
 SUPT. OF INDUSTRIES, 
 W. VA. COLORED INST.
 
 Tuskegee 131 
 
 mechanical department and have been here ever 
 since." 
 
 Mr. Canty's work as a teacher was very highly 
 commended to me by members of the Board of 
 Regents of the school. I was told that several 
 of his students are already doing good work as 
 blacksmiths and carpenters in the vicinity of 
 Charleston. I saw at the school grounds a 
 water tank holding twenty-two thousand gallons, 
 erected on a steel frame-work seventy-seven feet 
 high. Mr. Canty had built both tank and frame 
 with no help except that of his students, having 
 drawn all the plans himself. He owns a half of 
 a small house in Montgomery, Alabama, which 
 he rents, and when I was at Charleston had just 
 completed a good frame house near the school 
 grounds which he owned clear of any debt and 
 rented for eight dollars a month. It is only fair 
 to this man, and to all of the graduates of whom 
 I write, for me to say that such personal infor- 
 mation as this was given me only in response to 
 my questions, and then, in many cases, -permis- 
 sion to print it given only because I felt sure 
 it might benefit the Institute if known. Mr. 
 Canty's home is in one of the school buildings. 
 In every way it would compare very favorably 
 with the home of a man in the same position 
 anywhere. 
 
 Joseph L. Burks is the proprietor of a grocery 
 at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Third 
 Avenue, Birmingham, Alabama. He was at 
 Tuskegee about five years, leaving there in 1890.
 
 132 Tuskegee 
 
 After he left the school he worked in hotels 
 until he had saved $300, and then with this for 
 capital opened the grocery where he now is. 
 He had been in trade three years when I was at 
 his store. His stock then was worth at least 
 $1500, and was paid for. The stock was good 
 and fresh and the store neat and attractive. I 
 happened to encounter this man afterwards in 
 the Penny Savings Bank, the famous Negro bank 
 of Birmingham, just as he was making a deposit. 
 The footing at the bottom of the deposit slip 
 spoke well for his trade. 
 
 Robert Mabry is a tailor doing business in Bir- 
 mingham, on Eighteenth Street, between First 
 and Second Avenues. He graduated from. Tus- 
 kegee in 1895, after having been there five years. 
 The last two years he was there he took tailoring. 
 He employs one man all of the time and at times 
 another man and a woman. His brother, who is 
 now at Tuskegee learning tailoring, works for him 
 during the summer vacation. His trade is not 
 confined to people of his own race ; he has a num- 
 ber of white men among his regular customers. 
 
 George F. Baker, a shoemaker, has a shop at 
 1129 First Avenue, Birmingham. This man 
 went to Tuskegee in 1 894 and stayed five years, 
 graduating from the shoemaking class. When 
 he came to Birmingham, bought some stock, 
 hired a shop and paid a month's rent in advance, 
 he had just fifteen cents left in cash. He had 
 had his shop open four months when I went to 
 see him, and had made a good living. He could
 
 tell me just what his business had been for each 
 week. I think he was one of the happiest men 
 I ever saw. He said to me : " I sit here at my 
 work and think of Tuskegee, of the songs we 
 used to sing, and of what it has done for me. 
 I love the place." 
 
 David L. Johnson is a druggist at the corner 
 of Avenue A and Twentieth Street, Birmingham. 
 This man's story as he told it to me was this : 
 " As a boy I lived in Dallas, Alabama. A rela- 
 tive who had been to Tuskegee told me of the 
 new school which had been established there for 
 colored people. I entered the day school in 
 1885, when I was fourteen years old. I worked 
 on the farm. The first vacation I came to Pratt 
 City and went to work in a coal mine. I was 
 at Tuskegee four years, easily making enough 
 in the mines in the vacation to pay my expenses. 
 After I graduated I taught school or worked min- 
 ing. After awhile I decided to learn pharmacy. 
 To get the money to do this I went to Milldale 
 and went to work mining. I cleared $1500 in a 
 year. I did this by contracting, and working 
 other men under me. I worked driving the head- 
 ing in the main." 
 
 I asked Mr. Johnson why he did not keep on 
 at mining if he could do as well as this, and he 
 said he gave it up because it was breaking him 
 down, physically which I could understand 
 might be the case, as he is a man of slight phy- 
 sique. What he told me of his work in the 
 mines was confirmed to me by other persons.
 
 34 Tuskegee 
 
 The president of the company for which he 
 worked said that he was one of the very best 
 miners the company had ever had. I learned 
 that for some years he had supported his father 
 and mother, and assisted other relatives, and 
 that he is carrying an insurance policy of two 
 thousand dollars on his father's life. I asked 
 him if he had any trouble getting work in the 
 mines on account of his color, and he' said : " No, 
 never ; I worked right beside white men a great 
 part of the time, and never knew that I was 
 colored. If a man really wants to work he can 
 find work to do, whether he be white or black. 
 Perhaps it may not be at first just what he would 
 like most to do, but it will be something, and 
 with a chance of promotion." 
 
 This man went to Meharry College, at Nash- 
 ville, and stayed three years, to learn pharmacy. 
 He then came back to Birmingham, and went 
 into business. His drug store was one of the 
 two colored drug stores in the city when I was 
 there. 
 
 I asked him how he felt towards Tuskegee. 
 He said : " I love Tuskegee. I mean always to 
 be doing something for the place. I never hear 
 the name spoken even on the street that I do 
 not stop and try to get acquainted with the per- 
 son who has spoken it, if he be a stranger to me. 
 I do all I can to brace up and encourage the 
 young people who are going there, and to induce 
 others to go. I do not think there is a Tuskegee 
 graduate here whom I do not know." He cer-
 
 Tuskegee 135 
 
 tainly was able to tell me of a considerable num- 
 ber of students, and where I could find them. In 
 conclusion, he said : " I can sum up my opinion 
 of the methods at Tuskegee in one sentence. It 
 was there I learned how to learn." 
 
 Floyd Brooks had just opened a small grocery 
 at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Second 
 Avenue, Birmingham, when I was there. He 
 was the youngest of any of the students whom I 
 saw in business for himself, being only twenty 
 years old. He had run an ice business success- 
 fully that summer, and planned to peddle coal in 
 the winter. He had worked in grocery stores 
 and hotels after he came from the school, until 
 he got capital enough to start in trade. He 
 said : " I never would have been anything at all 
 if I had n't been to Tuskegee. It taught me how 
 to be economical, and how to do this," pointing 
 to the desk and goods in his little store. 
 
 There were seven young women, all graduates 
 of the academic department at Tuskegee, who 
 were teaching in the public schools of Birming- 
 ham when I was there. I visited the schools in 
 which all were teaching, and saw them at their 
 work. 
 
 Miss Lucile Hunter teaches the fourth grade 
 in the Lane Grammar School. She had fifty-two 
 scholars. That was her second year in the school. 
 She had come directly there from Tuskegee. She 
 had taught the children some of the Tuskegee 
 songs, and they sang them well. 
 
 Miss Annie E. Payne graduated from Tuske-
 
 136 Tuskegee 
 
 gee in 1894, and had been teaching in the Lane 
 Grammar School ever since. She had the junior 
 second grade when I was there. She had seven- 
 ty-five scholars. 
 
 Miss Lizzie S. Browning graduated from Tus- 
 kegee in 1895. She had taught country schools 
 at first, and that was her first year in the city. 
 She had the first grade juniors of the Lane 
 Grammar School ninety-seven in all. I find 
 in my note book a memorandum of the pains 
 she was taking to have the children overcome 
 the careless habits of pronunciation which they 
 brought to school with them, such as " lak " for 
 " like." 
 
 Miss Orlean D. Kennedy was in charge of the 
 sixth grade in the Slater Grammar School. She 
 had been there several years. She had sixty 
 scholars. She said : " I feel that I owe every- 
 thing to Tuskegee." I found the girls of her 
 school making a bed-quilt, to be sent to the Ala- 
 bama State Fair, and she told me that she 
 taught the girls sewing two days in the week. 
 I found out afterwards that this was done wholly 
 of her own accord. Miss Kennedy showed me, 
 with a great deal of pride, the " Washington 
 Library," in the Slater School building, of which 
 she is the librarian. This is a library of about 
 twelve hundred volumes, bought with money 
 raised in various ways by the colored schools of 
 the city, and available to any one who pays a sub- 
 scription of ten cents a month, or one dollar a year. 
 The library is named for Booker Washington.
 
 Tuskegee 137 
 
 The books were selected by Dr. Phillipps, the 
 superintendent of schools in Birmingham, who 
 acted as treasurer of the fund until a sufficient 
 sum was secured. 
 
 Mrs. Emma J. Boyd (Miss Parker) graduated 
 from Tuskegee in 1 89 1 . This was her second 
 year in the Slater School, where she had the 
 third grade. She had eighty-one scholars. 
 
 Miss Rosaline Bradford graduated from Tus- 
 kegee in 1893. This was her first year in the 
 Slater School, where she had the fourth grade. 
 She had taught three years in Mr. Edwards's 
 school at Snow Hill, Alabama. Birmingham 
 was her home, and she was educated in the very 
 school in which she was then teaching. 
 
 Miss Irene M. Thompson graduated from 
 Tuskegee in 1894. She had the first grade of 
 the Cameron School, with ninety-two scholars. 
 She had taught for some time in the country, 
 but this was her fifth term in her present posi- 
 tion. 
 
 I interviewed Dr. J. H. Phillipps, the superin- 
 tendent of schools in Birmingham, in regard to 
 the school work of these young women. He 
 said they were doing excellent work, and then 
 added : " I find in the graduates of Tuskegee 
 who have been teachers in our public schools 
 here a recognition of the industrial factors in the 
 elements of education. They encourage the 
 children to work, and give them" much instruc- 
 tion outside of the text-books." 
 
 S. P. Foreman is studying pharmacy in the
 
 138 Tuskegee 
 
 drug store of Dr. Charles E. Thomas, at 124 
 West Tenth Street, Anniston, Alabama. He 
 went to Tuskegee in 1889, and remained there 
 five years. It was his plan then to become a 
 druggist, and he gave special attention to chem- 
 istry. He had been in his present position two 
 years when I saw him. The drug store of Dr. 
 Thomas is one of the best colored drug stores in 
 the state, and would do credit to any city. 
 
 E. J. Williams owns and manages a good 
 " white " barber shop on East Tenth Street, 
 Anniston. He employs three men. He owns 
 his shop a.nd home, and some other real estate. 
 He left Tuskegee six years before, and came to 
 work in the shop where he now is. After a 
 while he became a partner in the business, and 
 then eventually the sole owner. He also owns 
 an interest in a tailor shop, next door to his bar- 
 ber shop. 
 
 S. T. Simpson I found working in the tailor 
 shop to which I have just referred. He had not 
 completed his trade at Tuskegee, and was away 
 earning money to go back and finish. I saw 
 some excellent garments of his cutting and 
 making. 
 
 George W. Crawford, in charge of the library 
 of Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama, and a 
 student in the college, graduated from Tuskegee 
 and came to Talladega. He hoped eventually 
 to study law. He said : " We all think a heap 
 of Tuskegee." 
 
 Two other graduates of Tuskegee who went
 
 Tuskegee 139 
 
 to Talladega for advanced studies had graduated 
 from the latter institution just previous to my 
 being there. Of these, John F. Young had en- 
 tered the law department of Howard University, 
 at Washington, and William H. Hollo way had 
 entered the senior class of the Yale Divinity 
 School. 
 
 Miss Jemmie Pierce is in charge of the mil- 
 linery department of the store of Mr. J. W. 
 Adams, of Montgomery, Alabama. This is an 
 excellent store, with a good line of goods, and 
 requires the services of several persons in the 
 different departments. Mr. Adams, who is one 
 of the trustees of Tuskegee, is one of the most 
 successful business men of his race in the state. 
 Miss Pierce is a native of Greenville, Alabama. 
 She was a student at Tuskegee five years, be- 
 ginning work in the plain-sewing department 
 and going on through the dressmaking class to 
 millinery. 
 
 Miss Ida Abercrombie is a teacher in the 
 Swayne School in Montgomery. She went to 
 Tuskegee in 1885, remained four years, and then 
 after she graduated remained two years more as 
 a teacher there. I spent one whole session in her 
 room. She is one of the most capable teachers 
 of her grade I have ever seen anywhere, and it 
 was a pleasure to watch her methods. She does 
 not confine herself to teaching books alone. 
 There was a good, stout comb on the desk, and 
 scholars who came with uncombed hair were sent 
 out to use the comb until they were in a satisfac-
 
 140 Tuskegee 
 
 tory condition. Children who came with dirty 
 faces or dirty clothes were sent home with a 
 polite note to their mothers, requesting that they 
 be made tidy before they be allowed to return. 
 The teacher admitted that this policy occasion- 
 ally caused her to receive calls from very angry 
 mothers, but she said that they generally proved 
 amenable to reason in the end. 
 
 Nicholas Abercrombie graduated from Tus- 
 kegee and has been employed for eight years as 
 distributing clerk in the Montgomery post- 
 office. 
 
 Stephen C. Shepard was a Tuskegee student, 
 but did not remain to graduate. He has been 
 a letter carrier connected with the Montgomery 
 post-office for eight years. 
 
 A. C. Perdue is the senior member of the 
 firm of Perdue Brothers, contractors and build- 
 ers, 3 1 5 West Jeff Davis Avenue, Montgomery. 
 Both brothers are Tuskegee graduates, but I 
 saw only the elder. Mr. Perdue went to Tuske- 
 gee first in 1888, and graduated in 1891. For 
 three years he worked at his trade, and then re- 
 turned to Tuskegee as a teacher in the repair 
 shop, that he might have an opportunity to take 
 a course at the Institute in architectural and 
 mechanical drawing. After he had completed 
 that course he returned to Montgomery and 
 went into business with his brother. The firm 
 had plenty of work, the greater part of it from 
 white customers. When I found Mr. Perdue he 
 was on top of a large house on one of the best res-
 
 Tuskegee 141 
 
 idence streets of the city, where he was oversee- 
 ing an extensive job of repairs and alterations. 
 
