UP FROM SLAVERY:
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

By Booker T. Washington

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

UP FROM SLAVERY

Chapter I.   A
Slave Among Slaves

Chapter II.   Boyhood
Days

Chapter III.   The
Struggle For An Education

Chapter
IV.   Helping Others

Chapter V.   The Reconstruction Period

Chapter VI.   Black Race And Red
Race

Chapter VII.   Early
Days At Tuskegee

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

Chapter IX.   Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights

Chapter X.   A Harder Task Than
Making Bricks Without Straw

Chapter
XI.   Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them

Chapter XII.   Raising
Money

Chapter XIII.   Two
Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech

Chapter XIV.   The Atlanta
Exposition Address

Chapter XV.   The
Secret Of Success In Public Speaking

Chapter XVI.   Europe

Chapter XVII.      Last Words

Preface

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walter H. Page.

UP FROM SLAVERY

Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter II. Boyhood Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter IV. Helping Others

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter V. The Reconstruction Period

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter VI. Black Race And Red Race

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This reminds me of a conversation which I once had with the Hon. Frederick
Douglass. At one time Mr. Douglass was travelling in the state of
Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the
baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his
passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the white
passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and one of
them said to him: “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded
in this manner,” Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon
which he was sitting, and replied: “They cannot degrade Frederick
Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one
that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are
inflicting it upon me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter IX. Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before the building was completed we passed through some very trying
seasons. More than once our hearts were made to bleed, as it were, because
bills were falling due that we did not have the money to meet. Perhaps no
one who has not gone through the experience, month after month, of trying
to erect buildings and provide equipment for a school when no one knew
where the money was to come from, can properly appreciate the difficulties
under which we laboured. During the first years at Tuskegee I recall that
night after night I would roll and toss on my bed, without sleep, because
of the anxiety and uncertainty which we were in regarding money. I knew
that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment—that of
testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control
the affairs of a large education institution. I knew that if we failed it
would injure the whole race. I knew that the presumption was against us. I
knew that in the case of white people beginning such an enterprise it
would be taken for granted that they were going to succeed, but in our
case I felt that people would be surprised if we succeeded. All this made
a burden which pressed down on us, sometimes, it seemed, at the rate of a
thousand pounds to the square inch.

In all our difficulties and anxieties, however, I never went to a white or
a black person in the town of Tuskegee for any assistance that was in
their power to render, without being helped according to their means. More
than a dozen times, when bills figuring up into the hundreds of dollars
were falling due, I applied to the white men of Tuskegee for small loans,
often borrowing small amounts from as many as a half-dozen persons, to
meet our obligations. One thing I was determined to do from the first, and
that was to keep the credit of the school high; and this, I think I can
say without boasting, we have done all through these years.

I shall always remember a bit of advice given me by Mr. George W.
Campbell, the white man to whom I have referred to as the one who induced
General Armstrong to send me to Tuskegee. Soon after I entered upon the
work Mr. Campbell said to me, in his fatherly way: “Washington, always
remember that credit is capital.”

At one time when we were in the greatest distress for money that we ever
experienced, I placed the situation frankly before General Armstrong.
Without hesitation he gave me his personal check for all the money which
he had saved for his own use. This was not the only time that General
Armstrong helped Tuskegee in this way. I do not think I have ever made
this fact public before.

During the summer of 1882, at the end of the first year’s work of the
school, I was married to Miss Fannie N. Smith, of Malden, W. Va. We began
keeping house in Tuskegee early in the fall. This made a home for our
teachers, who now had been increased to four in number. My wife was also a
graduate of the Hampton Institute. After earnest and constant work in the
interests of the school, together with her housekeeping duties, my wife
passed away in May, 1884. One child, Portia M. Washington, was born during
our marriage.

From the first, my wife most earnestly devoted her thoughts and time to
the work of the school, and was completely one with me in every interest
and ambition. She passed away, however, before she had an opportunity of
seeing what the school was designed to be.

Chapter X. A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw

From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the
students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have them
erect their own buildings. My plan was to have them, while performing this
service, taught the latest and best methods of labour, so that the school
would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but the students
themselves would be taught to see not only utility in labour, but beauty
and dignity; would be taught, in fact, how to lift labour up from mere
drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake. My plan
was not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to make
the forces of nature—air, water, steam, electricity, horse-power—assist
them in their labour.

At first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings
erected by the labour of the students, but I was determined to stick to
it. I told those who doubted the wisdom of the plan that I knew that our
first buildings would not be so comfortable or so complete in their finish
as buildings erected by the experienced hands of outside workmen, but that
in the teaching of civilization, self-help, and self-reliance, the
erection of buildings by the students themselves would more than
compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish.

I further told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan, that the
majority of our students came to us in poverty, from the cabins of the
cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the South, and that while I knew it
would please the students very much to place them at once in finely
constructed buildings, I felt that it would be following out a more
natural process of development to teach them how to construct their own
buildings. Mistakes I knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach
us valuable lessons for the future.

During the now nineteen years’ existence of the Tuskegee school, the plan
of having the buildings erected by student labour has been adhered to. In
this time forty buildings, counting small and large, have been built, and
all except four are almost wholly the product of student labour. As an
additional result, hundreds of men are now scattered throughout the South
who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect
these buildings. Skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set of
students to another in this way, until at the present time a building of
any description or size can be constructed wholly by our instructors and
students, from the drawing of the plans to the putting in of the electric
fixtures, without going off the grounds for a single workman.

Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of
marring the looks of some building by leadpencil marks or by the cuts of a
jack-knife, I have heard an old student remind him: “Don’t do that. That
is our building. I helped put it up.”

In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience was in
the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work reasonably well
started, we directed our next efforts toward the industry of making
bricks. We needed these for use in connection with the erection of our own
buildings; but there was also another reason for establishing this
industry. There was no brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own
needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market.

I had always sympathized with the “Children of Israel,” in their task of
“making bricks without straw,” but ours was the task of making bricks with
no money and no experience.

In the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was difficult to
get the students to help. When it came to brickmaking, their distaste for
manual labour in connection with book education became especially
manifest. It was not a pleasant task for one to stand in the mud-pit for
hours, with the mud up to his knees. More than one man became disgusted
and left the school.

We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that furnished brick
clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was very simple, but I soon
found out by bitter experience that it required special skill and
knowledge, particularly in the burning of the bricks. After a good deal of
effort we moulded about twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a
kiln to be burned. This kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was
not properly constructed or properly burned. We began at once, however, on
a second kiln. This, for some reason, also proved a failure. The failure
of this kiln made it still more difficult to get the students to take part
in the work. Several of the teachers, however, who had been trained in the
industries at Hampton, volunteered their services, and in some way we
succeeded in getting a third kiln ready for burning. The burning of a kiln
required about a week. Toward the latter part of the week, when it seemed
as if we were going to have a good many thousand bricks in a few hours, in
the middle of the night the kiln fell. For the third time we had failed.

The failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar with which
to make another experiment. Most of the teachers advised the abandoning of
the effort to make bricks. In the midst of my troubles I thought of a
watch which had come into my possession years before. I took the watch to
the city of Montgomery, which was not far distant, and placed it in a
pawn-shop. I secured cash upon it to the amount of fifteen dollars, with
which to renew the brickmaking experiment. I returned to Tuskegee, and,
with the help of the fifteen dollars, rallied our rather demoralized and
discouraged forces and began a fourth attempt to make bricks. This time, I
am glad to say, we were successful. Before I got hold of any money, the
time-limit on my watch had expired, and I have never seen it since; but I
have never regretted the loss of it.

Brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the school that
last season our students manufactured twelve hundred thousand of
first-class bricks, of a quality suitable to be sold in any market. Aside
from this, scores of young men have mastered the brickmaking trade—both
the making of bricks by hand and by machinery—and are now engaged in
this industry in many parts of the South.