 Dr. Thomas N. Harris is a physician and sur- 
 geon in Mobile, and one of the partners in a 
 drug store there. Dr. Harris went to Tuskegee 
 and remained four years, learning the printer's 
 trade. After he graduated he returned to Mont- 
 gomery and taught printing for four years in the 
 State Normal School for Negroes in that city. 
 From there he went to Meharry Medical Col- 
 lege, from which he graduated, and began the 
 practice of his profession. 
 
 Mrs. I. S. Watkins (Celia E. McDonald) grad- 
 uated from Tuskegee in 1893. Her husband is 
 a pharmacist in Montgomery. They own their 
 home, a pleasant house on South Jackson Street, 
 at which I called to see her. I mention this 
 because I wish to speak of her housekeeping 
 her work in the same way in which I have 
 spoken of the work of the other graduates whom 
 I visited. At my request Mrs. Watkins very 
 kindly showed me her whole house. It was 
 comfortably and tastefully furnished a good 
 piano, pictures, books, and all the accessories of 
 a cultivated home and was spotlessly neat and 
 in perfect order. When I said something about 
 this and spoke of Tuskegee she said, " I learned 
 order and system at Tuskegee. When I was 
 there prayers were held in the morning. It was 
 a rule that the girls must all make their rooms 
 neat and tidy before they left them in the morn- 
 ing. They were inspected every morning and a
 
 142 Tuskegee 
 
 report made. Then if any girl had- left her room 
 untidy, Mr. Washington read off her name in 
 chapel, and she had to get up, right there in the 
 eyes of everybody, and march out to go and put 
 it in shape. I hope I was naturally a good 
 housekeeper, but if I had not been I know the 
 dread of the shame of having to be sent out of 
 chapel like that during the years I was at Tus- 
 kegee would have made me one." 
 
 While I was talking with Mrs. Watkins, her 
 little boy, about two years old and just beginning 
 to talk, came to her bringing a long white roll of 
 paper, saying in his broken words, " I wants to 
 see Mr. Was'in'ton." 
 
 His mother unrolled the paper it proved to 
 be one of the large lithographs of Booker Wash- 
 ington, saved from some window where it had 
 advertised one of his addresses and spread it 
 out upon her knee, where the boy stood looking 
 at it. " Do you love Mr. Washington ? " his 
 mother asked. 
 
 " Yes," said the little fellow, looking from the 
 picture up into her face, and then adding, slow- 
 ly and emphatically, " I do." 
 
 " That 's right," she said. " Mother 's surely 
 going to send you to be a little Tuskegeean as 
 soon as you are old enough." 
 
 The incident interested me as showing the 
 strong impression which Mr. Washington's per- 
 sonality makes upon his students, and it seemed 
 to me full of promise for the future of the school. 
 
 A. J. Wilborn, of Tuskegee, graduated from
 
 Tuskegee 143 
 
 the school in 1888. For three years he worked 
 at shoemaking in Tuskegee and then opened a 
 grocery store there, in which he has built up a 
 business which is among the most successful in 
 the town. Having decided to erect a substantial 
 brick store in 1900, Mr. Wilborn ordered one hun- 
 dred thousand brick from the Tuskegee Institute 
 brick yard, at six dollars a thousand, and sent 
 his check to pay for them in advance. 
 
 Joseph O. Geddes, who went to Tuskegee in 
 1895 and remained three years, working in the 
 carpenter and joiner shop and in the paint shop, 
 I found at work in a wood-working shop connect- 
 ed with his father's undertaking business at 
 1726 Erato Street, New Orleans. This young 
 man and his father both spoke in warm terms of 
 the efficiency of the instruction at the Institute, 
 and of its results as seen in the young man's 
 help in their business. 
 
 N. E. Henry, Ramer, Alabama, graduated 
 from Tuskegee in 1893. He taught school for 
 three years at Matthew's Station, in the same 
 state, and then came to Ramer, where I saw 
 him and visited his school. When he went 
 there first there was no school house, and the 
 sessions were held in an old church. Since he 
 has been at Ramer he has built, with the help 
 of the men whose children come to his school, a 
 school house twenty by forty-two feet square, 
 containing two rooms, rudely but neatly fur- 
 nished. He has at times over a hundred scholars. 
 Before he built an addition to the school house
 
 144 Tuskegee 
 
 which gave him a second room, one of the 
 older scholars, who assisted him in hearing the 
 lessons, took her class out of doors to hear the 
 recitations, so as not to interfere with the lessons 
 going on in the school room. The allowance of 
 public money for this school had been on an 
 average only between twenty and thirty dollars 
 a year, previous to the time I was there. Mr. 
 Henry rented ground and raised cotton and 
 corn, with the help of the labor of the pupils, to 
 earn more money. With what he had obtained 
 in this way and what the parents of the scholars 
 had been able to contribute, the school had been 
 kept open nine months in the year. I asked 
 this man if he intended to remain where he was, 
 and he said, " Yes. I think the people need me 
 here. If I were to go away I am afraid they 
 would go back to what they were before I came." 
 This feeling, he said, came from his training at 
 Tuskegee. When he first went to Tuskegee as 
 a student he walked from Montgomery, forty 
 miles, because he had no money with which to 
 go in any other way. In the three years he was 
 at Matthew's Station he sent five pupils to Tus- 
 kegee, and hoped soon to be able to send one or 
 more from Ramer. In the spring of 1900 I 
 saw him at the Tuskegee Negro Conference, 
 with five of his pupils from Ramer whom he had 
 brought to get the benefit of the sessions of the 
 Conference. 
 
 A. J. Wood, who graduated from Tuskegee 
 in 1887, is in business as a general merchant,
 
 A. J. WILBORN, 'I 
 GROCER. 
 
 N. E. HENRY, 93, 
 TEACHER. 
 
 WILLIAM PEARSON, '96, 
 TINSMITH. 
 
 A. J. WOOD, '87, 
 GENERAL MERCHANT.
 
 Tuskegee 145 
 
 at Benton, Alabama. This man taught school 
 after he graduated until he had saved $90 with 
 which as capital he opened the store where he 
 now is. With a desire to learn all that I could 
 about Mr. Wood, and knowing that a man's 
 rivals in business will usually be acquainted with 
 his failings, I went into one of the largest white 
 stores in Benton and asked the proprietor, 
 " What kind of a man is this Wood, the colored 
 merchant down the street here ? " 
 
 The merchant, because I was a stranger in 
 town, concluded that I was a drummer, and 
 answered promptly : " You can sell him all the 
 goods you have a mind to and he will pay for 
 them every time. He's good for all he will 
 buy." 
 
 This man has a good store and has built up a 
 good trade. He has the respect of the commu- 
 nity. He told me that probably a third of his 
 trade came from white customers, a fact which 
 .my own observation while I was in the store 
 would confirm. While I was in the store and 
 Mr. Wood had been called away to wait on 
 some customers, I stepped to the open back 
 door of the store and stood looking out into a 
 narrow yard behind the building. While I was 
 there the merchant joined me and began to call, 
 " Suke ! Suke ! Suke ! Ho, there, Suke ! " 
 
 In response to the summons there began to 
 be a grunting down under the store like most 
 southern buildings, the store was raised a little 
 way from the ground and had no cellar and
 
 146 
 
 u s k e g e 
 
 presently there came squeezing out, with con- 
 siderable difficulty because he was getting alto- 
 gether too large to crawl under the sills of the 
 building an enormous, fat, black hog. 
 
 " That is my hog," the merchant explained. 
 " I raise one every year. There isn't any real 
 reason why I should" he was not married, 
 and boarded out " but I raise them as object 
 lessons. It doesn't take much of anything to 
 feed them on, except the waste from the store, 
 and you see how fat they grow. 
 
 " Then I get the Negro farmers who come in 
 to trade," he continued, " to come and look at 
 my hog, and see what can be done by keeping 
 the animals shut up and fed, instead of letting 
 them run wild and hunt their own feed, as is the 
 custom of most of the farmers here. Then I 
 tell them how they might just as well have their 
 hogs look like mine, instead of being the razor- 
 backs they are. All the farmers need to do is 
 to shut up the pigs in a pen of rails and set the 
 children to gathering acorns with which to feed 
 them. 
 
 " I can't start a school here," he concluded ; 
 " I tried to, and could not ; but if I can't do 
 that I can at least teach the farmers here how to 
 raise hogs as I learned to raise them at Tuske- 
 gee."
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE building up by a Tuskegee student of a 
 school for colored children at Ramer, Alabama, 
 which I have referred to in the preceding chap- 
 ter, is only one of many similar instances. Just 
 as Tuskegee may be called a child of Hampton, 
 there are springing up, all over the far South, 
 country schools which may be called the chil- 
 dren of Tuskegee. The largest and one of the 
 most successful of these is Snow Hill Industrial 
 Institute, at Snow Hill, Alabama, established by 
 William J. Edwards, of the class of '93. The 
 pupils at Snow Hill already number over three 
 hundred every year. 
 
 The story of Mr. Edwards's life and the found- 
 ing of Snow Hill Institute is typical of what 
 scores of Negroes in the South are doing, although 
 in a smaller way, to pass on to others of their 
 race the help which Tuskegee has given to 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Edwards was born in a wretched cabin 
 home. His mother died soon after he was born, 
 and his father promptly deserted him. An old 
 grandmother cared for him until he was twelve 
 years old, when she, too, died. A few years 
 later the boy heard of Tuskegee, and, after hav- 
 ing walked over a hundred miles to reach the 
 Institute, stayed there until he graduated. He 
 was offered excellent positions at good pay, but
 
 148 Tuskegee 
 
 refused them all to go back to his old home at 
 Snow Hill, where he opened a school for colored 
 pupils in an old log hut. As this school devel- 
 oped, the excellent effect of its influence in the 
 county attracted the attention of Hon. R. O. 
 Simpson, one of the most prominent white citi- 
 zens of the county and an ex-slaveholder. This 
 man became so much impressed with the value 
 to the community of the young colored man's 
 school that he gave forty acres of land for a per- 
 manent location, and has contributed generously 
 to its support each year. 
 
 Snow Hill Institute now employs a force of 
 twelve teachers, all of them graduates of Tuske- 
 gee. Instruction is given in academic, moral 
 and religious, and industrial departments. Nine 
 industries are taught, special attention being 
 given to farming. Except for the assistance 
 given him by Mr. Simpson, Mr. Edwards is 
 obliged to depend almost wholly upon his own 
 efforts to secure the money necessary for the 
 support of his school. 
 
 Mt. Meigs Colored Industrial Institute was 
 started by Tuskegee graduates in 1885. Miss 
 Cornelia Bowen, one of the first graduates of 
 Tuskegee Institute, is the principal, and the suc- 
 cess of the school has been largely a result of 
 her interest and ability. The school now has 
 four buildings, including one devoted to indus- 
 trial training. There are five teachers and an 
 average of two hundred pupils. 
 
 Miss Lizzie E. Wright, '93, has established
 
 WILLIAM J. EDWARDS FIRST SCHOOL HOUSE AT SNOW HILL. 
 
 " WASHINGTON HALL, ONE OF THE PRESENT SCHOOL- 
 BUILDINGS AT SNOW HILL.
 
 Tuskegee 149 
 
 one of the most encouraging schools at Den- 
 mark, South Carolina, where she has about three 
 hundred pupils. Her experience shows what the 
 earnest efforts of one person can do. She was 
 an orphan, living with an aunt. One day, when 
 she was a girl, a scrap of paper blowing over the 
 ground attracted her attention. It proved to be 
 a part of a circular describing Tuskegee Insti- 
 tute. She could hardly read well enough to 
 comprehend all that the bit of paper said, but 
 with the help of some one else made out enough 
 so that she was fired with a desire to go to 
 Tuskegee. Her uncle told her that if she would 
 work for him the next year in the cotton field he 
 would give her fifteen dollars wages, and that 
 with that she would be able to get to Tuskegee. 
 She toiled through all the hot months, only to 
 have the crop so nearly a failure that the planter 
 could pay her nothing. The next year she be- 
 gan again and did the work all over. That year 
 she was paid and went to Tuskegee, remaining 
 there until she graduated. After graduation she 
 went to South Carolina, and, after looking about 
 for some time for a place where she could begin 
 work, settled in Denmark. After a time, through 
 the help of a white gentleman there, she was 
 able to buy twenty acres of land, with some 
 buildings on it, for $2,000. She has paid all of 
 this but $300, getting the money when and 
 where she could, and while doing it building up 
 her school. She has three teachers besides her- 
 self one of them a young man who graduated
 
 o Tuskege 
 
 from Tuskegee, who oversees the students in the 
 cultivation of the twenty acres of land which the 
 school owns. 
 
 John H. Michael, '92, after having occupied 
 the position of Superintendent of Industries at 
 Mt. Meigs Colored Industrial Institute for some 
 time, went to the Slater Industrial and State 
 Normal School, at Winston-Salem, North Caro- 
 lina, where he occupies the same place. He has 
 made an excellent record as a teacher, especially 
 in the erection of buildings, several large school 
 buildings having been put up wholly or in part 
 by the students, under his supervision. 
 
 Abner B. Jackson, '91, has built a good school 
 house at Brackin, Alabama, on the site of an old 
 log hut, in which he began to teach when he 
 went there. He has between two hundred and 
 three hundred pupils, the children coming to 
 school during the summer, and their fathers and 
 mothers during the season of the year when 
 they are not employed on the land. 
 
 R. C. Calhoun, '96, has established a school 
 of one hundred students at Eatonville, Florida, 
 where his work has made such a good impression 
 that he has- been given one hundred and twenty 
 acres of land for a permanent location. He has 
 a blacksmith shop already, and will add other 
 industries. He intends to plant a part of his 
 land to orange trees. His wife, who was a Tus- 
 kegee undergraduate, is his assistant. 
 
 Sidney M. Murphey, '87, has taught continu- 
 ously since graduation as principal of the public
 
 Tuskegee 151 
 
 school in Eufaula, Alabama. He is now a trus- 
 tee of Wilberforce University. 
 