The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the
relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had had no
contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to
buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks. They
discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community. The making
of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to
begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him
worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to
the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of the
neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they
traded with us and we with them. Our business interests became
intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had something which
we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the
pleasant relations that have continued to exist between us and the white
people in that section, and which now extend throughout the South.

Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he has
something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he
has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it
is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him.
In this way pleasant relations between the races have been stimulated.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always
makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what
colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that it is the visible,
the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices. The actual
sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more
potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or
perhaps could build.

The same principle of industrial education has been carried out in the
building of our own wagons, carts, and buggies, from the first. We now own
and use on our farm and about the school dozens of these vehicles, and
every one of them has been built by the hands of the students. Aside from
this, we help supply the local market with these vehicles. The supplying
of them to the people in the community has had the same effect as the
supplying of bricks, and the man who learns at Tuskegee to build and
repair wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in the
community where he goes. The people with whom he lives and works are going
to think twice before they part with such a man.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the
end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a community
prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek sentences.
The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of,
Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons.
If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to
a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability
to appreciate it and to profit by it.

About the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of bricks we
began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the students to being
taught to work. By this time it had gotten to be pretty well advertised
throughout the state that every student who came to Tuskegee, no matter
what his financial ability might be, must learn some industry. Quite a
number of letters came from parents protesting against their children
engaging in labour while they were in the school. Other parents came to
the school to protest in person. Most of the new students brought a
written or a verbal request from their parents to the effect that they
wanted their children taught nothing but books. The more books, the larger
they were, and the longer the titles printed upon them, the better pleased
the students and their parents seemed to be.

I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no opportunity to
go into as many parts of the state as I could, for the purpose of speaking
to the parents, and showing them the value of industrial education.
Besides, I talked to the students constantly on the subject.
Notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school continued
to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle of the second
year there was an attendance of about one hundred and fifty, representing
almost all parts of the state of Alabama, and including a few from other
states.

In the summer of 1882 Miss Davidson and I both went North and engaged in
the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building. On my
way North I stopped in New York to try to get a letter of recommendation
from an officer of a missionary organization who had become somewhat
acquainted with me a few years previous. This man not only refused to give
me the letter, but advised me most earnestly to go back home at once, and
not make any attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that I would
never get more than enough to pay my travelling expenses. I thanked him
for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.

The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass., where I
spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family with whom I could
board, never dreaming that any hotel would admit me. I was greatly
surprised when I found that I would have no trouble in being accommodated
at a hotel.

We were successful in getting money enough so that on Thanksgiving Day of
that year we held our first service in the chapel of Porter Hall, although
the building was not completed.

In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon, I found
one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know. This was
the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from Wisconsin, who was then
pastor of a little coloured Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala.
Before going to Montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon I
had never heard of Mr. Bedford. He had never heard of me. He gladly
consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the Thanksgiving service. It was
the first service of the kind that the coloured people there had ever
observed, and what a deep interest they manifested in it! The sight of the
new building made it a day of Thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten.

Mr. Bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the school, and in
that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been connected with it for
eighteen years. During this time he has borne the school upon his heart
night and day, and is never so happy as when he is performing some
service, no matter how humble, for it. He completely obliterates himself
in everything, and looks only for permission to serve where service is
most disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted. In all my
relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly to the spirit
of the Master as almost any man I ever met.

A little later there came into the service of the school another man,
quite young at the time, and fresh from Hampton, without whose service the
school never could have become what it is. This was Mr. Warren Logan, who
now for seventeen years has been the treasurer of the Institute, and the
acting principal during my absence. He has always shown a degree of
unselfishness and an amount of business tact, coupled with a clear
judgment, that has kept the school in good condition no matter how long I
have been absent from it. During all the financial stress through which
the school has passed, his patience and faith in our ultimate success have
not left him.

As soon as our first building was near enough to completion so that we
could occupy a portion of it—which was near the middle of the second
year of the school—we opened a boarding department. Students had
begun coming from quite a distance, and in such increasing numbers that we
felt more and more that we were merely skimming over the surface, in that
we were not getting hold of the students in their home life.

We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin a
boarding department. No provision had been made in the new building for a
kitchen and dining room; but we discovered that by digging out a large
amount of earth from under the building we could make a partially lighted
basement room that could be used for a kitchen and dining room. Again I
called on the students to volunteer for work, this time to assist in
digging out the basement. This they did, and in a few weeks we had a place
to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and uncomfortable. Any one
seeing the place now would never believe that it was once used for a
dining room.

The most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding department
started off in running order, with nothing to do with in the way of
furniture, and with no money with which to buy anything. The merchants in
the town would let us have what food we wanted on credit. In fact, in
those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed to
have more faith in me than I had in myself. It was pretty hard to cook,
however, without stoves, and awkward to eat without dishes. At first the
cooking was done out-of-doors, in the old-fashioned, primitive style, in
pots and skillets placed over a fire. Some of the carpenters’ benches that
had been used in the construction of the building were utilized for
tables. As for dishes, there were too few to make it worth while to spend
time in describing them.

No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any idea that
meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and this was a
source of great worry. Everything was so out of joint and so inconvenient
that I feel safe in saying that for the first two weeks something was
wrong at every meal. Either the meat was not done or had been burnt, or
the salt had been left out of the bread, or the tea had been forgotten.

Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door listening to
the complaints of the students. The complaints that morning were
especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole breakfast had been a
failure. One of the girls who had failed to get any breakfast came out and
went to the well to draw some water to drink and take the place of the
breakfast which she had not been able to get. When she reached the well,
she found that the rope was broken and that she could get no water. She
turned from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone, not knowing
that I was where I could hear her, “We can’t even get water to drink at
this school.” I think no one remark ever came so near discouraging me as
that one.

At another time, when Mr. Bedford—whom I have already spoken of as
one of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the institution—was
visiting the school, he was given a bedroom immediately over the dining
room. Early in the morning he was awakened by a rather animated discussion
between two boys in the dining room below. The discussion was over the
question as to whose turn it was to use the coffee-cup that morning. One
boy won the case by proving that for three mornings he had not had an
opportunity to use the cup at all.

But gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out of chaos,
just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with patience and
wisdom and earnest effort.

As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad to see that
we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and
inconveniences. I am glad that our students had to dig out the place for
their kitchen and dining room. I am glad that our first boarding-place was
in the dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement. Had we started in a fine,
attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have “lost our heads” and
become “stuck up.” It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a
foundation which one has made for one’s self.

When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go
into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted dining room,
and see tempting, well-cooked food—largely grown by the students
themselves—and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases
of flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each
meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost
no complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room, they,
too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as we did, and
built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and natural process of growth.

Chapter XI. Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them

A little later in the history of the school we had a visit from General
J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, who had had faith
enough to lend us the first two hundred and fifty dollars with which to
make a payment down on the farm. He remained with us a week, and made a
careful inspection of everything. He seemed well pleased with our
progress, and wrote back interesting and encouraging reports to Hampton. A
little later Miss Mary F. Mackie, the teacher who had given me the
“sweeping” examination when I entered Hampton, came to see us, and still
later General Armstrong himself came.

At the time of the visits of these Hampton friends the number of teachers
at Tuskegee had increased considerably, and the most of the new teachers
were graduates of the Hampton Institute. We gave our Hampton friends,
especially General Armstrong, a cordial welcome. They were all surprised
and pleased at the rapid progress that the school had made within so short
a time. The coloured people from miles around came to the school to get a
look at General Armstrong, about whom they had heard so much. The General
was not only welcomed by the members of my own race, but by the Southern
white people as well.

This first visit which General Armstrong made to Tuskegee gave me an
opportunity to get an insight into his character such as I had not before
had. I refer to his interest in the Southern white people. Before this I
had had the thought that General Armstrong, having fought the Southern
white man, rather cherished a feeling of bitterness toward the white
South, and was interested in helping only the coloured man there. But this
visit convinced me that I did not know the greatness and the generosity of
the man. I soon learned, by his visits to the Southern white people, and
from his conversations with them, that he was as anxious about the
prosperity and the happiness of the white race as the black. He cherished
no bitterness against the South, and was happy when an opportunity offered
for manifesting his sympathy. In all my acquaintance with General
Armstrong I never heard him speak, in public or in private, a single
bitter word against the white man in the South. From his example in this
respect I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only
little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to
the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the
unfortunate makes one weak.

It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong, and
resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be,
to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. With God’s help, I
believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the
Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race.
I am made to feel just as happy now when I am rendering service to
Southern white men as when the service is rendered to a member of my own
race. I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so
unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the
most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain
sections of the South have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order
to get rid of the force of the Negroes’ ballot, is not wholly in the wrong
done to the Negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white
man. The wrong to the Negro is temporary, but to the morals of the white
man the injury is permanent. I have noted time and time again that when an
individual perjures himself in order to break the force of the black man’s
ballot, he soon learns to practise dishonesty in other relations of life,
not only where the Negro is concerned, but equally so where a white man is
concerned. The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by
cheating a white man. The white man who begins to break the law by
lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man. All
this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole Nation lend a hand
in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the South.

Another thing that is becoming more apparent each year in the development
of education in the South is the influence of General Armstrong’s idea of
education; and this not upon the blacks alone, but upon the whites also.
At the present time there is almost no Southern state that is not putting
forth efforts in the direction of securing industrial education for its
white boys and girls, and in most cases it is easy to trace the history of
these efforts back to General Armstrong.

Soon after the opening of our humble boarding department students began
coming to us in still larger numbers. For weeks we not only had to contend
with the difficulty of providing board, with no money, but also with that
of providing sleeping accommodations. For this purpose we rented a number
of cabins near the school. These cabins were in a dilapidated condition,
and during the winter months the students who occupied them necessarily
suffered from the cold. We charge the students eight dollars a month—all
they were able to pay—for their board. This included, besides board,
room, fuel, and washing. We also gave the students credit on their board
bills for all the work which they did for the school which was of any
value to the institution. The cost of tuition, which was fifty dollars a
year for each student, we had to secure then, as now, wherever we could.

This small charge in cash gave us no capital with which to start a
boarding department. The weather during the second winter of our work was
very cold. We were not able to provide enough bed-clothes to keep the
students warm. In fact, for some time we were not able to provide, except
in a few cases, bedsteads and mattresses of any kind. During the coldest
nights I was so troubled about the discomfort of the students that I could
not sleep myself. I recall that on several occasions I went in the middle
of the night to the shanties occupied by the young men, for the purpose of
confronting them. Often I found some of them sitting huddled around a
fire, with the one blanket which we had been able to provide wrapped
around them, trying in this way to keep warm. During the whole night some
of them did not attempt to lie down. One morning, when the night previous
had been unusually cold, I asked those of the students in the chapel who
thought that they had been frostbitten during the night to raise their
hands. Three hands went up. Notwithstanding these experiences, there was
almost no complaining on the part of the students. They knew that we were
doing the best that we could for them. They were happy in the privilege of
being permitted to enjoy any kind of opportunity that would enable them to
improve their condition. They were constantly asking what they might do to
lighten the burdens of the teachers.

I have heard it stated more than once, both in the North and in the South,
that coloured people would not obey and respect each other when one member
of the race is placed in a position of authority over others. In regard to
this general belief and these statements, I can say that during the
nineteen years of my experience at Tuskegee I never, either by word or
act, have been treated with disrespect by any student or officer connected
with the institution. On the other hand, I am constantly embarrassed by
the many acts of thoughtful kindness. The students do not seem to want to
see me carry a large book or a satchel or any kind of a burden through the
grounds. In such cases more than one always offers to relieve me. I almost
never go out of my office when the rain is falling that some student does
not come to my side with an umbrella and ask to be allowed to hold it over
me.

While writing upon this subject, it is a pleasure for me to add that in
all my contact with the white people of the South I have never received a
single personal insult. The white people in and near Tuskegee, to an
especial degree, seem to count it as a privilege to show me all the
respect within their power, and often go out of their way to do this.

Not very long ago I was making a journey between Dallas (Texas) and
Houston. In some way it became known in advance that I was on the train.
At nearly every station at which the train stopped, numbers of white
people, including in most cases of the officials of the town, came aboard
and introduced themselves and thanked me heartily for the work that I was
trying to do for the South.

On another occasion, when I was making a trip from Augusta, Georgia, to
Atlanta, being rather tired from much travel, I rode in a Pullman sleeper.
When I went into the car, I found there two ladies from Boston whom I knew
well. These good ladies were perfectly ignorant, it seems, of the customs
of the South, and in the goodness of their hearts insisted that I take a
seat with them in their section. After some hesitation I consented. I had
been there but a few minutes when one of them, without my knowledge,
ordered supper to be served for the three of us. This embarrassed me still
further. The car was full of Southern white men, most of whom had their
eyes on our party. When I found that supper had been ordered, I tried to
contrive some excuse that would permit me to leave the section, but the
ladies insisted that I must eat with them. I finally settled back in my
seat with a sigh, and said to myself, “I am in for it now, sure.”

To add further to the embarrassment of the situation, soon after the
supper was placed on the table one of the ladies remembered that she had
in her satchel a special kind of tea which she wished served, and as she
said she felt quite sure the porter did not know how to brew it properly,
she insisted upon getting up and preparing and serving it herself. At last
the meal was over; and it seemed the longest one that I had ever eaten.
When we were through, I decided to get myself out of the embarrassing
situation and go to the smoking-room, where most of the men were by that
time, to see how the land lay. In the meantime, however, it had become
known in some way throughout the car who I was. When I went into the
smoking-room I was never more surprised in my life than when each man,
nearly every one of them a citizen of Georgia, came up and introduced
himself to me and thanked me earnestly for the work that I was trying to
do for the whole South. This was not flattery, because each one of these
individuals knew that he had nothing to gain by trying to flatter me.

From the first I have sought to impress the students with the idea that
Tuskegee is not my institution, or that of the officers, but that it is
their institution, and that they have as much interest in it as any of the
trustees or instructors. I have further sought to have them feel that I am
at the institution as their friend and adviser, and not as their overseer.
It has been my aim to have them speak with directness and frankness about
anything that concerns the life of the school. Two or three times a year I
ask the students to write me a letter criticising or making complaints or
suggestions about anything connected with the institution. When this is
not done, I have them meet me in the chapel for a heart-to-heart talk
about the conduct of the school. There are no meetings with our students
that I enjoy more than these, and none are more helpful to me in planning
for the future. These meetings, it seems to me, enable me to get at the
very heart of all that concerns the school. Few things help an individual
more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you
trust him. When I have read of labour troubles between employers and
employees, I have often thought that many strikes and similar disturbances
might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting
nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and
letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same. Every
individual responds to confidence, and this is not more true of any race
than of the Negroes. Let them once understand that you are unselfishly
interested in them, and you can lead them to any extent.

It was my aim from the first at Tuskegee to not only have the buildings
erected by the students themselves, but to have them make their own
furniture as far as was possible. I now marvel at the patience of the
students while sleeping upon the floor while waiting for some kind of a
bedstead to be constructed, or at their sleeping without any kind of a
mattress while waiting for something that looked like a mattress to be
made.