 In 1899 manual training was introduced into 
 the schools of Columbus, Georgia. Two gradu- 
 ates of Pratt Institute were engaged to take 
 charge of the work in the white schools, and 
 two graduates of Tuskegee to teach it in the col- 
 ored schools. The work has been remarkably 
 successful. The branches taught are sewing, 
 cooking, and wood working. 
 
 It has been impossible for me, in the space at 
 my disposal, even to mention all of the schools 
 which have come into existence as a result of 
 Tuskegee. I have tried merely to give some 
 idea of the work they are doing, and to show 
 over how wide an extent the influence of the In- 
 stitute already extends. 
 
 I have had an excellent opportunity to observe 
 the beginning and development of such schools 
 as these during the years in which I have been 
 going to Tuskegee, since Mrs. Booker Washing- 
 ton has been conducting what she calls mission- 
 ary work on a plantation about eight miles from 
 the Institute, which has resulted in the estab- 
 lishment of a flourishing school there. 
 
 The first year I was at Tuskegee I told Mr. 
 Washington that I wished I might have an op- 
 portunity to study the country people in their 
 homes in some place where they were living un- 
 der typically unfavorable circumstances, in order 
 that I might have a fair chance to see just what 
 material such a school as Tuskegee must plan to
 
 152 Tuskegee 
 
 deal with. Mr. Washington told me that I could 
 see just such conditions as these without going 
 more than eight or ten miles from the school, 
 and said that he would have me driven out to such 
 a place. A few days later, with Mr. C. W. Greene 
 for a guide and driver, I made the first of these 
 visits. Mr. Greene's long residence at Tuske- 
 gee, and his wide experience in all the details of 
 southern country life, have made it possible in the 
 course of these drives for me to get a better in- 
 sight into Negro life on the plantations than it 
 would have been possible for any one to do un- 
 der almost any other circumstances. 
 
 The plantation which we visited first is nearly 
 eight miles from the Institute. In the course of 
 this drive of about fifteen miles, after we had 
 left the immediate vicinity of the town, we saw 
 only two houses in which white persons lived, 
 except the one on the plantation which was our 
 destination. This plantation comprises fourteen 
 hundred acres of tillage land, nearly one thou- 
 sand of which are put into cotton each year. At 
 the time of my first visit to this place there were 
 about thirty families of Negroes living there ; 
 the number is somewhat less now. The men, 
 and almost all of the women, worked on the 
 land. 
 
 The plantation house was broad and low. It 
 stood at the head of a long avenue bordered by 
 double rows of magnificent water oaks, their 
 foliage as glossy and green in February as if it 
 had been midsummer. Three women were
 
 IDA M. ABERCROMBIE, 
 TEACHER. 
 
 CORNELIA BOWEN, '85, 
 PRINCIPAL MT. MEIGS INST. 
 
 MT. MEIGS COLORED INDUSTRIAL [NSTITUTE, ESTABLISHED 
 BY MISS CORNELIA BOWEN.
 
 Tuskegee 153 
 
 washing clothes in the open air, under the trees 
 of the driveway. They were heating the water 
 in iron pots set on stones, between which fires 
 were built. A black sow and her litter of pigs, 
 disturbed from their slumbers in the roadway by 
 our approach, took refuge under a house. The 
 owner of the plantation received us very cour- 
 teously, and gave us permission to go wherever 
 we wished. 
 
 A few single houses for the hands, built near 
 the "big house," were of frame and had one 
 window each, but these were so old and in such 
 poor repair that the roof hardly shed water. 
 The greater number of the families lived far 
 down on the plantation. We drove out to their 
 quarters between hundreds of acres of cotton 
 fields where the strippings of the last year's 
 crop still fluttered on the weather-beaten stalks. 
 We forded three sloughs, in which, as well as in 
 the clay mud of the roads over which we had 
 driven earlier in the day, our carriage and the 
 harnesses on our horses successfully sustained 
 tests which spoke well for the work of the 
 wheelwright shop and the harness shop at the 
 Institute. 
 
 We found the people, almost without exception, 
 living in cabins of one room each, about twelve 
 to sixteen feet square, usually with no window, 
 the lack of which did not matter so much, since 
 both light and air generally were able to pass 
 freely through the cracks in the walls. In each 
 of these one-room houses would be living from
 
 54 Tuskegee 
 
 six to ten persons, often comprising two fami- 
 lies. There was no school nearer than Tuske- 
 gee. As a result, there were found to be very 
 few individuals from out the whole thirty fami- 
 lies who could read even simple print. There 
 was a little old church between the plantation 
 and Tuskegee, in which there were at times ser- 
 vices to which the people might have gone by 
 walking four miles each way. 
 
 These were the conditions on this plantation 
 when Mrs. Washington decided to try to do 
 some missionary work there. Her first step was 
 to send and ask permission of the owner of the 
 place. His answer, as I have heard her tell of 
 it, was this : " He just put a colored man on a 
 mule, with a big, fat turkey, and sent him right 
 back to give me the turkey and tell me that I 
 could come down and do anything I wanted to." 
 This encouraging reception was followed by other 
 help later on. After a school was started the use 
 of a cabin was given for it, and land was set aside 
 for the teacher's garden. Both the planter and 
 his wife assisted the undertaking in many ways. 
 
 Mrs. Washington's missionary work is apt to 
 be conducted on the principle that cleanliness is 
 not only next to godliness, but in front of it. 
 She selected what seemed to her to be the most 
 promising-looking house in the settlement and 
 asked the woman who lived in it if she could in- 
 vite some of the people on the plantation to come 
 to her house to a meeting. The permission was 
 readily given. The next Sunday was selected
 
 Tuskegee 155 
 
 for the day, and word was to be sent over the 
 place by a boy. On the appointed day Mrs. 
 Washington, with two of the teachers from the 
 Institute, came to the plantation in good season, 
 bringing with them, along with books and pa- 
 pers which missionaries might be expected to 
 bring, a good, stiff, new broom. Since Mrs. 
 Washington had asked to be allowed to use the 
 house, it was easy for her to suggest that she 
 be allowed to help make some special prepara- 
 tions. She made the woman a present of the 
 broom, and then proposed that each sweep a half 
 of the house, the woman beginning. This was 
 done, but before Mrs. Washington had nearly 
 completed her own share, digging the mud 
 chinking out of corners and dealing thoroughly 
 with all the dirt, the woman, who had been 
 watching her, was saying, " Oh, Mis' Washin'- 
 ton, you jes' lemme take dat broom agin, so Ah 
 can do mah half ovah." The first lesson had 
 been learned. 
 
 The first meetings were little more than 
 friendly visits, with some songs and, before the 
 visitors came away, a prayer. Pictures, music, 
 and talks with the women and children paved the 
 way to propose a school. Mrs. Washington tells 
 of one incident connected with the beginning 
 of this school : " We carried down some prim- 
 ers and easy reading books. Quite a number of 
 men and women and children came to the house 
 where the week before I had told them the 
 meeting would be held, and if they did n't seem
 
 156 
 
 T u s k e g e 
 
 particularly interested, were at least pleasant. 
 This was true of all but one young man who 
 stood outside the house all of the time and 
 would n't come in, although he was asked to sev- 
 eral times. He seemed to me to look sullen, 
 and I was really afraid of him, and said to my- 
 self, ' I don't believe it's any use trying to do 
 anything with him.' But, finally, after I had 
 been around to all the rest and had asked them 
 if they did not want to come to a school, or send 
 their children, I plucked up courage to go and 
 speak to him, because I was determined I 
 would n't let him say he had not been asked. 
 
 " So I went out of doors and said to him, 
 ' Would n't you like to come to school ? ' He 
 did n't answer for a minute, and when I looked 
 up to see the reason there were great tears roll- 
 ing down his cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, Mis' Washin'ton,' he said, Ah 'm so 
 'shamed, but Ah don' even know mah letters. 
 Ah wants ter learn ter read, evah so much, 
 though, an' if you '11 only jes' lemme take a 
 book Ah '11 go off down in de woods an' learn 
 mah letters there.' 
 
 " That taught me," said Mrs. Washington, 
 " never to be downhearted again about the work. 
 What a pity it would have been if I had not 
 spoken to him, for he has learned to read quite 
 well the last time I was down there he had 
 got up to the third reader, and of course he 
 doesn't have much chance, as he works days on 
 the plantation."
 
 luskegee 157 
 
 This was the beginning. Before many months 
 it was possible to open a regular school. The 
 owner of the place, as I have said, gave the use 
 of an abandoned cabin ; and a young woman, a 
 graduate of the Institute who had had some ex- 
 perience in teaching, moved in with bed, broom, 
 mop, table, dishes, coffeepot and teakettle, for 
 the little one-room cabin must be not only the 
 school house but also the teacher's home. This 
 teacher, Miss Annie Davis, is a young woman 
 whose education and refinement would entitle 
 her to a welcome in any society. It is hard to 
 fully realize what it must have meant to her to 
 leave home, friends, and all the associations 
 which had made life pleasant, and take up this 
 work. It could not have been for money that 
 she went, for she was to be paid only ten dollars 
 a month, and even this small amount Mrs. 
 Washington had to secure as best she could 
 from such friends as she could interest in the 
 work. 
 
 Some of the teachers at the Institute volun- 
 tarily became responsible out of their own none 
 too large salaries for the money necessary to 
 provide the teacher with food, but after a few 
 months they were relieved from this tax. The 
 people on the plantation who were receiving the 
 benefit of the newly established school were en- 
 couraged to do all they could to help sustain it. 
 They could do this most easily by making con- 
 tributions of food, fuel, and work ; and such 
 assistance began to be given. One little girl
 
 158 Tuskege 
 
 would bring " teacher " two eggs when she came 
 to school ; another brought half a chicken ; 
 another a " mess of greens." A father would 
 draw a load of wood, and another father would 
 cut the wood into fireplace length. When one 
 of these men went hunting and had good luck, 
 "teacher" quite likely got a 'possum. A record 
 book of all these contributions is kept and the 
 record is read aloud once a month by Mrs. 
 Washington when she happens to be at the 
 school. In the list I have given above I have 
 only quoted verbatim from this record book. 
 For a long time the teacher has been supplied 
 with food in this way. 
 
 As is the case at the Institute, the teaching 
 from books at such a school as this is only a part 
 of the instruction. The girls learn to make the 
 teacher's bed, to sweep and wash the floor, to 
 wash dishes, sew and mend. The boys cut 
 wood, sweep the yard clean, raise chickens, and, 
 in a little patch of ground which has been fenced 
 in, cultivate a garden. The children come to 
 school in the day time ; their fathers and mothers 
 in the evening. The women learn to read, but 
 they also learn to wash and iron and cook and 
 sew. 
 
 When I last visited the plantation the school 
 had been in operation between two and three 
 years. An improvement in the general atmos- 
 phere of the place was manifest. A rude but 
 serviceable little church had been built and the 
 attendance of a minister once a month secured.
 
 MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
 
 luskegee 159 
 
 A Sunday school was held each week. I visited 
 the plantation on Sunday. There were over 
 thirty persons at the Sunday school that day. 
 They were neatly dressed, attentive, interested, 
 and thoroughly devoted to their teacher, who 
 certainly may have the reward of knowing that 
 her work is successful and appreciated. She 
 had at that time over fifty scholars, and more 
 would have come if there had been room. Al- 
 ready the fame of the school had spread out into 
 the surrounding country so that scholars from as 
 far as ten miles away were asking to be allowed 
 to come, finding some place to work near or 
 some way in which they could board themselves. 
 Since then Mrs. Washington has bought ten 
 acres of land adjoining this plantation, and had 
 a good double house built on it, into which the 
 school has been moved. Its present accommo- 
 dations will allow of a broadening of the work, 
 especially along industrial lines. 
 
 The true magnitude of the task which is to be 
 accomplished and the conditions which are to be 
 met in beginning such a work as this perhaps 
 may be understood best if I relate one incident 
 which has occurred on this very plantation, an 
 incident not at all unusual in such work. 
 
 In the course of the development of the school 
 Mrs. Washington proposed that there be ap- 
 pointed to the position of school committee a 
 man whose general manner and the appearance 
 of whose home had attracted her favorable atten- 
 tion. A woman who perhaps was interested in
 
 160 Tuskege 
 
 a rival candidate came to her and complained 
 that this man was not a proper man for the 
 office ; he and his wife had never been married, 
 she said, although they had lived together for 
 several years, and had three children. Un- 
 fortunately this condition of affairs is possible in 
 some parts of the South and sometimes may not 
 excite comment unless for some special reason, 
 as in this case. Mrs. Washington went directly 
 to the man and his wife, and from them learned 
 that the charge was true. These people had 
 been among her strongest helpers, and greatly 
 interested in having their children go to school. 
 She said to them, " You must be married at 
 once ; not only because it is right, and for the 
 sake of the example on the rest of the people in 
 the community, but for the sake of your influence 
 in the school. The success or failure of the 
 work here may depend upon it." Ultimately this 
 proved the strongest argument, and probably the 
 one which was effectual ; for the father and 
 mother were honestly devoted to their children's 
 welfare. At first, though, they made many ob- 
 jections ; they had no money for license and 
 minister, which was probably true. Mrs. Wash- 
 ington promptly offered to furnish both. " Come 
 to my house to-morrow," she said, "and be 
 married." They protested that they had no 
 suitable clothes ; which was quite true again. 
 She agreed to have clothes ready for both. 
 They said let them wait until the next Sunday, 
 and they could come. She was inflexible. It
 
 Tuskegee 161 
 
 must be the next day morning. Then probably 
 the real hardest reason was brought out the 
 shame of the public acknowledgment. Here it 
 was that the children and the school triumphed. 
 The parents said they would come. 
 
 " I went home," said Mrs. Washington, " in 
 fear and trembling. I hardly dared hope they 
 would come, but I was determined to be ready 
 in case they did." Before nine o'clock .the next 
 morning she had procured a license and a minis- 
 ter, and had had a suit of Mr. Washington's 
 clothes made ready to give to the man. She 
 had enlisted the interest of the wives of some of 
 the faculty, and from various sources suitable 
 clothes for the woman were provided. At nine 
 o'clock the man and woman came, eight miles, 
 and were married in Mrs. Washington's parlor ; 
 to which sponge cake and lemonade and a few 
 hastily improvised presents, useful household 
 articles, gave quite a wedding appearance. I 
 am glad to be able to say that I have seen this 
 man and his wife since, in their home, and have 
 shaken hands with them. I think they are hon- 
 estly trying to make the most possible of their 
 lives for their own sake and the sake of their 
 children. It seems to me a question if many 
 persons will be called on to fight, and if they are 
 so called will win, a harder fight than did this 
 man and woman.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 I HAVE referred in previous chapters to some 
 of the ways in which the influence of Tuskegee 
 is being extended through the teachings and 
 example of its students ; and worthily, too, do 
 they sustain the reputation of their Alma Mater. 
 In addition to the great power for good which is 
 exercised in this way, the Institute has its regu- 
 larly organized system of what may very properly 
 be regarded as University Extension work. The 
 most important factor in this system is the 
 Negro Conference which assembles at Tuskegee 
 in February of each year. I quote Mr. Wash- 
 ington's own words telling why and how he came 
 to organize this institution : 
 
 " Soon after the Tuskegee Normal and Indus- 
 trial Institute was established it was impressed 
 upon my mind that much good might be accom- 
 plished by some movement which would interest 
 the older people and inspire them to work for 
 their own elevation. I think I first came to 
 think of this when I had occasion to notice re- 
 peatedly the unusual amount of common sense 
 displayed by what is termed the ignorant colored 
 man of the South. In my opinion the unedu- 
 cated black man in the South, especially the one 
 living in the country districts, has more natural 
 sense than the uneducated ignorant class of 
 almost any other race. This led me to the con-
 
 Tuskegee 163 
 
 elusion that any people who could see so clearly 
 into their own condition and describe their own 
 condition so vividly as can the common farming 
 class of colored people in the South, could be led 
 to do a great deal towards their own elevation. 
 This caused me to call the first session of what 
 is now known as the Tuskegee Negro Conference. 
 
 At first I sent invitations to about seventy- 
 five farmers, mechanics, school teachers, and 
 ministers to come and spend a day at Tuskegee, 
 talking over their condition and needs. I was 
 very careful to tell all who were invited to come 
 that I did not want them to come prepared with 
 any address or cut-and-dried speech. I very 
 often find that when the average man is asked 
 to prepare an address, too much time is spent in 
 giving attention to rhetoric and too little sense 
 is put into the address ; so I was very careful to 
 impress upon all who were invited that we wanted 
 no formal address, but wanted them to come and 
 talk about their conditions and needs very much 
 as they would do around their own firesides. 
 
 " To my surprise there came to this first con- 
 ference four hundred men and women of all 
 grades and conditions. The bulk of the people 
 were farmers and mechanics, with a scattering 
 of teachers and ministers. The morning of the 
 day was spent in having told in a plain and sim- 
 ple manner what the conditions were along indus- 
 trial lines. We had each delegate, as far as he 
 could, tell the number of men in his community 
 who owned their farms, the number who rented
 
 164 Tuskege 
 
 land, the number who lived in one-room log 
 cabins, and the number who mortgaged their 
 crops. We also had them tell about the educa- 
 tional conditions in their communities. We gave 
 attention to the moral and religious life of the 
 community, and had them tell what kind of a 
 minister they had. 
 
 " From the very first we have been surprised 
 at the frankness and directness of these reports. 
 In the afternoon we heard from these same 
 people what, in their opinion, would bring about 
 remedies for the evils which they had described. 
 It was very encouraging to see how clearly the 
 people saw into their own condition, and how 
 often they were able to suggest the needed 
 remedies. If was found that in what is known 
 as the ' Black Belt ' of the South at least four- 
 fifths of the Negro people in many counties were 
 living in one-room cabins, on rented land, were 
 mortgaging their crops for food on which to live, 
 and were paying a rate of interest on those mort- 
 gages which ranges from fifteen to forty per 
 cent per annum. The schools, in most cases, 
 extended but three months, and were taught, as 
 a rule, in the churches, in broken down log 
 cabins, or in a brush arbor." 
 
 The first conference adopted the following set 
 of resolutions, and each succeeding year a set 
 similar to these has been made a basis for the 
 discussions, such new matters being considered 
 from year to year as may have come up to at- 
 tract attention.
 
 Tuskegee 165 
 
 " i. The seriousness of our condition lies in 
 that, in the states where the colored people are 
 most numerous, at least ninety per cent of them 
 are in the country ; they are difficult to reach, 
 and but little is being done for them. Their 
 industrial, educational, and moral condition is 
 slowly improving, but among the masses there 
 is still a great amount of poverty and ignorance, 
 and much need of moral and religious training. 
 
 "2. We urge all to buy land and to cultivate 
 it thoroughly ; to raise more food supplies ; to 
 build houses with more than one room ; to tax 
 themselves to build better school-houses, and to 
 extend the school year to at least six months ; to 
 give more attention to the character of our 
 leaders, especially ministers and teachers ; to 
 keep out of debt ; to avoid lawsuits ; to treat our 
 women better ; and that conferences similar in 
 aim to this one be held in every community 
 wherever practicable. 
 
 " 3. More can be accomplished by going for- 
 ward than by complaining. With all our advan- 
 tages, nowhere is there afforded us such business 
 opportunities as are afforded in the South. We 
 would discourage the emigration agent. Self- 
 respect will bring us many rights now denied us. 
 Crime among us decreases as property increases." 
 
 The second conference was attended by about 
 eight hundred persons, representing every section 
 of the South. The attendance has increased 
 each year. One of the most interesting features 
 is when the people are given an opportunity to
 
 1 66 Tuskegee 
 
 tell how these conferences have been beneficial 
 to the masses. For instance, at the last session 
 one man said that where in his community 
 before these conferences were begun only two 
 persons owned land, now there are fourteen who 
 do so ; few live in one-room cabins and few mort- 
 gage their crops ; they had not only built a 
 school house but had extended the school year 
 from three to six months. It is a common 
 thing to hear these men report that the com- 
 munity has long since got to a point where no 
 man who is not morally upright can be a teacher 
 or a preacher in it. 
 
 The first sessions of the conference were held 
 in the assembly room in Porter Hall, but they 
 soon outgrew the accommodations there. When 
 I first began to attend the conferences the dele- 
 gates gathered in the rude temporary building 
 which then served for a chapel. Imagine a 
 broad, low building, walled and roofed with un- 
 planed boards, its floor the ground, and the only 
 seats in it made by spiking planks on to posts 
 driven into the earth. From the rafters hang 
 long steamers of Spanish moss, and the walls are 
 trimmed with Union flags looped back with 
 spiked palmetto leaves. Every inch of space in 
 the building is occupied by the delegates and 
 their wives, and late comers who cannot get in 
 cluster around the open windows and doors like 
 bees around the mouth of a hive. 
 
 The majority of these men and women were 
 slaves. They see their sons and daughters
 
 A QUARTETTE OF ''SISTERS. 
 
 CONFERENCE DELEGATES.
 
 Tuskegee 167 
 
 learning many things which for their own gene- 
 ration were impossible. They ask, " Is there no 
 chance for us?" The Negro Conference is 
 Tuskegee's attempt to answer their appeal. 
 " O Lord, we want to thank thee for this, our 
 one day of schooling in the whole year," was the 
 first sentence of the prayer with which I heard 
 a grizzled Negro preacher open one year's session. 
 
 I turn to my note books again for illustrations : 
 Father Mitchell, a regular attendant since the 
 meetings were organized, discoursed on the ex- 
 travagance of the race. " We's been eatin' too 
 much terbaccer an snuff," he said. " We's been 
 puttin' the bridle into our own mouths." At the 
 same time Father Mitchell is not parsimoni- 
 ous. It is one of the proudest boasts of this 
 man that he raises a good fat hog every year to 
 give toward the support of Tuskegee. 
 
 Many of the speakers are hampered by the 
 lack of words to express all that they would say, 
 they are so tremendously in earnest. One man 
 raised an indignant chorus of " You don't done 
 mean dat," when he said, " The people ought to 
 practice more intemperance." " Dat's what Miss 
 Porter (a favorite teacher) said," he persisted, 
 in response to the cries of expostulation, at 
 which Miss Porter felt called upon to rise, evi- 
 dently very much embarrassed, to say, " O Mr. 
 Harris, I never said that. I said ' temperance.' " 
 To which the farmer replied, nothing daunted, 
 " Well, they all knows what I means." This 
 man's logic was all right, if his diction was shaky,
 
 168 Tuskegee 
 
 for when some one asserted that the colored 
 people had to pay so much money for taxes that 
 they were impoverished, he retorted, " It aint for 
 taxes de money goes. What dey pays for taxes 
 is like dis "- measuring off on a five-foot stick 
 which he had with him a- portion about five 
 inches long ; " but what dey pays for int'rest is 
 like dis " holding up the stick so that its whole 
 length of five feet was to be seen. 
 
 One other man was so diffident about telling 
 his story that Mr. Washington finally helped 
 him out by saying : " What Mr. Ligon means is 
 that after he had made up his mind to get a 
 start for himself, when he was too poor at first 
 to own even a mule, he used to go out moon- 
 shiny nights, when the neighbors would not see 
 him, and plow with the boy hitched up to draw 
 the plow." This recital elicited a round of ap- 
 plause, but when this had quieted down the man 
 himself was seen to have risen to his feet again, 
 and he was heard to exclaim, " O Mr. Wash- 
 in'ton, Ah didn' say dat. Ah never say Ah plow 
 de boy. Ah say Ah put on de harness an' he 
 plow me." This distinction being satisfactorily 
 established Mr. Washington went on to explain 
 that the important fact which he wanted to bring 
 out was that the course which this man had 
 followed had made him the owner of a good farm, 
 of stock in one of the Tuskegee banks, and of 
 various other property. 
 
 Since the completion of the new chapel the 
 sessions of the conference have been held in that
 
 Tuskegee 169 
 
 building. There is a steady, healthy increase in 
 attendance and interest, which shows that the in- 
 stitution has taken hold on the people in such a 
 way as to give it a permanent influence for good. 
 Although, as would be expected, a majority of 
 the delegates are from Alabama, every one of 
 the southern states usually is represented. 
 
 The practical nature of the teaching of these 
 gatherings can be seen from the following list 
 of admonitions printed on a slip of paper which 
 was given to each person entering the church to 
 attend the sessions of the Conference for 1900 : 
 
 THINGS TO REMEMBER AND PRACTICE DUR- 
 ING 1900. 
 
 1 . Do not be deceived by emigration agents. 
 
 2 . See that you treat your wife better than 
 you did last year. 
 
 3 . If you have an immoral minister or teach- 
 er, get rid of him. 
 
 4. Give the lessons learned in these confer- 
 ences to your neighbor. 
 
 5. Own a home just as soon as possible. 
 Begin buying one this year. 
 
 6. Keep out of lawsuits. Do not lie 
 around town on Saturdays. 
 
 7. Do not plant too much cotton, but more 
 corn, peas, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, etc. ; 
 raise hogs, cows, chickens, etc. 
 
 8. It is wrong to keep your family in a house 
 with but one room ; have at least two rooms 
 three are better.
 
 170 Tuskegee 
 
 9. Pay off the old debt as soon as possible, 
 and do not make another. 
 
 10. A three-months school amounts to but 
 little ; extend the term to at least six months, 
 by each one taxing himself. 
 
 11. Don't waste money on excursions, whis- 
 key, cheap jewelry, and other things that can 
 be done without. 
 
 12. Do not mortgage your crop ; if you have 
 done so, go in other debt as little as possible. 
 
 13. Do not stand still and complain, but go 
 forward mere fault-finders accomplish little. 
 
 Another slip, printed, like the first, in the In- 
 stitute's printing office, was given at the same 
 time to the women who were present. It 
 read : 
 
 THINGS FOR WOMEN TO REMEMBER AND 
 PRACTICE. 
 
 1 . More is gained by going forward than by 
 standing around idling and complaining. 
 
 2. If your minister or teacher is immoral, 
 use your influence against him this is the right 
 thing. 
 
 3. Do not be satisfied with a one-room cabin 
 
 its influence is bad. 
 
 4. Never consent to your husband's going 
 in debt. 
 
 5. Harm very often comes from allowing 
 your home to be a place where young boys and 
 girls congregate on Sundays or Saturday nights 
 
 discourage Sunday visiting.
 
 luskegee 171 
 
 6. Do not spend your money for bright col- 
 ored ribbons, brass earrings, breastpins and fin- 
 ger rings never give your children whiskey. 
 
 7. Court houses, public auctions, and the 
 like are places where women should never be seen 
 except when absolutely compelled by the law. 
 
 8. Visit the school, become acquainted with 
 the teacher, and thus learn for yourself whether 
 he or she is a fit one. Do not encourage your 
 children to tattle about the teacher. 
 
 9. Make no demand upon your husband that 
 will interfere with his buying a home. 
 
 10. Do not allow any one to be more inter- 
 ested in the education of your children than you 
 yourself are. Make every effort to extend your 
 school term. 
 
 1 1 . Do not expect your husband to be mindful 
 of your comforts if you neglect his. It is a part 
 of your duty to see that things are comfortable 
 around the house. 
 
 1.2. Let there be such close confidence be- 
 tween husband and wife that one will not enter 
 into any compact with a third party without the 
 consent of the other. 
 
 13. Let every father and mother study the 
 individual character of their children and deal 
 with them accordingly. Make whipping your 
 last resort never strike children on the head. 
 
 14. No one is too old to learn ; do not be con- 
 tent to better your own condition and stop there. 
 Help your neighbors by teaching them what you 
 have learned at these conferences.
 