In the early days we had very few students who had been used to handling
carpenters’ tools, and the bedsteads made by the students then were very
rough and very weak. Not unfrequently when I went into the students’ rooms
in the morning I would find at least two bedsteads lying about on the
floor. The problem of providing mattresses was a difficult one to solve.
We finally mastered this, however, by getting some cheap cloth and sewing
pieces of this together as to make large bags. These bags we filled with
the pine straw—or, as it is sometimes called, pine needles—which
we secured from the forests near by. I am glad to say that the industry of
mattress-making has grown steadily since then, and has been improved to
such an extent that at the present time it is an important branch of the
work which is taught systematically to a number of our girls, and that the
mattresses that now come out of the mattress-shop at Tuskegee are about as
good as those bought in the average store. For some time after the opening
of the boarding department we had no chairs in the students’ bedrooms or
in the dining rooms. Instead of chairs we used stools which the students
constructed by nailing together three pieces of rough board. As a rule,
the furniture in the students’ rooms during the early days of the school
consisted of a bed, some stools, and sometimes a rough table made by the
students. The plan of having the students make the furniture is still
followed, but the number of pieces in a room has been increased, and the
workmanship has so improved that little fault can be found with the
articles now. One thing that I have always insisted upon at Tuskegee is
that everywhere there should be absolute cleanliness. Over and over again
the students were reminded in those first years—and are reminded now—that
people would excuse us for our poverty, for our lack of comforts and
conveniences, but that they would not excuse us for dirt.

Another thing that has been insisted upon at the school is the use of the
tooth-brush. “The gospel of the tooth-brush,” as General Armstrong used to
call it, is part of our creed at Tuskegee. No student is permitted to
retain who does not keep and use a tooth-brush. Several times, in recent
years, students have come to us who brought with them almost no other
article except a tooth-brush. They had heard from the lips of other
students about our insisting upon the use of this, and so, to make a good
impression, they brought at least a tooth-brush with them. I remember that
one morning, not long ago, I went with the lady principal on her usual
morning tour of inspection of the girls’ rooms. We found one room that
contained three girls who had recently arrived at the school. When I asked
them if they had tooth-brushes, one of the girls replied, pointing to a
brush: “Yes, sir. That is our brush. We bought it together, yesterday.” It
did not take them long to learn a different lesson.

It has been interesting to note the effect that the use of the tooth-brush
has had in bringing about a higher degree of civilization among the
students. With few exceptions, I have noticed that, if we can get a
student to the point where, when the first or second tooth-brush
disappears, he of his own motion buys another, I have not been
disappointed in the future of that individual. Absolute cleanliness of the
body has been insisted upon from the first. The students have been taught
to bathe as regularly as to take their meals. This lesson we began
teaching before we had anything in the shape of a bath-house. Most of the
students came from plantation districts, and often we had to teach them
how to sleep at night; that is, whether between the two sheets—after
we got to the point where we could provide them two sheets—or under
both of them. Naturally I found it difficult to teach them to sleep
between two sheets when we were able to supply but one. The importance of
the use of the night-gown received the same attention.

For a long time one of the most difficult tasks was to teach the students
that all the buttons were to be kept on their clothes, and that there must
be no torn places or grease-spots. This lesson, I am pleased to be able to
say, has been so thoroughly learned and so faithfully handed down from
year to year by one set of students to another that often at the present
time, when the students march out of the chapel in the evening and their
dress is inspected, as it is every night, not one button is found to be
missing.

Chapter XII. Raising Money

When we opened our boarding department, we provided rooms in the attic of
Porter Hall, our first building, for a number of girls. But the number of
students, of both sexes, continued to increase. We could find rooms
outside the school grounds for many of the young men, but the girls we did
not care to expose in this way. Very soon the problem of providing more
rooms for the girls, as well as a larger boarding department for all the
students, grew serious. As a result, we finally decided to undertake the
construction of a still larger building—a building that would
contain rooms for the girls and boarding accommodations for all.

After having had a preliminary sketch of the needed building made, we
found that it would cost about ten thousand dollars. We had no money
whatever with which to begin; still we decided to give the needed building
a name. We knew we could name it, even though we were in doubt about our
ability to secure the means for its construction. We decided to call the
proposed building Alabama Hall, in honour of the state in which we were
labouring. Again Miss Davidson began making efforts to enlist the interest
and help of the coloured and white people in and near Tuskegee. They
responded willingly, in proportion to their means. The students, as in the
case of our first building, Porter Hall, began digging out the dirt in
order to allow the laying of the foundations.

When we seemed at the end of our resources, so far as securing money was
concerned, something occurred which showed the greatness of General
Armstrong—something which proved how far he was above the ordinary
individual. When we were in the midst of great anxiety as to where and how
we were to get funds for the new building, I received a telegram from
General Armstrong asking me if I could spend a month travelling with him
through the North, and asking me, if I could do so, to come to Hampton at
once. Of course I accepted General Armstrong’s invitation, and went to
Hampton immediately. On arriving there I found that the General had
decided to take a quartette of singers through the North, and hold
meetings for a month in important cities, at which meetings he and I were
to speak. Imagine my surprise when the General told me, further, that
these meetings were to be held, not in the interests of Hampton, but in
the interests of Tuskegee, and that the Hampton Institute was to be
responsible for all the expenses.

Although he never told me so in so many words, I found that General
Armstrong took this method of introducing me to the people of the North,
as well as for the sake of securing some immediate funds to be used in the
erection of Alabama Hall. A weak and narrow man would have reasoned that
all the money which came to Tuskegee in this way would be just so much
taken from the Hampton Institute; but none of these selfish or
short-sighted feelings ever entered the breast of General Armstrong. He
was too big to be little, too good to be mean. He knew that the people in
the North who gave money gave it for the purpose of helping the whole
cause of Negro civilization, and not merely for the advancement of any one
school. The General knew, too, that the way to strengthen Hampton was to
make it a centre of unselfish power in the working out of the whole
Southern problem.

In regard to the addresses which I was to make in the North, I recall just
one piece of advice which the General gave me. He said: “Give them an idea
for every word.” I think it would be hard to improve upon this advice; and
it might be made to apply to all public speaking. From that time to the
present I have always tried to keep his advice in mind.

Meetings were held in New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, and other
large cities, and at all of these meetings General Armstrong pleaded,
together with myself, for help, not for Hampton, but for Tuskegee. At
these meetings an especial effort was made to secure help for the building
of Alabama Hall, as well as to introduce the school to the attention of
the general public. In both these respects the meetings proved successful.

After that kindly introduction I began going North alone to secure funds.
During the last fifteen years I have been compelled to spend a large
proportion of my time away from the school, in an effort to secure money
to provide for the growing needs of the institution. In my efforts to get
funds I have had some experiences that may be of interest to my readers.
Time and time again I have been asked, by people who are trying to secure
money for philanthropic purposes, what rule or rules I followed to secure
the interest and help of people who were able to contribute money to
worthy objects. As far as the science of what is called begging can be
reduced to rules, I would say that I have had but two rules. First, always
to do my whole duty regarding making our work known to individuals and
organizations; and, second, not to worry about the results. This second
rule has been the hardest for me to live up to. When bills are on the eve
of falling due, with not a dollar in hand with which to meet them, it is
pretty difficult to learn not to worry, although I think I am learning
more and more each year that all worry simply consumes, and to no purpose,
just so much physical and mental strength that might otherwise be given to
effective work. After considerable experience in coming into contact with
wealthy and noted men, I have observed that those who have accomplished
the greatest results are those who “keep under the body”; are those who
never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm,
self-possessed, patient, and polite. I think that President William
McKinley is the best example of a man of this class that I have ever seen.

In order to be successful in any kind of undertaking, I think the main
thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself;
that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses
himself in the way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness
out of his work.

My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no
patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they
are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity. In the
first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms do not know
how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering would result,
if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of
their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business
enterprises. Then very few persons have any idea of the large number of
applications for help that rich people are constantly being flooded with.
I know wealthy people who receive as much as twenty calls a day for help.
More than once when I have gone into the offices of rich men, I have found
half a dozen persons waiting to see them, and all come for the same
purpose, that of securing money. And all these calls in person, to say
nothing of the applications received through the mails. Very few people
have any idea of the amount of money given away by persons who never
permit their names to be known. I have often heard persons condemned for
not giving away money, who, to my own knowledge, were giving away
thousands of dollars every year so quietly that the world knew nothing
about it.

As an example of this, there are two ladies in New York, whose names
rarely appear in print, but who, in a quiet way, have given us the means
with which to erect three large and important buildings during the last
eight years. Besides the gift of these buildings, they have made other
generous donations to the school. And they not only help Tuskegee, but
they are constantly seeking opportunities to help other worthy causes.

Although it has been my privilege to be the medium through which a good
many hundred thousand dollars have been received for the work at Tuskegee,
I have always avoided what the world calls “begging.” I often tell people
that I have never “begged” any money, and that I am not a “beggar.” My
experience and observation have convinced me that persistent asking
outright for money from the rich does not, as a rule, secure help. I have
usually proceeded on the principle that persons who possess sense enough
to earn money have sense enough to know how to give it away, and that the
mere making known of the facts regarding Tuskegee, and especially the
facts regarding the work of the graduates, has been more effective than
outright begging. I think that the presentation of facts, on a high,
dignified plane, is all the begging that most rich people care for.

While the work of going from door to door and from office to office is
hard, disagreeable, and costly in bodily strength, yet it has some
compensations. Such work gives one a rare opportunity to study human
nature. It also has its compensations in giving one an opportunity to meet
some of the best people in the world—to be more correct, I think I
should say the best people in the world. When one takes a broad survey of
the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people in
it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for
the purpose of making the world better.

At one time, when I was in Boston, I called at the door of a rather
wealthy lady, and was admitted to the vestibule and sent up my card. While
I was waiting for an answer, her husband came in, and asked me in the most
abrupt manner what I wanted. When I tried to explain the object of my
call, he became still more ungentlemanly in his words and manner, and
finally grew so excited that I left the house without waiting for a reply
from the lady. A few blocks from that house I called to see a gentleman
who received me in the most cordial manner. He wrote me his check for a
generous sum, and then, before I had had an opportunity to thank him,
said: “I am so grateful to you, Mr. Washington, for giving me the
opportunity to help a good cause. It is a privilege to have a share in it.
We in Boston are constantly indebted to you for doing our work.” My
experience in securing money convinces me that the first type of man is
growing more rare all the time, and that the latter type is increasing;
that is, that, more and more, rich people are coming to regard men and
women who apply to them for help for worthy objects, not as beggars, but
as agents for doing their work.

In the city of Boston I have rarely called upon an individual for funds
that I have not been thanked for calling, usually before I could get an
opportunity to thank the donor for the money. In that city the donors seem
to feel, in a large degree, that an honour is being conferred upon them in
their being permitted to give. Nowhere else have I met with, in so large a
measure, this fine and Christlike spirit as in the city of Boston,
although there are many notable instances of it outside that city. I
repeat my belief that the world is growing in the direction of giving. I
repeat that the main rule by which I have been guided in collecting money
is to do my full duty in regard to giving people who have money an
opportunity for help.

In the early years of the Tuskegee school I walked the streets or
travelled country roads in the North for days and days without receiving a
dollar. Often as it happened, when during the week I had been disappointed
in not getting a cent from the very individuals from whom I most expected
help, and when I was almost broken down and discouraged, that generous
help has come from some one who I had had little idea would give at all.

I recall that on one occasion I obtained information that led me to
believe that a gentleman who lived about two miles out in the country from
Stamford, Conn., might become interested in our efforts at Tuskegee if our
conditions and needs were presented to him. On an unusually cold and
stormy day I walked the two miles to see him. After some difficulty I
succeeded in securing an interview with him. He listened with some degree
of interest to what I had to say, but did not give me anything. I could
not help having the feeling that, in a measure, the three hours that I had
spent in seeing him had been thrown away. Still, I had followed my usual
rule of doing my duty. If I had not seen him, I should have felt unhappy
over neglect of duty.

Two years after this visit a letter came to Tuskegee from this man, which
read like this: “Enclosed I send you a New York draft for ten thousand
dollars, to be used in furtherance of your work. I had placed this sum in
my will for your school, but deem it wiser to give it to you while I live.
I recall with pleasure your visit to me two years ago.”

I can hardly imagine any occurrence which could have given me more genuine
satisfaction than the receipt of this draft. It was by far the largest
single donation which up to that time the school had ever received. It
came at a time when an unusually long period had passed since we had
received any money. We were in great distress because of lack of funds,
and the nervous strain was tremendous. It is difficult for me to think of
any situation that is more trying on the nerves than that of conducting a
large institution, with heavy obligations to meet, without knowing where
the money is to come from to meet these obligations from month to month.

In our case I felt a double responsibility, and this made the anxiety all
the more intense. If the institution had been officered by white persons,
and had failed, it would have injured the cause of Negro education; but I
knew that the failure of our institution, officered by Negroes, would not
only mean the loss of a school, but would cause people, in a large degree,
to lose faith in the ability of the entire race. The receipt of this draft
for ten thousand dollars, under all these circumstances, partially lifted
a burden that had been pressing down upon me for days.

From the beginning of our work to the present I have always had the
feeling, and lose no opportunity to impress our teachers with the same
idea, that the school will always be supported in proportion as the inside
of the institution is kept clean and pure and wholesome.

The first time I ever saw the late Collis P. Huntington, the great
railroad man, he gave me two dollars for our school. The last time I saw
him, which was a few months before he died, he gave me fifty thousand
dollars toward our endowment fund. Between these two gifts there were
others of generous proportions which came every year from both Mr. and
Mrs. Huntington.

Some people may say that it was Tuskegee’s good luck that brought to us
this gift of fifty thousand dollars. No, it was not luck. It was hard
work. Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result
of hard work. When Mr. Huntington gave me the first two dollars, I did not
blame him for not giving me more, but made up my mind that I was going to
convince him by tangible results that we were worthy of larger gifts. For
a dozen years I made a strong effort to convince Mr. Huntington of the
value of our work. I noted that just in proportion as the usefulness of
the school grew, his donations increased. Never did I meet an individual
who took a more kindly and sympathetic interest in our school than did Mr.
Huntington. He not only gave money to us, but took time in which to advise
me, as a father would a son, about the general conduct of the school.

More than once I have found myself in some pretty tight places while
collecting money in the North. The following incident I have never related
but once before, for the reason that I feared that people would not
believe it. One morning I found myself in Providence, Rhode Island,
without a cent of money with which to buy breakfast. In crossing the
street to see a lady from whom I hoped to get some money, I found a bright
new twenty-five-cent piece in the middle of the street track. I not only
had this twenty-five cents for my breakfast, but within a few minutes I
had a donation from the lady on whom I had started to call.

At one of our Commencements I was bold enough to invite the Rev. E.
Winchester Donald, D.D., rector of Trinity Church, Boston, to preach the
Commencement sermon. As we then had no room large enough to accommodate
all who would be present, the place of meeting was under a large
improvised arbour, built partly of brush and partly of rough boards. Soon
after Dr. Donald had begun speaking, the rain came down in torrents, and
he had to stop, while someone held an umbrella over him.

The boldness of what I had done never dawned upon me until I saw the
picture made by the rector of Trinity Church standing before that large
audience under an old umbrella, waiting for the rain to cease so that he
could go on with his address.

It was not very long before the rain ceased and Dr. Donald finished his
sermon; and an excellent sermon it was, too, in spite of the weather.
After he had gone to his room, and had gotten the wet threads of his
clothes dry, Dr. Donald ventured the remark that a large chapel at
Tuskegee would not be out of place. The next day a letter came from two
ladies who were then travelling in Italy, saying that they had decided to
give us the money for such a chapel as we needed.

A short time ago we received twenty thousand dollars from Mr. Andrew
Carnegie, to be used for the purpose of erecting a new library building.
Our first library and reading-room were in a corner of a shanty, and the
whole thing occupied a space about five by twelve feet. It required ten
years of work before I was able to secure Mr. Carnegie’s interest and
help. The first time I saw him, ten years ago, he seemed to take but
little interest in our school, but I was determined to show him that we
were worthy of his help. After ten years of hard work I wrote him a letter
reading as follows:

December 15, 1900.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie, 5 W. Fifty-first St., New York.

Dear Sir: Complying with the request which you made of me when I saw you
at your residence a few days ago, I now submit in writing an appeal for a
library building for our institution.