 1 72 Tuskegee 
 
 The Negro women take just as much interest 
 in the conferences as the men, and frequently 
 are among the most entertaining speakers. One 
 woman, when the conference was discuss- 
 ing the evils of one-room log cabins, got up 
 and said : " I was a widow. I had two children 
 and John had five. I married him and that 
 made seven. He had only one room to his 
 house. I told him he had got to get more, and 
 he got them. I have one room 'specially for cook- 
 ing, 'cause I don't propose to have everybody see 
 what I cooks. I have learned a heap here at 
 this meeting to-day. Let sardines and snuff 
 and candy and red ribbons alone. Get your man 
 to buy land, just one acre at a time, if he can't 
 get any more than that, and then work it. Some 
 of you men jest want to put us women in the 
 white folks' kitchens to work and feed you, 
 while you walk up and down the road." 
 
 The Conference of 1 900 adopted the following 
 set of declarations : 
 
 i . More and more, as a race, we feel that 
 we are to work out our destiny through the slow 
 and often trying processes of natural growth rather 
 than by any easy, sudden, or superficial method ; 
 and while we are trying to make ourselves worthy 
 citizens we ask the patience and good will, 
 and appeal to the sense of justice, of our white 
 friends. 
 
 2. We desire to reaffirm what we have advised 
 in previous years, that, while not overlooking 
 our rights as citizens, it should still be our main
 
 Tuskegee 173 
 
 concern to use our energy in continuing to secure 
 homes, better schools, a higher degree of skill, 
 and Christian character, and in the practice of 
 industry and economy. 
 
 3 . We believe the race is making slow but 
 sure progress, and we are glad to note the grow- 
 ing interest of the best Southern white people 
 in our elevation, as shown by the various con- 
 ferences, held by them, for the discussion of the 
 race problem. 
 
 4. We would call attention to the fact that 
 our people charged with crime, and in Southern 
 prisons, have, as a rule, little or no education, and 
 are largely without industrial and moral training. 
 
 5 . We believe that the openings in the South 
 for employment, especially in the direction of 
 skilled labor, were never greater than now. 
 
 6. We urge all to become tax-payers and to 
 promptly pay their taxes, to keep out of the 
 courts, to cease loafing on the streets and in pub- 
 lic places ; and to prepare to do well the work 
 which the best interests of the community de- 
 mand. 
 
 These declarations should be tacked up in 
 your house that they may be referred to during 
 the year.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ON the day following what is known as the 
 Negro Conference there is held what is called 
 the Workers' Conference, composed of white 
 and colored teachers in educational institutions 
 for Negroes in the South, and of professional 
 and business men of both races. This supple- 
 mentary conference was established because 
 many lessons can be learned from the Negro 
 Conference which ought to be discussed and put 
 into practice by teachers in colored schools and 
 by workers in other fields. A considerable num- 
 ber of northern men and women interested in 
 educational work also attend the conference each 
 year for the sake of the valuable information 
 which can be obtained there. The success of 
 the Tuskegee Negro Conference has led to the 
 establishment of similar organizations in other 
 Southern states. The influence for good of 
 such gatherings is very manifest, especially to 
 one who has attended them. 
 
 The teachings of the conference are dissem- 
 inated widely by the hundreds of men and 
 women who attend the sessions, but their volun- 
 tary service is not the only agency depended 
 upon to strengthen the influence of the meetings. 
 One member of the Institute's administrative 
 force, Mr. T. J. Jackson, devotes his whole time 
 to advancing the interests of the conference
 
 AN OLD " UNCLE." 
 
 FATHER AND SON.
 
 Tuskegee 175 
 
 work. In a great many of the towns and 
 counties of Alabama the Negroes have organized 
 local conferences or farmers' clubs, which meet 
 at frequent intervals during the year and make 
 annual reports to the central organization at 
 Tuskegee. In 1900 there were two hundred 
 and fifty of these in existence. Mr. Jackson 
 attends the meetings of these local societies to 
 encourage and advise the members, and organ- 
 izes many such societies in places where the 
 people have not started them for themselves. 
 His work keeps him in close touch with the 
 farmers. He is able to see to what extent they 
 are putting the teachings of the conference into 
 practice, and in a measure to decide what subjects 
 are most needed to be brought up for discussion 
 at the annual gatherings. 
 
 The work which Mr. Jackson does in the state 
 of Alabama other representatives of the school 
 do so far as they can in other states. Quite 
 often some of the teachers, especially the men 
 in the agricultural department, go out for a long 
 distance to hold special meetings of this kind. 
 These meetings, which are thoroughly advertised 
 by means of posters printed in the Institute's 
 printing office, will be held in a country church 
 or school house. Frequently a graduate of the 
 school, or a student who has gone home to work, 
 arranges for such a meeting as this and gets the 
 Institute to send him a speaker to help him in 
 starting what he is quite apt to designate as " a 
 little Tuskegee" of his own. The Negro
 
 176 Tuskegee 
 
 preachers who have come within the influence of 
 the Institute's teachings are a great help in this 
 work, too, as they go through the country. The 
 farmers and their wives come to the place of 
 meeting prepared for an all day's session. If 
 the meeting is the first which has been held in a 
 locality the plan of the Negro Conference is ex- 
 plained. The fundamental principle which the 
 speakers seek to impress is the value of owner- 
 ship of land. The people are shown how often 
 they can buy land merely with the money which 
 they waste in foolish expenditure and in the time 
 which they lose in going to town too frequently. 
 As one Negro farmer said, " Too many of us 
 have two Sundays in a week," meaning that they 
 are too apt to spend Saturday loafing around the 
 towns. They are shown what are the most prof- 
 itable crops for them to raise, and how to raise 
 them. If a man from the agricultural depart- 
 ment is going out to hold a series of these meet- 
 ings, quite often he carries with him his butter 
 moulds and paddles and his cheese hoop. The 
 farmers' wives have been asked beforehand to 
 bring milk and cream with them to the place of 
 meeting. During the day they have a practical 
 object lesson in making butter and in the begin- 
 ning of making cheese. They are taught the 
 advantage of raising poultry, eggs, and garden 
 truck, and of utilizing the fruits, berries, and nuts 
 with which the forests abound. 
 
 I give a few illustrations taken from Mr. 
 Jackson's note books : " One man in Ramer
 
 luskegee 177 
 
 found by practicing the conference methods that 
 he changed from coming out $50 in debt one 
 year to $60 surplus the next. He did this 
 mainly by buying less, and buying what he did 
 find necessary to purchase, for cash. This man 
 had never supposed he could get along without a 
 mortgage." This conference at Ramer was 
 organized by Mr. Henry, the Tuskegee graduate 
 whom I have already spoken of as teaching at 
 Ramer. 
 
 "Another man at Ramer tried an experiment. 
 He had always been in the habit of having his 
 wife help him cultivate the land. One year he 
 planted less ground, just what he could take care 
 of himself, and had his wife devote her time to 
 the care of the house and children, to raising 
 poultry, and to such work as that. He kept a 
 careful account of the results of the work of each 
 year, and the second proved so much the more 
 profitable in money as well as in comfort that he 
 ever afterwards followed that plan. 
 
 " Another man made a pledge that he would 
 own a piece of land in five years ; he had never 
 owned anything before except a mortgage. The 
 first two years he got out of debt and made 
 enough to live on the third year. That year, 
 being free to move, he hired a piece of land, on 
 to which he moved his family. The next year 
 he would make enough to rent a patch outright, 
 and on that he would make enough to buy the 
 land the fifth year." 
 
 Frequently land can be bought in large quanti-
 
 1 uskegee 
 
 ties when it cannot in small, as some one will 
 have a large plantation which he wishes to dis- 
 pose of as a whole. In these cases the Negroes 
 sometimes club together and buy the whole lot, 
 dividing it up as suits themselves. A regularly 
 chartered company at Mt. Meigs has bought 
 about a thousand acres in this way. " A man 
 by the name of Nickerson, in Russell county, 
 was so determined to move that he sold his mule 
 his whole capital to pay his debts. He leased 
 a large plantation for four years, and at the end 
 of the fourth year made the first payment to- 
 wards its purchase. He had done this by hav- 
 ing his two sons and a brother move on to the 
 place with him, thus making, as they say there, 
 'four plows' to work with. He got this idea at 
 the Tuskegee Conference. 
 
 " In one place the women organized a confer- 
 ence because the men of the community did not 
 seem to be much interested. They signed an 
 agreement not to wear a mortgaged dress or to 
 eat mortgaged food, and they lived up to the 
 agreement. They realized that they could buy 
 much more cheaply in large quantities and so 
 pooled their money, each paying a dollar apiece, 
 at first. With this they bought what they wished 
 and then divided the goods among themselves." 
 The women frequently form what they call auxil- 
 iary conferences, pledging themselves to raise so 
 many hogs, so many chickens, and so many 
 dozen of eggs in a year. 
 
 " Rufus H err on, of Camp Hill, Alabama, has
 
 A SNAP SHOT ON THE GROUNDS. 
 
 ARGUING THE POINT.
 
 Tuskegee 179 
 
 become so strong a convert to the conference 
 idea that he offers to pay the expenses of any 
 man in his community, who cannot otherwise 
 afford to come, who will attend the conferences. 
 This man owns a plantation of one hundred and 
 sixty acres." Many colored men now own much 
 larger plantations than this. 
 
 Mr. Washington is nothing if not practical. 
 His ability to see a chance to do good is equaled 
 by his promptness to take advantage of the op- 
 portunity. An instance of this is to be found in 
 a circular letter which he sent out to the Negro 
 farmers in the fall of 1899, J ust when the cotton 
 crop was being marketed. The names and ad- 
 dresses of all of the delegates who come to the 
 conferences are recorded, and the names of 
 many other farmers secured. To these men a 
 copy of the following letter was sent : 
 
 To THE COLORED FARMERS OF THE BLACK 
 BELT OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : We feel that the eight annual 
 sessions of the Tuskegee Negro Conference have 
 done much good throughout the South. The 
 masses generally have made improvement in get- 
 ting rid of the one-room cabin, in buying land, 
 in using greater economy, in paying themselves 
 out of debt, and in living up to the resolution to 
 better their condition along moral and educa- 
 tional lines. 
 
 " But while some progress has been made, 
 there is much yet to be accomplished. The
 
 8o Tuskegee 
 
 poverty and ignorance of our race demand our 
 most serious consideration. We must work 
 harder this year than ever before to improve the 
 surroundings and elevate the characters of our 
 people. There are over five million Negroes in 
 the South more than half the race who can- 
 not yet read and write ; and what is worse, 
 ignorance in some localities is increasing faster 
 than intelligence. This alarming fact should 
 lead us to make every possible sacrifice for the 
 education of our children. Instead of spending 
 money for things that we do not need, let us 
 save this money and prolong our school term to 
 six, seven, or eight months. We can do without 
 old, worn-out buggies, cheap jewelry and degrad- 
 ing railroad excursions ; but we cannot do with- 
 out good schools for our children, if we hope to 
 get our rights as citizens. Every community 
 should run its school at least six months, and 
 the way to do this is to begin at once to make 
 preparations for it. 
 
 " Last year cotton sold as low as four cents a 
 pound. This year it is selling for as much as 
 seven cents and may go even higher. Now, 
 what permanent advantage will there be to the 
 farmers as a result of this increase ? Will they 
 continue to waste and foolishly squander their 
 earnings, as they have been doing for the past 
 twenty years? Now is the time to put in 
 practice the teachings of the Tuskegee Negro 
 Conference. Those who came out ahead last 
 year on four cent cotton ought, at least, to save
 
 Tuskegee 18 
 
 some money this year on seven and eight cent 
 cotton, and those who have fallen behind while 
 cotton was down can surely pay off those old 
 mortgages now that cotton is up. But if the 
 results of this year's increase in price are thrown 
 away, the next year will find us in no better con- 
 dition than we have been in the past. It is the 
 duty of all to take advantage of these compara- 
 tively high prices, and begin right now to buy 
 homes and farms. Land is cheaper now than it 
 will ever be again. Let each one resolve that he 
 will not let this opportunity pass. 
 
 " We still urge that local conferences be 
 organized and maintained in every community. 
 Information and literature may be had by writ- 
 ing to the Tuskegee Institute for them. 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 " BOOKER T. WASHINGTON."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THERE are many other methods employed to 
 extend the influence of the Institute, in addition 
 to those which I have just described. Some of 
 these are not so far-reaching as others, but no 
 less successful within their immediate sphere. 
 For several years a special effort has been made 
 to reach the home life of the people who live 
 within a radius of about twenty miles of the Insti- 
 tute, through the churches. The direction of 
 this work has been chiefly in the hands of Mr. J. 
 H. Palmer, who, usually accompanied by one or 
 more of the teachers, visits the churches on Sun- 
 day. These Sunday talks deal a little more 
 specifically with the moral and religious side of 
 the life of the people than do the conference 
 meetings, but the foundation thought in both is 
 the same the need of a wholesome physical 
 life as a basis for real moral improvement. 
 
 A Farmers' Institute, composed of Negro 
 farmers in Macon county, has been in existence 
 for several years. This was organized by Mr. 
 C. W. Greene, the farm superintendent, and he 
 presides over the meetings, held once a month 
 in the Agricultural Building. 
 
 Mrs. Washington's method of establishing 
 schools I have already described. She has 
 sought also to do a special work among the 
 wives of the Negro farmers and laboring men.
 
 Tuskegee 183 
 
 Her " Mothers' Meetings," and " Women's 
 Clubs " have a national reputation. She has 
 described how she came to found, at Tuskegee, 
 the first of these : 
 
 " When the women come to town on Satur- 
 day with the men to trade, as they often have 
 to do, they frequently have long, weary hours of 
 waiting, while the men spend their time trading 
 or talking. Many times the women have little 
 children that they have to hold in their arms all 
 of the time. I thought it would be a nice thing 
 if we could have some place where these women 
 could come and rest, and where they might per- 
 haps be taught something at the same time. 
 
 " I found I could have the use of an old fire- 
 engine house in town for this purpose. It was 
 not a very good place, but it would do to begin 
 in. Now we have some better rooms. I sent a 
 boy around to invite all the women who would 
 like to do so to come there one afternoon. I 
 hadn't said anything to anybody about what I 
 was going to do, because I did n't know that any 
 one would come. They did, though, that first 
 day ; and the number soon increased. Very 
 often we have nearly a hundred women at the 
 meetings now, sometimes women who have come 
 ten miles or more to be there. 
 