We have 1100 students, 86 officers and instructors, together with their
families, and about 200 coloured people living near the school, all of
whom would make use of the library building.

We have over 12,000 books, periodicals, etc., gifts from our friends, but
we have no suitable place for them, and we have no suitable reading-room.

Our graduates go to work in every section of the South, and whatever
knowledge might be obtained in the library would serve to assist in the
elevation of the whole Negro race.

Such a building as we need could be erected for about $20,000. All of the
work for the building, such as brickmaking, brick-masonry, carpentry,
blacksmithing, etc., would be done by the students. The money which you
would give would not only supply the building, but the erection of the
building would give a large number of students an opportunity to learn the
building trades, and the students would use the money paid to them to keep
themselves in school. I do not believe that a similar amount of money
often could be made go so far in uplifting a whole race.

If you wish further information, I shall be glad to furnish it.

Yours truly,

Booker T. Washington, Principal.

The next mail brought back the following reply: “I will be very glad to
pay the bills for the library building as they are incurred, to the extent
of twenty thousand dollars, and I am glad of this opportunity to show the
interest I have in your noble work.”

I have found that strict business methods go a long way in securing the
interest of rich people. It has been my constant aim at Tuskegee to carry
out, in our financial and other operations, such business methods as would
be approved of by any New York banking house.

I have spoken of several large gifts to the school; but by far the greater
proportion of the money that has built up the institution has come in the
form of small donations from persons of moderate means. It is upon these
small gifts, which carry with them the interest of hundreds of donors,
that any philanthropic work must depend largely for its support. In my
efforts to get money I have often been surprised at the patience and deep
interest of the ministers, who are besieged on every hand and at all hours
of the day for help. If no other consideration had convinced me of the
value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all
denominations in America has done during the last thirty-five years for
the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian. In a large
degree it has been the pennies, the nickels, and the dimes which have come
from the Sunday-schools, the Christian Endeavour societies, and the
missionary societies, as well as from the church proper, that have helped
to elevate the Negro at so rapid a rate.

This speaking of small gifts reminds me to say that very few Tuskegee
graduates fail to send us an annual contribution. These contributions
range from twenty-five cents up to ten dollars.

Soon after beginning our third year’s work we were surprised to receive
money from three special sources, and up to the present time we have
continued to receive help from them. First, the State Legislature of
Alabama increased its annual appropriation from two thousand dollars to
three thousand dollars; I might add that still later it increased this sum
to four thousand five hundred dollars a year. The effort to secure this
increase was led by the Hon. M.F. Foster, the member of the Legislature
from Tuskegee. Second, we received one thousand dollars from the John F.
Slater Fund. Our work seemed to please the trustees of this fund, as they
soon began increasing their annual grant. This has been added to from time
to time until at present we receive eleven thousand dollars annually from
the Fund. The other help to which I have referred came in the shape of an
allowance from the Peabody Fund. This was at first five hundred dollars,
but it has since been increased to fifteen hundred dollars.

The effort to secure help from the Slater and Peabody Funds brought me
into contact with two rare men—men who have had much to do in
shaping the policy for the education of the Negro. I refer to the Hon.
J.L.M. Curry, of Washington, who is the general agent for these two funds,
and Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New York. Dr. Curry is a native of the South,
an ex-Confederate soldier, yet I do not believe there is any man in the
country who is more deeply interested in the highest welfare of the Negro
than Dr. Curry, or one who is more free from race prejudice. He enjoys the
unique distinction of possessing to an equal degree the confidence of the
black man and the Southern white man. I shall never forget the first time
I met him. It was in Richmond, Va., where he was then living. I had heard
much about him. When I first went into his presence, trembling because of
my youth and inexperience, he took me by the hand so cordially, and spoke
such encouraging words, and gave me such helpful advice regarding the
proper course to pursue, that I came to know him then, as I have known him
ever since, as a high example of one who is constantly and unselfishly at
work for the betterment of humanity.

Mr. Morris K. Jessup, the treasurer of the Slater Fund, I refer to because
I know of no man of wealth and large and complicated business
responsibilities who gives not only money but his time and thought to the
subject of the proper method of elevating the Negro to the extent that is
true of Mr. Jessup. It is very largely through this effort and influence
that during the last few years the subject of industrial education has
assumed the importance that it has, and been placed on its present
footing.

Chapter XIII. Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech

Soon after the opening of our boarding department, quite a number of
students who evidently were worthy, but who were so poor that they did not
have any money to pay even the small charges at the school, began applying
for admission. This class was composed of both men and women. It was a
great trial to refuse admission to these applicants, and in 1884 we
established a night-school to accommodate a few of them.

The night-school was organized on a plan similar to the one which I had
helped to establish at Hampton. At first it was composed of about a dozen
students. They were admitted to the night-school only when they had no
money with which to pay any part of their board in the regular day-school.
It was further required that they must work for ten hours during the day
at some trade or industry, and study academic branches for two hours
during the evening. This was the requirement for the first one or two
years of their stay. They were to be paid something above the cost of
their board, with the understanding that all of their earnings, except a
very small part, were to be reserved in the school’s treasury, to be used
for paying their board in the regular day-school after they had entered
that department. The night-school, started in this manner, has grown until
there are at present four hundred and fifty-seven students enrolled in it
alone.

There could hardly be a more severe test of a student’s worth than this
branch of the Institute’s work. It is largely because it furnishes such a
good opportunity to test the backbone of a student that I place such high
value upon our night-school. Any one who is willing to work ten hours a
day at the brick-yard, or in the laundry, through one or two years, in
order that he or she may have the privilege of studying academic branches
for two hours in the evening, has enough bottom to warrant being further
educated.

After the student has left the night-school he enters the day-school,
where he takes academic branches four days in a week, and works at his
trade two days. Besides this he usually works at his trade during the
three summer months. As a rule, after a student has succeeded in going
through the night-school test, he finds a way to finish the regular course
in industrial and academic training. No student, no matter how much money
he may be able to command, is permitted to go through school without doing
manual labour. In fact, the industrial work is now as popular as the
academic branches. Some of the most successful men and women who have
graduated from the institution obtained their start in the night-school.

While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the work
at Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the religious and
spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational, but it is
thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the students is not
neglected. Our preaching service, prayer-meetings, Sunday-school,
Christian Endeavour Society, Young Men’s Christian Association, and
various missionary organizations, testify to this.

In 1885, Miss Olivia Davidson, to whom I have already referred as being
largely responsible for the success of the school during its early
history, and I were married. During our married life she continued to
divide her time and strength between our home and the work for the school.
She not only continued to work in the school at Tuskegee, but also kept up
her habit of going North to secure funds. In 1889 she died, after four
years of happy married life and eight years of hard and happy work for the
school. She literally wore herself out in her never ceasing efforts in
behalf of the work that she so dearly loved. During our married life there
were born to us two bright, beautiful boys, Booker Taliaferro and Ernest
Davidson. The older of these, Booker, has already mastered the
brick-maker’s trade at Tuskegee.

I have often been asked how I began the practice of public speaking. In
answer I would say that I never planned to give any large part of my life
to speaking in public. I have always had more of an ambition to do
things than merely to talk about doing them. It seems that when I
went North with General Armstrong to speak at the series of public
meetings to which I have referred, the President of the National
Educational Association, the Hon. Thomas W. Bicknell, was present at one
of those meetings and heard me speak. A few days afterward he sent me an
invitation to deliver an address at the next meeting of the Educational
Association. This meeting was to be held in Madison, Wis. I accepted the
invitation. This was, in a sense, the beginning of my public-speaking
career.

On the evening that I spoke before the Association there must have been
not far from four thousand persons present. Without my knowing it, there
were a large number of people present from Alabama, and some from the town
of Tuskegee. These white people afterward frankly told me that they went
to this meeting expecting to hear the South roundly abused, but were
pleasantly surprised to find that there was no word of abuse in my
address. On the contrary, the South was given credit for all the
praiseworthy things that it had done. A white lady who was teacher in a
college in Tuskegee wrote back to the local paper that she was gratified,
as well as surprised, to note the credit which I gave the white people of
Tuskegee for their help in getting the school started. This address at
Madison was the first that I had delivered that in any large measure dealt
with the general problem of the races. Those who heard it seemed to be
pleased with what I said and with the general position that I took.

When I first came to Tuskegee, I determined that I would make it my home,
that I would take as much pride in the right actions of the people of the
town as any white man could do, and that I would, at the same time,
deplore the wrong-doing of the people as much as any white man. I
determined never to say anything in a public address in the North that I
would not be willing to say in the South. I early learned that it is a
hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more
often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions
performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.

While pursuing this policy I have not failed, at the proper time and in
the proper manner, to call attention, in no uncertain terms, to the wrongs
which any part of the South has been guilty of. I have found that there is
a large element in the South that is quick to respond to straightforward,
honest criticism of any wrong policy. As a rule, the place to criticise
the South, when criticism is necessary, is in the South—not in
Boston. A Boston man who came to Alabama to criticise Boston would not
effect so much good, I think, as one who had his word of criticism to say
in Boston.

In this address at Madison I took the ground that the policy to be pursued
with references to the races was, by every honourable means, to bring them
together and to encourage the cultivation of friendly relations, instead
of doing that which would embitter. I further contended that, in relation
to his vote, the Negro should more and more consider the interests of the
community in which he lived, rather than seek alone to please some one who
lived a thousand miles away from him and from his interests.

In this address I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely
upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through his
skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the
community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his
presence. I said that any individual who learned to do something better
than anybody else—learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner—had
solved his problem, regardless of the colour of his skin, and that in
proportion as the Negro learned to produce what other people wanted and
must have, in the same proportion would he be respected.

I spoke of an instance where one of our graduates had produced two hundred
and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes from an acre of ground, in a
community where the average production had been only forty-nine bushels to
the acre. He had been able to do this by reason of his knowledge of the
chemistry of the soil and by his knowledge of improved methods of
agriculture. The white farmers in the neighbourhood respected him, and
came to him for ideas regarding the raising of sweet potatoes. These white
farmers honoured and respected him because he, by his skill and knowledge,
had added something to the wealth and the comfort of the community in
which he lived. I explained that my theory of education for the Negro
would not, for example, confine him for all time to farm life—to the
production of the best and the most sweet potatoes—but that, if he
succeeded in this line of industry, he could lay the foundations upon
which his children and grand-children could grow to higher and more
important things in life.

Such, in brief, were some of the views I advocated in this first address
dealing with the broad question of the relations of the two races, and
since that time I have not found any reason for changing my views on any
important point.

In my early life I used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any one
who spoke in bitter terms against the Negro, or who advocated measures
that tended to oppress the black man or take from him opportunities for
growth in the most complete manner. Now, whenever I hear any one
advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of another,
I pity the individual who would do this. I know that the one who makes
this mistake does so because of his own lack of opportunity for the
highest kind of growth. I pity him because I know that he is trying to
stop the progress of the world, and because I know that in time the
development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make him ashamed of
his weak and narrow position. One might as well try to stop the progress
of a mighty railroad train by throwing his body across the track, as to
try to stop the growth of the world in the direction of giving mankind
more intelligence, more culture, more skill, more liberty, and in the
direction of extending more sympathy and more brotherly kindness.

The address which I delivered at Madison, before the National Educational
Association, gave me a rather wide introduction in the North, and soon
after that opportunities began offering themselves for me to address
audiences there.

I was anxious, however, that the way might also be opened for me to speak
directly to a representative Southern white audience. A partial
opportunity of this kind, one that seemed to me might serve as an entering
wedge, presented itself in 1893, when the international meeting of
Christian Workers was held at Atlanta, Ga. When this invitation came to
me, I had engagements in Boston that seemed to make it impossible for me
to speak in Atlanta. Still, after looking over my list of dates and places
carefully, I found that I could take a train from Boston that would get me
into Atlanta about thirty minutes before my address was to be delivered,
and that I could remain in that city before taking another train for
Boston. My invitation to speak in Atlanta stipulated that I was to confine
my address to five minutes. The question, then, was whether or not I could
put enough into a five-minute address to make it worth while for me to
make such a trip.

I knew that the audience would be largely composed of the most influential
class of white men and women, and that it would be a rare opportunity for
me to let them know what we were trying to do at Tuskegee, as well as to
speak to them about the relations of the races. So I decided to make the
trip. I spoke for five minutes to an audience of two thousand people,
composed mostly of Southern and Northern whites. What I said seemed to be
received with favour and enthusiasm. The Atlanta papers of the next day
commented in friendly terms on my address, and a good deal was said about
it in different parts of the country. I felt that I had in some degree
accomplished my object—that of getting a hearing from the dominant
class of the South.

The demands made upon me for public addresses continued to increase,
coming in about equal numbers from my own people and from Northern whites.
I gave as much time to these addresses as I could spare from the immediate
work at Tuskegee. Most of the addresses in the North were made for the
direct purpose of getting funds with which to support the school. Those
delivered before the coloured people had for their main object the
impressing upon them the importance of industrial and technical education
in addition to academic and religious training.

I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
called National. I refer to the address which I delivered at the opening
of the Atlanta Cotton states and International Exposition, at Atlanta,
Ga., September 18, 1895.

So much has been said and written about this incident, and so many
questions have been asked me concerning the address, that perhaps I may be
excused for taking up the matter with some detail. The five-minute address
in Atlanta, which I came from Boston to deliver, was possibly the prime
cause for an opportunity being given me to make the second address there.
In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from prominent citizens in
Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from that city to Washington
for the purpose of appearing before a committee of Congress in the
interest of securing Government help for the Exposition. The committee was
composed of about twenty-five of the most prominent and most influential
white men of Georgia. All the members of this committee were white men
except Bishop Grant, Bishop Gaines, and myself. The Mayor and several
other city and state officials spoke before the committee. They were
followed by the two coloured bishops. My name was the last on the list of
speakers. I had never before appeared before such a committee, nor had I
ever delivered any address in the capital of the Nation. I had many
misgivings as to what I ought to say, and as to the impression that my
address would make. While I cannot recall in detail what I said, I
remember that I tried to impress upon the committee, with all the
earnestness and plainness of any language that I could command, that if
Congress wanted to do something which would assist in ridding the South of
the race question and making friends between the two races, it should, in
every proper way, encourage the material and intellectual growth of both
races. I said that the Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for
both races to show what advance they had made since freedom, and would at
the same time afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress.

I tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be deprived
by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone would not save
him, and that back of the ballot he must have property, industry, skill,
economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race without these
elements could permanently succeed. I said that in granting the
appropriation Congress could do something that would prove to be of real
and lasting value to both races, and that it was the first great
opportunity of the kind that had been presented since the close of the
Civil War.

I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close of
my address to receive the hearty congratulations of the Georgia committee
and of the members of Congress who were present. The Committee was
unanimous in making a favourable report, and in a few days the bill passed
Congress. With the passing of this bill the success of the Atlanta
Exposition was assured.

Soon after this trip to Washington the directors of the Exposition decided
that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to erect a
large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to showing
the progress of the Negro since freedom. It was further decided to have
the building designed and erected wholly by Negro mechanics. This plan was
carried out. In design, beauty, and general finish the Negro Building was
equal to the others on the grounds.

After it was decided to have a separate Negro exhibit, the question arose
as to who should take care of it. The officials of the Exposition were
anxious that I should assume this responsibility, but I declined to do so,
on the plea that the work at Tuskegee at that time demanded my time and
strength. Largely at my suggestion, Mr. I. Garland Penn, of Lynchburg,
Va., was selected to be at the head of the Negro department. I gave him
all the aid that I could. The Negro exhibit, as a whole, was large and
creditable. The two exhibits in this department which attracted the
greatest amount of attention were those from the Hampton Institute and the
Tuskegee Institute. The people who seemed to be the most surprised, as
well as pleased, at what they saw in the Negro Building were the Southern
white people.