 " We have two rooms now, with simple furni- 
 ture. We have a cook-stove and some dishes, 
 enough so that we can give talks on cooking and 
 at the same time have the women do the things 
 we are teaching them. In the same way we
 
 184 "Tuskegee 
 
 have one room fitted up as a bed room, and the 
 women have lessons in bed making and how to 
 keep a bed room properly. There are too many 
 of the country .homes in which the people do not 
 take the trouble to have any sheets and pillow 
 cases ; they just crawl between what apologies 
 for blankets they have, without removing their 
 clothes. I have had a tin bath tub set in the 
 middle of one room, at times, and show them 
 how they can hang a calico curtain from a hoop 
 above it, or curtain off a corner of a room so that 
 those who live in the house, even if it does have 
 only one room, can have an opportunity to bathe. 
 At times we have talks on cutting out and making 
 clothes for themselves and their children, and 
 lessons in sewing. We show them how they can 
 cut pictures from papers, and make little frames 
 for them, and with these brighten up their 
 homes. These are only a few of the many things 
 we do at the Mothers' Meeting. The teachers 
 at the Institute help me a great deal. 
 
 " The women are so interested that they do all 
 they can to help. At first I had to get all of the 
 money necessary to pay the rent and furnish what 
 supplies we needed from such friends as I could, 
 but the women now hold a fair each year where 
 we sell things they have made. In this way they 
 have been able to help pay a part of the expenses." 
 
 The rooms which the Mothers' Meeting occu- 
 pies are over the store of Mr. Wilburn, the 
 Tuskegee graduate of whom I have spoken. 
 They are directly on the public square, and hence
 
 u s 
 
 k e g e e 185 
 
 are easily accessible. They are open all day. 
 The children have special lessons in cooking, 
 sewing, and such work. 
 
 A library has been established at Tuskegee 
 city, and a boys' temperance society. The 
 Humane Society has set up and looks after a 
 watering trough. Mr. C. W. Greene has gath- 
 ered together a Sunday school in the city and 
 superintends the classes every week. Of the 
 " neighborhood " work I think the most pictur- 
 esque feature is the care which the students take 
 of " Aunt Harriet," an old colored woman who 
 lives alone in a little house in the oak forest. 
 She is very old and quite alone in the world. 
 The students not only contribute from their own 
 small stores of money to her support, but in 
 other ways have taken almost the whole care of 
 her for several years. The boys cut wood for 
 her and make her garden ; the girls wash for her 
 and bake and sew and scrub. 
 
 The students who give their services to make 
 more comfortable the life of a poor old woman ; 
 the man who teaches his townsmen to raise 
 better hogs ; the boy whose example induces his 
 friend to realize the advantage of a night shirt ; 
 the city school teacher who adds sewing to her 
 grade's list of studies ; the young farmer who 
 goes home and shows his father how to raise two 
 hundred and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes 
 where only forty bushels grew before ; all 
 who do such things as these are doing, even if it 
 be unconsciously, true extension work.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE property of the institution is constantly 
 growing and increasing in value. The Institute 
 now owns two thousand four hundred and eighty- 
 eight acres of land, six hundred head of live 
 stock, including horses, mules, cows, hogs, and 
 sheep ; and fifty vehicles buggies, surreys, 
 wagons, and carts built by the students in the 
 school's wheelwrighting shop. There are forty- 
 six buildings, large and small, on the grounds. 
 
 The total valuation of the plant with its equip- 
 ment is fully $350,000. In addition $150,000 
 invested funds from bequests and gifts, and 
 $125,000, the probable proceeds from the sale 
 of the twenty-five thousand acres of land appro- 
 priated out of the public domain of Alabama by 
 Congress, constitutes the nucleus of a permanent 
 endowment fund. 
 
 Since the work at Tuskegee was begun there 
 have been collected and expended for the found- 
 ing and support of the Institute $850,000. 
 The annual expense of the school is now not 
 far from $70,000. About $24,000 of this is 
 provided for by the income from the endowment 
 fund, by the annual allowance from the state of 
 Alabama, and by that portion of the income of 
 the Slater Fund which the trustees of that prop- 
 erty have allotted to Tuskegee. The students 
 pay for board and other charges, each year, in
 
 Tuskegee 187 
 
 the neighborhood of $7,500 in cash, besides what 
 they contribute in labor. Even if the demands 
 for admission to the school were not continually 
 increasing, so that the expense of maintaining it 
 is constantly growing larger, there will still be, 
 unless a sufficiently large endowment fund is 
 provided, a need for a considerable sum to be 
 secured each year to meet the balance of the 
 current expenses. Much of this money Mr. 
 Washington is obliged to obtain from generous 
 friends of the Institute in the North, by personal 
 solicitation and by public addresses, frequently 
 having in the latter the assistance of the songs 
 of a quartette of young men from the school. 
 
 I do not think that I have ever known a place 
 where a dollar goes farther than it does at 
 Tuskegee. Those who are willing to contribute 
 to help carry on the work of the school may rest 
 assured that they will get the worth of their 
 money. The fear is sometimes expressed that 
 the giving of money to young people for the pur- 
 pose of helping them to get an education may 
 have a bad effect may be deadening to effort 
 and ambition. Those who give to Tuskegee 
 may dismiss this fear from their minds. The 
 greater part of the money given to Tuskegee 
 simply furnishes materials with which the stu- 
 dents may work, and opportunities to use these 
 materials. The students work, and work hard, 
 to be allowed to stay at the school, and while 
 doing that work, and in doing it, obtain the edu- 
 cation which they seek.
 
 i88 Tuskegee 
 
 It seems to me as if every one who thoroughly 
 examines into the work of Tuskegee Institute, 
 and who stops to consider the history of the 
 Negro race in this country, its present condition, 
 and its prospect for the future, will acknowledge 
 that Tuskegee's mission is one of national im- 
 portance, and as such deserves the widest possi- 
 ble support. 
 
 Ex-President Grover Cleveland expressed this 
 thought very clearly in a letter to Mr. Washing- 
 ton, written in 1899, at the time Mr. Cleveland 
 was rendering very efficient aid towards securing 
 an endowment fund for the Institute: 
 
 "... We [the nation] have to deal with eight 
 millions of Negroes, who, though free and in- 
 vested with all the rights of citizenship, still 
 constitute in the body politic a mass largely 
 affected with ignorance, slothfulness, and a re- 
 sulting lack of appreciation of the obligations of 
 that citizenship. 
 
 " I am so certain that these conditions cannot 
 be neglected, and so convinced that the mission 
 marked out by the Tuskegee Institute presents 
 the best hope of their amelioration, and that 
 every consideration makes immediate action im- 
 portant, whether based on Christian benevolence, 
 a love of country, or selfish material interests, 
 that I am profoundly impressed with the necessity 
 of such prompt aid to your efforts as will best 
 insure their success. 
 
 " I cannot believe that your appeal to the 
 good people of our country will be unsuccessful.
 
 Tuskegee 189 
 
 Such disinterested devotion as you have exhib- 
 ited and the results already accomplished by your 
 unselfish work ought to be sufficient guarantee 
 of the far reaching and beneficial results that 
 must follow such a manifestation of Christian 
 charity and good citizenship as would be appar- 
 ent in a cordial and effective support of your 
 endeavor." 
 
 Those who wish to make a special disposition 
 of money which they give to the Institute can 
 do so. Some prefer to support one or more 
 individual students. Others would rather establish 
 or assist some particular industry, or found some 
 special feature, like the " Parker Home." 
 
 The immediate needs of the Institute at the 
 time I write, in 1900, are $10,000 for a better 
 equipment of the industrial building, $4,000 for 
 a hospital building, $15,000 for a library and 
 administration building, $15,000 for a dormitory 
 for young men, and contributions to the endow- 
 ment fund. 
 
 Until a permanent endowment fund is estab- 
 lished which will assure a steady and sufficient 
 income to maintain the school, the best results 
 of the institution cannot be expected. So long 
 as Mr. Washington is obliged to be away from 
 Tuskegee for a considerable portion of the year, 
 occupied in securing money to meet the current 
 expenses of the Institute, he sacrifices time and 
 strength which otherwise would be expended 
 there and in other work in the South for which 
 he is so remarkably well adapted. He is fortu-
 
 190 luskegee 
 
 nate in having the assistance of a very capable 
 private secretary, a native of Texas and an ex- 
 perienced newspaper man in that state before he 
 came to Tuskegee, of whom he says : " My pri- 
 vate secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, for a num- 
 ber of years has been in the closest and most 
 helpful relations to me in all my work. With- 
 out his constant and painstaking care it would be 
 impossible for me to perform even a very small 
 part of the labor that I now do. Mr. Scott 
 understands so thoroughly my motives, plans, 
 and ambitions that he puts himself into my own 
 position as nearly as it is possible for one indi- 
 vidual to put himself into the place of another, 
 and in this way makes himself invaluable, not 
 only to me personally but to the institution. 
 Such a man as Mr. Scott I have found exceed- 
 ingly rare ; only once or twice in a lifetime are 
 such people discovered."
 
 EMMETT J. SCOTT, PRIVATE SECRETARY.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE first chapters of this work were devoted 
 to the story of the early years of Mr. Washing- 
 ton's life. It is only fitting that the book 
 should be closed by a further reference to him 
 and to the opinion which people who know Mr. 
 Washington and Tuskegee Normal and Indus- 
 trial Institute have for him and for his work. 
 My only embarrassment is to know how to 
 select the few examples which I have room to 
 use, from the great number of commendations 
 before me. 
 
 In the summer of 1899 Mr. and Mrs. Wash- 
 ington went to Europe, for a few weeks, rest. 
 While there, both in France and in England the 
 constant and kindly social attentions shown them 
 were a proof that the knowledge of their work 
 was not confined to this country. The papers 
 of both countries universally complimented them 
 and their work. The London Daily Chronicle 
 said : " Mr. Washington saw long ago that the 
 most important service which could be rendered 
 the blacks was to make useful artisans and 
 workers of them. He founded Tuskegee Insti- 
 tute and has had the satisfaction of seeing this 
 institution grow to its present status of the 
 largest and most important training center of 
 the black race in the world." 
 
 The London Daily News said : " We have
 
 192 Tuskegee 
 
 among us just now perhaps the most distinguished 
 man of color in America. He has come qui- 
 etly into our midst with characteristic modesty, 
 having no axe to grind on this side, no funds 
 to raise, or anything of that kind. He has come 
 just for a little rest and for the purpose of hav- 
 ing a look at one or two things which we are 
 doing, in the hope that he may the better do the 
 work to which his life is devoted. ... In the 
 work in which Booker T. Washington is now 
 engaged he has, and should ever have, the earn- 
 est support of the right thinking people of two 
 continents." 
 
 It is often said, and truly, that a man's keen- 
 est judges are his neighbors. The Montgomery 
 (Ala.) Daily Advertiser is one of the leading 
 papers of the South. Of papers which have a 
 national reputation there is perhaps no other 
 which is published so near Tuskegee and which 
 therefore has so good an opportunity to watch 
 the work of the Institute. The Advertiser regu- 
 larly gives full reports of all the exercises at 
 Tuskegee and has very frequently referred to 
 the school in terms of warm commendation. In 
 1898, Major W. W. Screws, the editor of the 
 Advertiser^ after visiting the Institute, published 
 a long article, written by himself and giving a 
 summary of the work done at the Institute, in 
 which he said : " From the day of his arrival at 
 Tuskegee, when he had only modest surround- 
 ings, until the present, when his name and that of 
 the institution over which he presides is known
 
 luskegee 193 
 
 over the entire continent, Booker T. Washing- 
 ton has had the absolute confidence of the white 
 people of that community. There is never a 
 word of harsh criticism of him or of his methods. 
 He has been singularly imbued with a desire to 
 cultivate good relations between the two races, 
 and to be of lasting benefit to his own people. 
 He is succeeding in both undertakings. There 
 is nothing of the agitator about him. His ways 
 are those of pleasantness and peace, and as far as 
 his voice and example prevail there will always 
 be the best of feeling between the white and 
 black people of the country. 
 
 " It is a blessing for the control of the colored 
 schools to fall into the hands of such a man as 
 Booker T. Washington. It can be said to his 
 credit that colored teachers are found all over 
 Alabama who were educated at his institution, 
 and in every instance the white people commend 
 them for instilling correct notions into their 
 pupils and for impressing upon them the fact 
 that they cannot prosper unless their white 
 neighbors prosper and unless a proper under- 
 standing exists between them. It is infinitely 
 better to have teachers who have such notions 
 than to have those who would seek to create 
 prejudice which would inevitably lead to trouble. 
 
 " It might be supposed that with so large a 
 collection of colored people, about twelve hun- 
 dred, in a town of this size, that there would be 
 trouble between the races. There has never 
 been an instance of this kind, and there is not
 
 194 Tuskegee 
 
 likely to be so long as the influence of President 
 Washington prevails. The white citizens, with- 
 out exception, say that you would scarcely know 
 of so many colored pupils being here, as they 
 are under the very best of discipline, and good 
 behavior is the rule with all the students. It 
 is really a pleasure to the citizens of Tuskegee 
 to bear testimony to the excellence of the insti- 
 tution and its management." 
 
 The Mobile Register of June 19, 1899, said: 
 " Booker Washington is right. The solution of 
 the problem lies not in book-learning or in trying 
 to cut the Negro to the measure of the white 
 man, but in teaching him that this is a world 
 where honest labor begets happiness." 
 
 The Atlanta Constitution for September 25, 
 1899, said: " Booker Washington was recently 
 given a reception at the place of his birth in 
 West Virginia, at which the governor and other 
 distinguished citizens assisted ; he is shortly to 
 be given a reception at Atlanta. Are these 
 tributes the result of his color or his politics ? 
 Not in the remotest degree. They are the re- 
 sult of the confidence and esteem he has won by 
 reason of his high character and his unselfish 
 devotion to the highest and best interests of his 
 race. They are also a recognition of the fact 
 that he has put a remarkable intellectual equip- 
 ment to uses that may be described as unique. 
 He has chosen to use it in behalf of the eleva- 
 tion and uplifting of his race." 
 
 I have already quoted from the words of the
 
 Tuskegee 195 
 
 Republican governor and Democratic ex-governor 
 of West Virginia, to which the Constitutions 
 article refers. In November of 1899 I heard 
 Mayor Flower of New Orleans, in introducing 
 Mr. Washington to an audience in that city, say : 
 " The motto of Professor Booker T. Washington 
 is to look upward. He is engaged in a noble 
 work. The seeds he is sowing will fall on fertile 
 ground. After he has passed away there will 
 spring up disciples to continue and disseminate 
 his teachings, which will not be circumscribed 
 by environment, nor limited to Tuskegee, which 
 he has made famous, but spreading far and wide 
 will reach all classes of society, whether white or 
 black." 
 
 These are testimonies from men and news- 
 papers of the white race. I add to them a few 
 paragraphs from men of Mr. Washington's own 
 race. 
 
 Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, the distinguished 
 Afro-American journalist, editor of the New York 
 Age, has said of Mr. Washington : " To-day the 
 South possesses no voice stronger than his that 
 has the nation for an audience when he uses it, 
 that is teaching Christian love and sympathy and 
 national unity with like power and success. The 
 God that lifted him out of bondage has made of 
 him a great power for good in the land. And it 
 is due to the southern people, to all the southern 
 people, to say that they recognize the native 
 ability and the consecration to service the 
 sustaining of the weak and the lifting up of the
 
 196 
 
 Tuskegee 
 
 fallen of the man, the tower of strength, who 
 has taken the place so long and worthily filled 
 by Frederick Douglass, as ' the guide, philoso- 
 pher, and friend' of the ten million Afro- Ameri- 
 can citizens of the Republic, with whom his lot 
 is more particularly cast ; and to emphasize the 
 fact that one of the strongest elements of his 
 strength and influence is the respect and confi- 
 dence of the whole southern people which he 
 enjoys in such unstinted measure a respect and 
 confidence which, added to that of the people of 
 the North and West, have enabled him to erect 
 and sustain a lighthouse of knowledge in the 
 Black Belt of Alabama, whose reflection, whose 
 pervasive influence, is blinding the eyes of igno- 
 rance and prejudice, so that men may see the 
 beauty and the wealth that abound in Nature, 
 and thus intelligently lay hold upon them for 
 their use and comfort, and that they may see and 
 imbibe that reverence for the Creator and love 
 of mankind in which the happiness of the people 
 and the strength of the nation abide." 
 
 Mr. R. W. Thompson, of the Colored American, 
 has said : " The most remarkable Afro-Ameri- 
 can of this generation is Booker T. Washington. 
 As was said of Frederick Douglass, he is not 
 only a great Negro he is a great man. . . . 
 Mr. Washington stands for a definite idea. He 
 is the pioneer apostle of industrial training for 
 the Negro, as the fundamental principle in the 
 solution of the vexatious race problem. . . . Mr. 
 Washington's work is not finished, but the prin-
 
 Tuskegee 197 
 
 ciples of industrialism are so firmly imbedded in 
 the intelligence and affection of the nation that 
 prejudice and criticism are without power to 
 injure. Tuskegee long ago passed the experi- 
 mental stage. It is an enduring monument to 
 the industry, sagacity, and high moral purpose of 
 its eminent founder." 
 
 TO BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. 
 
 Beside our way the streams are dried, 
 
 And famine mates us side by side. 
 
 Discouraged and reproachful eyes 
 
 Seek once again the frowning skies. 
 
 Yet shall there come, 'spite storm and shock, 
 
 A Moses who shall smite the rock, 
 
 Call manna from the Giver's hand, 
 
 And lead us to the promised land. 
 
 PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, 
 
 in Tuskegee Student. 
 
 In the fall of 1899 Mr. Washington published 
 a book entitled " The Future of the American 
 Negro," ' which immediately attracted universal 
 attention as one of the most important contribu- 
 tions to the literature of the race question . From 
 the great number of reviews of the book I make 
 a few quotations to show the very general inter- 
 est taken in it. 
 
 Charles W. Chesnutt, in Saturday Evening 
 Post : " Mr. Washington may be considered, in 
 relation to education, as the prophet of the 
 practical. While he is hopeful of his race, and 
 
 1 Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.
 
 198 Tuskegee 
 
 believes in the ultimate triumph of the forces of 
 progress, which in the end make for justice, the 
 future of the Negro which he discusses is that 
 of to-morrow, as growing out of the conditions 
 of yesterday and to-day ; and as he believes in 
 getting the foundations of an argument, as well 
 as of an education, properly kid, he gives to the 
 present a large part of his attention." 
 
 Sunday School Times: " No man of the colored 
 race commands more than Booker T. Washing- 
 ton the attention of the American people. His 
 moderation in judgment, his far-sightedness, and 
 his lively appreciation of the difficulties which 
 beset social problems, have earned him this con- 
 fidence." 
 
 The Outlook : " No man in the present decade 
 has thrown so much light on the difficult problem 
 presented by the race conditions in the South 
 as Mr. Booker T. Washington. He has done 
 this by his deeds even more than by his words. 
 He has commended himself to the best elements 
 in his own race and in the white race, both South 
 and North. He has had amazing success in 
 overcoming both race and sectional prejudice, and 
 he has done this, not by palterings or evasions, 
 not by using words in a double sense, not by 
 giving one message to the colored people, another 
 to the Southern whites, and a third to the North- 
 ern whites, not by yielding to prejudice, sec- 
 tional or racial, not by presenting as a compromise 
 a mosaic-work platform made up of incongruous 
 principles, but by his clear perception and cour-
 
 Tuskegee 199 
 
 ageous but always non-polemical presentation of 
 fundamental principles." 
 
 The Chicago Inter-Ocean : " When Booker T. 
 Washington writes or speaks, all nationalities and 
 people can well afford to read or listen. He is 
 easily the foremost and ablest man of color living. 
 He is a brainy, scholarly man, practical in all his 
 methods. He is a natural organizer, who, amid 
 such discouragements as would have enervated 
 most men, has persevered until he has built up an 
 institution which has been a blessing to his race ; 
 and more, by his public addresses he has molded 
 a public sentiment wide-reaching in its good 
 effect." 
 
 Rocky Mountain News (Denver) : " Booker T. 
 Washington is recognized as probably the fore- 
 most colored writer on social and industrial 
 topics." 
 
 The Independent (New York) : "The practical 
 wisdom of Mr. Washington, as illustrated in this 
 book, deserves all praise, and by his race he is 
 generally accepted as their most distinguished 
 leader. The work that he has done at Tuskegee 
 is simply marvelous. He has built up an insti- 
 tution which is a town, and he has an immense 
 task before him in giving it an endowment. But 
 he is young and vigorous and full of faith, and 
 we believe he will do it." 
 
 Chicago Evening Post : " Booker Washington 
 is to-day the most widely known and most influ- 
 ential representative of his race. He has emi- 
 nently the ear of the public. And he has earned
 
 2oo Tuskegee 
 
 this right by what he has done as well as by what 
 he has said. The Normal and Industrial Train- 
 ing School which he has built up at Tuskegee, 
 Ala., is well known all over the country. Edu- 
 cated himself at General Armstrong's Hampton 
 Institute, he has gone down into the heart of the 
 Black Belt and put into force all the most char- 
 acteristic lessons which he had learned there." 
 
 Houston Post (Texas) : " Booker T. Washing- 
 ton is the acknowledged spokesman of the Negro 
 race in the South. Besides possessing the well- 
 rounded equipment which leadership requires, he 
 occupies the position of president of the Normal 
 and Industrial School at Tuskegee, Ala,, where 
 he is engaged in teaching the young scions of 
 the Negro race how they may earn competent 
 livelihoods and at the same time contribute to 
 the material upbuilding of the South." 
 
 Florida Times- Union and Citizen : " The po- 
 litical Negro will not accept Booker Washington 
 as a prophet, but he is doing more for the race 
 than all its bishops, and the next generation will 
 arise and call him blessed. The whites of the 
 South long since recognized in him a prominent 
 factor in its industrial and political development, 
 and hailed him as a statesman as well as the 
 leader well worthy of a following of ten millions." 
 
 San Francisco Argonaut: "While the race 
 problem of the South is the most important with 
 which Americans of this generation have to deal, 
 it is an encouraging sign that from among the 
 Negroes themselves should arise such a man as
 
 Tuskegee 201 
 
 Booker T. Washington, at once a counselor and 
 a model." 
 
 Chicago Times-Herald: "Those who know 
 Mr. Washington's work in uplifting his people 
 recognize that in him the colored race of this 
 country has its Moses ; that he has come nearer 
 to solving the Negro problem than anyone that 
 has yet attempted its solution, and that the way 
 he points out for his brethren is the way he has 
 traveled himself and found successful. What he 
 tells his race is that their salvation lies in making 
 themselves industrially capable, that the world 
 wants their labor, their energy, and the fruits of 
 their toil." 
 
 The Interior : "The best mind developed by 
 the Negro race in America thus far is Booker 
 T. Washington. He saw through the fog of the 
 Negro problem years ago. He saw that radical 
 and thorough-going reform was necessary in the 
 education of the Negro, and in his ideas. He 
 has done, and is doing, more for the white men 
 of the South, and for the general prosperity of 
 the South, than has been done by all the states- 
 men and politicians put together. This is fully 
 appreciated by the intelligent white people of the 
 South." 
 
 Rev. George B. Eager, in Woman s Work 
 (Montgomery, Ala.) : " The South, no less than 
 the North, has reason to be grateful that the well 
 known principal of the Tuskegee Institute has 
 been induced to put into definite and permanent 
 form the ideas regarding the Negro and his future
 
 202 Tuskegee 
 
 to which he had already given more or less pub- 
 licity though the platform, the magazines, and 
 the newspapers. The appearance of this book, 
 and the general acceptance of the leading ideas 
 it stands for, will mark an epoch in the history 
 of the South, and, if I mistake not, make a price- 
 less contribution toward the solution of the race 
 problem. The author is well known to our 
 people. He has earned the right to speak to 
 whites and blacks on this subject." 
 
 Revieiv of Reviews : "Mr. Washington has 
 written a book that will undoubtedly be very 
 widely read by the northern friends of the work 
 of Tuskegee, and, what is perhaps more to the 
 purpose, it will be read by intelligent Southern- 
 ers who believe that Tuskegee holds the key to 
 the ultimate solution of the race problem in their 
 section." 
 
 New York Commercial Advertiser : "It would 
 hardly be too much to say that the assurance of 
 a worthy future for the Negro race in this coun- 
 try is its capability to produce a man like the 
 author of this book. Among all that has been 
 written on this vexed topic Mr. Washington's 
 review and forecast of his race seems to be the 
 truest and most comprehensive. 
 
 " If it be asked what distinguishes Mr. Wash- 
 ington's point of view from other writers on this 
 topic, the answer, it would seem, must be that 
 he emphasizes the creation of industrial values in 
 the Negro, and strives, first, 1 o develop his moral 
 and intellectual manhood as an industrial unit.
 
 Tuskegee 203 
 
 He is a pronounced individualist, a preacher of 
 the gospel of self-help for the Negro." 
 
 If I were to add my own tribute to those 
 which I have given and the high esteem which 
 Mr. Washington's life has caused me to have for 
 him during the years I have been associated 
 with him makes me wish to do so it would be 
 this : Not only has he so taught the students of 
 Tuskegee as to cause them to become indus- 
 trious, law-abiding, respected, and self-respecting 
 men and women, but he has had the power to 
 inspire in their hearts a desire to do something 
 to help others a desire to pass on to others 
 the help which Tuskegee has given to them. 
 This seems to me to be the dominant note of the 
 whole institution. 
 
 Mr. Washington has said of himself when at 
 Hampton : " I resolved when I had finished the 
 course of training that I would go into the far 
 South, into the Black Belt of the South, and 
 give my life to provide the same kind of oppor- 
 tunity for self reliance and self -a waken ing that 
 I had found provided for me at Hampton." He 
 has been able to impress this ambition upon 
 those who have been his pupils. The feeling of 
 the students almost universally seems to me to 
 be that the help which generous friends have 
 afforded to Tuskegee Institute is a trust for 
 which its representatives are responsible ; it is 
 their duty and their privilege to fulfill that trust 
 by helping others to become what the Institute 
 has helped them to be. They realize that the
 
 204 Tuskegee 
 
 real Tuskegee is not merely a school in a county 
 town in Alabama, but an influence for good 
 throughout the whole South, to be spread wider 
 and stronger each year by their consistently put- 
 ting into practice the principles which the Insti- 
 tute has taught them.
 
 APPENDIX
 
 Appendix 
 
 FACULTY 
 
 The faculty and the various executive depart- 
 ments of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial In- 
 stitute were composed as follows for the school 
 year 1899-1900 : 
 
 STATE COMMISSIONERS. 
 
 GEORGE W. CAMPBELL, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 LEWIS ADAMS, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 CHARLES W. HARE, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 
 
 GEORGE W. CAMPBELL, President, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 REV. GEORGE L. CHENEY, Vice-President, 
 
 Leominster, Mass. 
 
 REV. R. C. BEDFORD, Secretary, Beloit, Wis. 
 
 WARREN LOGAN, Treasurer, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 LEWIS ADAMS, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 CHARLES W. HARE, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 J. W. ADAMS, Montgomery, Ala. 
 
 JOHN C. GRANT, LL.D. Chicago, 111. 
 
 REV. GEORGE A. GORDON, Boston, Mass. 
 
 REV. CHARLES F. DOLE, Boston, Mass. 
 
 J. G. PHELPS-STOKES, New York, N. Y. 
 
 S. C. DIZER, Boston, Mass. 
 
 WM. H. BALDWIN, Jr. New York, N. Y. 
 
 R. O. SIMPSON, Furman, Ala.
 
 208 
 
 Appendix 
 
 COMMITTEE ON INVESTMENT OF 
 ENDOWMENT FUND. 
 
 WM. H. BALDWIN, JR. 
 
 J. G. PHELPS STOKES. 
 
 ' EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, 
 WARREN LOGAN, 
 JOHN H. WASHINGTON, 
 
 Principal. 
 Treasurer. 
 
 Director of Mechanical 
 Industries. 
 
 M. T. DRIVER, Business Agent. 
 
 G. W. CARVER, Director of Agricultural Department. 
 EDGAR J. PENNEY, Chaplain. 
 
 JAMES D. McCALL, Director of Academic Depart- 
 ment. 
 
 JULIUS B. RAMSEY, Commandant. 
 
 JAMES N. GALLOWAY, Manager Marshall Farm. 
 
 MRS. JOSEPHINE B. BRUCE, Lady Principal. 
 
 MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Directress of 
 
 Mechanical Industries for Girls. 
 
 ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT. 
 
 JAMES D. McCALL, Director, 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, 
 
 WARREN LOGAN, 
 BUTLER H. PETERSON, 
 
 J. R. E. LEE, 
 FREDERICK C. JOHNSON, 
 JOHN J. WHEELER, 
 J. W. MYERS, 
 EDGAR WEBBER, 
 
 Chemistry. 
 Mental and Moral 
 Philosophy. 
 Bookkeeping. 
 Mental and Moral Phi- 
 losophy; Mathematics. 
 Mathematics. 
 Mathematics. 
 Mathematics ; Chemistry. 
 Physics. 
 Civics.
 
 Appendix 
 
 209 
 
 CHARLES WINTER WOOD, Grammar ; Elocution. 
 
 Writing ; 
 Pedagogy 
 
 ALONZO H. KENNIEBREW, M. D. 
 
 MRS. IDA T. MCCALL, 
 
 ROSA MASON, 
 
 SUSAN D. COOPER, 
 
 ELIZABETH W. MORSE, 
 
 SUSAN H. PORTER, 
 
 MRS. A. U. CRAIG, 
 
 DANELLA E. FOOTE, 
 
 MABEL L. KEITH, 
 
 MRS. SARA P. GREENE, 
 
 MRS. A. H. KENNIEBREW, 
 
 AZALIA THOMAS, 
 
 SARAH L. HUNT, 
 
 CARRIE L. SPIES, 
 
 EDNA A. SPEARS, 
 
 LYDIA C. ROBINSON, 
 
 CLARA B. COY, 
 
 IDA A. MORGAN, 
 
 DAYSE D. WALKER, 
 
 ARSINE E. JONES, 
 
 LULA M. CROPPER, 
 
 LIZZIE BAYTOP, 
 
 Physiology. 
 History. 
 
 Reading; Grade Work. 
 Geography. 
 Vocal Music. 
 Grade Work. 
 Grade Work. 
 Assistant to the Director. 
 Grammar. 
 
 Reading ; Grade Work. 
 Grammar. 
 Gymnastics. 
 Grade Work. 
 Grade Work. 
 Grade Work. 
 Grade Work. 
 Grade Work. 
 
 In Charge of Grades ; Writing. 
 Reading ; Grade Work. 
 Training School. 
 Critic in Charge Training 
 School. 
 Librarian. 
 
 COLUMBUS A. BARROWS, 
 
 AARON COAR, 
 EMMA T. NESBITT, 
 
 Night School, Marshall 
 Farm. 
 
 Night School, Marshall Farm. 
 1 Clerk. 
 
 MUSICAL DEPARTMENT. 
 
 CHARLES G. HARRIS, Vocal Music ; Leader of Choir. 
 
 ELIZABETH W. MORSE, * Instrumental Music; Writing. 
 
 SHERMAN W. GRISHAM, Band Master ; Leader of 
 
 , Orchestra. 
 
 1 Part of year
 
 2io Appendix 
 
 NURSE TRAINING DEPARTMENT. 
 
 A. H. KENNIEBREW, M. D., Physician in Charge. 
 S. M. SMITH, Head Nurse. 
 
 PHELPS HALL BIBLE SCHOOL. 
 
 REV. EDGAR J. PENNEY, Dean ; Introduction to the 
 
 Bible ; the Life of Christ ; Pastoral Theology. 
 
 REV. BUTLER H. PETERSON, Bible History ; Sacred 
 
 Geography. 
 
 MICHAEL B. STEVENS, Sociology ; Gymnastics. 
 
 MRS. A. U. CRAIG, English. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT. 
 
 JOHN H. WASHINGTON, Director. 
 
 MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Directress of Do- 
 mestic Industries for Girls. 
 
 JOHN H. PALMER, Assistant to Director. 
 
 LEWIS ADAMS, Tinning. 
 
 R. B. WILLIAMS, Wheelwrighting. 
 
 JOHN W. CARTER, Carpentry. 
 
 GEORGE B. EVANS, Carpentry. 
 
 M. B. GARNER, Carpentry. 
 
 SOLOMON C. CONYERS, Blacksmithing. 
 
 AUGUSTUS RAYFIELD, Architectural and Mechanical 
 
 Drawing. 
 
 BERNARD NESBITT, Assistant in Drawing. 
 
 ARTHUR U. CRAIG, Electrical Engineering. 
 
 JAMES M. GREENE, Plastering and Brick Masonry. 
 JOHN C. GREEN, House and Carriage Painting. 
 WILLIAM A. RICHARDSON, Assistant in Painting. 
 WILLIAM GREGORY, Brick Making. 
 
 HARRY E. THOMAS, Founding, Plumbing, and 
 
 Machine Work.
 
 Appendix 211 
 
 HENRY E. COOPER, Harness Making and Carriage 
 
 Trimming. 
 
 WILLIAM M. ALLEN, Shoeinaking. 
 
 J. W. GAINES, Tailoring. 
 
 D. R. FARMER, Assistant in Tailoring. 
 
 MRS. W. J. CLAVTOR, Assistant in Tailoring. 
 
 CHARLES ALEXANDER, Printing and Binding. 
 
 LAVINIA E. DEVAUGHN, Dressmaking. 
 
 BESSIE PHONE, Assistant in Dressmaking. 
 
 ELIZA S. ADAMS, Plain Sewing and Millinery. 
 
 .LAURA E. MABRY, Laundering. 
 
 LILLIE HODGES, Assistant in Laundering. 
 
 ROSE MILLER, Mattress Factory. 
 
 EMMA T. NESBITT, ' Cooking. 
 
 ALICE PINYON, Cooking. 
 
 MRS. A. K. HAMILTON, In Charge of Sales Room. 
 
 AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT. 
 
 GEORGE W. CARVER, Director ; Instructor in 
 
 Scientific Agriculture ; Dairy Science. 
 
 CHARLES W. GREENE, Practical Agriculture ; Farm 
 
 Manager. 
 
 WILLIAM V. CHAMBLISS, In Charge of Dairy Herd. 
 WILLIAM J. CLAYTOR, Stock Raising. 
 
 CRAWFORD D. MENIFEE, Horticulture ; In Care of 
 
 Grounds. 
 
 C. A. WARREN, Horticulture. 
 
 G. W. OWENS, Assistant in Scientific Agriculture. 
 
 BOARDING DEPARTMENT. 
 
 M. T. DRIVER, Business Agent. 
 
 JOHN H. PALMER, Assistant. 
 
 JULIUS B. RAMSEY, Boys' Department ; Military 
 
 Science. 
 
 1 Part of year.
 
 2 i 2 Appendix 
 
 H. W. SEALS, 
 
 MRS. J. B. BRUCE, Principal Girls' Department. 
 MRS. FRANCES B. THORNTON, Assistant to Lady 
 
 Principal, and Matron. 
 
 HENRY G. MABERRY, Commissariat. 
 
 HORACE S. SCURRY, Steward, Teachers' Home. 
 
 CHARLES L. DIGGS, Custodian of Buildings. 
 
 ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 EMMETT J. SCOTT, Private Secretary to Principal. 
 ROBERT W. TAYLOR, Northern Financial Agent. 
 
 CHARLES H. GIBSON, 
 LEONARD C. FOSTER, 
 THOMAS J. JACKSON, 
 MOSES B. LACY, 
 NATHAN HUNT, 
 SUSIE B. THOMAS, 
 EDWARD H. WESTON, 
 LAVISA M. CRUM, 
 FRANK E. WINTER, 
 JAMES B. WASHINGTON, 
 C. A. GILMORE, 
 
 Head Bookkeeper. 
 Assistant Bookkeeper. 
 Negro Conference Agent. 
 Cashier. 
 Stenographer. 
 Stenographer. 
 Stenographer. 
 Stenographer. 
 Stenographer. 
 Clerk; Postmaster. 
 Registration Clerk. 
 
 LECTURERS. 
 
 REV. C. O. BOOTHE, D.D. 
 
 T. THOMAS FORTUNE. 
 
 REV. FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D.D. 
 
 RT. REV. W. J. GAINES. 
 
 RT. REV. GEORGE W. CLINTON, D.D.
 
 Appendix 213 
 
 PRESENT LOCATION AND EMPLOYMENT 
 OF THE CLASS OF 1899. 
 
 COLTON ANDREWS, 138 No. Butler St., Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Brickmaker. 
 MARTIN L. BARNES, .350 Dearborn St., Mobile, Ala. 
 
 Working at his trade of brickmasonry. 
 MATTIE I. BENSON, Kowaliga, Ala. 
 
 Teacher of sewing in Kowaliga Industrial 
 
 Institute, 
 CHARLES S. BOWMAN, Quindaro, Kan. 
 
 Superintendent of industries, Industrial 
 
 School. 
 FREDERICK A. BOYD, Jackson, Tenn. 
 
 Working at his trade of brickmasonry. 
 NETTIE L. BUCHANAN, Troy, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in Troy Industrial School. 
 WALTER S. BUCHANAN, Aiken, S. C. 
 
 Teacher in Schofield Industrial Academy. 
 JOHN EVANS BUTLER, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Taking post-graduate course in wheelwrighting. 
 EDWARD N. BROADNAX, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Painter. 
 ANNIE L. CAMPBELL, Nixburg, Ala. 
 
 Acting principal of Cottage Grove Academy. 
 ALLIE L. DuVALL, Dawson, Ga. 
 
 Assistant teacher in Dawson public school. 
 G. A. FALLINGS, New Lewisville, Ark. 
 
 Not heard from. 
 F. E. FEISER, 567 Adams St., Vicksburg, Miss. 
 
 Teacher in the county schools. 
 LEONARD C. FOSTER, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Assistant bookkeeper at the Institute. 
 GEORGE A. GOODRUM, Nixburg, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in Cottage Grove Academy.
 
 214 Appendix 
 
 BEATRICE M. GRAINE, 152 Elm St., Paw Paw, Mich. 
 Teacher in county school. 
 
 WILLIAM A. GRAY, Cambria, Va. 
 
 In charge of farm at the Christianburg In- 
 dustrial Institute at Cambria. 
 
 MANCESSOR HAIR, Newberry, S. C. 
 
 Working at his trade of brickmasonry. 
 
 SHEPHERD L. HARRIS, Maysville, S. C. 
 
 Instructor in Carpentry. 
 
 GEORGE W. HENDERSON, Montgomery, Ala. 
 
 Baker. 
 
 ANNIE HENDERSON, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Assistant matron in students' dining room 
 at the Institute. 
 
 LILY M. HODGES, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Assistant instructress in laundry. 
 
 PINKSTON HOWARD, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Student in Phelps Hall Bible School. 
 
 EDGAR D. HOWARD, 362 Hudson St., New York, N. Y. 
 Working in drug store preparatory to tak- 
 ing a course in pharmacy. 
 
 WARREN W. JEFFERSON, Montserrat, British West 
 Principal of Industrial School, Indies. 
 
 JOSEPH LEVETTE, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Journeyman brickmason. 
 
 J. G. LOWE, Waugh, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in Mt. Meigs Industrial Institute. 
 
 JAMES B. NESBITT, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Assistant instructor in architectural and 
 mechanical drawing at the Institute. 
 
 EGELINA C. O'NEAL, Columbus, Ga. 
 
 In charge of industries for girls in Colum- 
 bus public schools. 
 
 FLORINE PATTERSON, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in county school.
 
 Appendix 215 
 
 MARY ELLA PERRY, . Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Taking a post-graduate course in dressmaking. 
 JOHN H. PINKARD, Jenefer, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in public schools of Calhoun county. 
 ELIZABETH E. PLUMMER, 215 No. Rues St., 
 
 Teacher. Pensacola, Fla. 
 
 MINNIE L. RHODES, Greensboro, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in public schools. 
 
 WILLIAM J. SHOALS, Clear Creek, Indian Territory. 
 ALICE R. SIMMS, 34 W. Grand Ave., Des 
 
 Sewing and housekeeping. Moines, Iowa. 
 
 R. C. M. SIMMONS, Concord, N. C. 
 
 Newspaper work. 
 BRYANT SIMPSON, West Point, Ga. 
 
 Tailor. 
 ANNIE L. SMITH, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Clerk in store. 
 ANNIE L. TAYLOR, Montgomery, Ala. 
 
 Teacher in public schools. 
 
 MATTIE E. VAN HORNE, Tuscaloosa, Ala. 
 
 WILLIAM W. WILSON, Pensacola, Fla. 
 
 Principal Escambia High School. 
 R. E. WILLIAMS, Newberry, S. C. 
 
 SARAH J. WILLIAMS, Snow Hill, Ala. 
 
 Instructress in sewing at Snow Hill Institute. 
 
 PHELPS HALL BIBLE SCHOOL GRADU- 
 ATES, 1899. 
 
 WILLIAM C. CHEERS, Tuskegee, Ala. 
 
 Student in academic department. 
 GEORGE GRINTER, Tuscaloosa, Ala. 
 
 Student Stillman Seminary. 
 ADA M. HANNON, Forest Home, Ala. 
 
 Teacher.
 
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