As the day for the opening of the Exposition drew near, the Board of
Directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises. In the
discussion from day to day of the various features of this programme, the
question came up as to the advisability of putting a member of the Negro
race on for one of the opening addresses, since the Negroes had been asked
to take such a prominent part in the Exposition. It was argued, further,
that such recognition would mark the good feeling prevailing between the
two races. Of course there were those who were opposed to any such
recognition of the rights of the Negro, but the Board of Directors,
composed of men who represented the best and most progressive element in
the South, had their way, and voted to invite a black man to speak on the
opening day. The next thing was to decide upon the person who was thus to
represent the Negro race. After the question had been canvassed for
several days, the directors voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of
the opening-day addresses, and in a few days after that I received the
official invitation.

The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of responsibility
that it would be hard for any one not placed in my position to appreciate.
What were my feelings when this invitation came to me? I remembered that I
had been a slave; that my early years had been spent in the lowest depths
of poverty and ignorance, and that I had had little opportunity to prepare
me for such a responsibility as this. It was only a few years before that
time that any white man in the audience might have claimed me as his
slave; and it was easily possible that some of my former owners might be
present to hear me speak.

I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the
Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same
platform with white Southern men and women on any important National
occasion. I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the wealth
and culture of the white South, the representatives of my former masters.
I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would be composed
of Southern people, yet there would be present a large number of Northern
whites, as well as a great many men and women of my own race.

I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of my
heart to be true and right. When the invitation came to me, there was not
one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to what I should
omit. In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a tribute to me.
They knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in a large degree,
the success of the Exposition. I was also painfully conscious of the fact
that, while I must be true to my own race in my utterances, I had it in my
power to make such an ill-timed address as would result in preventing any
similar invitation being extended to a black man again for years to come.
I was equally determined to be true to the North, as well as to the best
element of the white South, in what I had to say.

The papers, North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming
speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more and
more widespread. Not a few of the Southern white papers were unfriendly to
the idea of my speaking. From my own race I received many suggestions as
to what I ought to say. I prepared myself as best I could for the address,
but as the eighteenth of September drew nearer, the heavier my heart
became, and the more I feared that my effort would prove a failure and a
disappointment.

The invitation had come at a time when I was very busy with my school
work, as it was the beginning of our school year. After preparing my
address, I went through it, as I usually do with those utterances which I
consider particularly important, with Mrs. Washington, and she approved of
what I intended to say. On the sixteenth of September, the day before I
was to start for Atlanta, so many of the Tuskegee teachers expressed a
desire to hear my address that I consented to read it to them in a body.
When I had done so, and had heard their criticisms and comments, I felt
somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of what I had to say.

On the morning of September 17, together with Mrs. Washington and my three
children, I started for Atlanta. I felt a good deal as I suppose a man
feels when he is on his way to the gallows. In passing through the town of
Tuskegee I met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the country.
In a jesting manner this man said: “Washington, you have spoken before the
Northern white people, the Negroes in the South, and to us country white
people in the South; but Atlanta, to-morrow, you will have before you the
Northern whites, the Southern whites, and the Negroes all together. I am
afraid that you have got yourself in a tight place.” This farmer diagnosed
the situation correctly, but his frank words did not add anything to my
comfort.

In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both coloured and
white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with perfect
freedom, in my hearings, what was going to take place the next day. We
were met by a committee in Atlanta. Almost the first thing that I heard
when I got off the train in that city was an expression something like
this, from an old coloured man near by: “Dat’s de man of my race what’s
gwine to make a speech at de Exposition to-morrow. I’se sho’ gwine to hear
him.”

Atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts of
the country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as well as
with military and civic organizations. The afternoon papers had forecasts
of the next day’s proceedings in flaring headlines. All this tended to add
to my burden. I did not sleep much that night. The next morning, before
day, I went carefully over what I planned to say. I also kneeled down and
asked God’s blessing upon my effort. Right here, perhaps, I ought to add
that I make it a rule never to go before an audience, on any occasion,
without asking the blessing of God upon what I want to say.

I always make it a rule to make especial preparation for each separate
address. No two audiences are exactly alike. It is my aim to reach and
talk to the heart of each individual audience, taking it into my
confidence very much as I would a person. When I am speaking to an
audience, I care little for how what I am saying is going to sound in the
newspapers, or to another audience, or to an individual. At the time, the
audience before me absorbs all my sympathy, thought, and energy.

Early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in the
procession which was to march to the Exposition grounds. In this
procession were prominent coloured citizens in carriages, as well as
several Negro military organizations. I noted that the Exposition
officials seemed to go out of their way to see that all of the coloured
people in the procession were properly placed and properly treated. The
procession was about three hours in reaching the Exposition grounds, and
during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us disagreeably hot.
When we reached the grounds, the heat, together with my nervous anxiety,
made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse, and to feel that my
address was not going to be a success. When I entered the audience-room, I
found it packed with humanity from bottom to top, and there were thousands
outside who could not get in.

The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking. When I
entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion of
the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people. I had been
told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people were going
to be present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity, and that others
who would be present would be in full sympathy with me, there was a still
larger element of the audience which would consist of those who were going
to be present for the purpose of hearing me make a fool of myself, or, at
least, of hearing me say some foolish thing so that they could say to the
officials who had invited me to speak, “I told you so!”

One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal
friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr. was at the time General Manager of the
Southern Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on that day. He was so
nervous about the kind of reception that I would have, and the effect that
my speech would produce, that he could not persuade himself to go into the
building, but walked back and forth in the grounds outside until the
opening exercises were over.

Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address

The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as a
representative of the Negro race, as stated in the last chapter, was
opened with a short address from Governor Bullock. After other interesting
exercises, including an invocation from Bishop Nelson, of Georgia, a
dedicatory ode by Albert Howell, Jr., and addresses by the President of
the Exposition and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, the President of the Woman’s
Board, Governor Bullock introduce me with the words, “We have with us
to-day a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization.”

When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from
the coloured people. As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in
my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship
of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them. So far as my
outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing that I recall
distinctly now is that when I got up, I saw thousands of eyes looking
intently into my face. The following is the address which I delivered:—

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens.

One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No
enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section
can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest
success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment
of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and
manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously
recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every
stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the
friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our
freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a
new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not
strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top
instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature
was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political
convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy
farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From
the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we
die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back,
“Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water,
water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was
answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth
signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The
captain of the distressed vessel, at last heading the injunction, cast
down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the
mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering
their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of
cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their
next-door neighbour, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast
it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by
whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service,
and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind
that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to
business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a
man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition
more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that
in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that
the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to
keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify
and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common
occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the
line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws
of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is
as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the
bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our
grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign
birth and strange tongue and habits of the prosperity of the South, were I
permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race: “Cast down your bucket
where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose
habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to
have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your
bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars,
tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and
cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and
helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of
the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and
encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of
head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land,
make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories.
While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you
and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful,
law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have
proved our loyalty to you in the past, nursing your children, watching by
the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with
tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we
shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready
to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our
industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that
shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely
social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all
things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest
intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending
to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned
into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and
intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per
cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed—”blessing him
that gives and him that takes.”

There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:—

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward,
or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute
one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third
its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the
business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a
veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to
advance the body politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an
exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty
years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and
chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has
led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural
implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving,
paintings, the management of drug-stores and banks, has not been trodden
without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we
exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment
forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your
expectations but for the constant help that has come to our education
life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern
philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing
and encouragement.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of
social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment
of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe
and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has
anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree
ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be
ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the
exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a
factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a
dollar in an opera-house.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more
hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as
this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bending, as it were,
over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race
and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I
pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem
which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times
the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in
mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product
of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will
come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good,
that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional
differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to
administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to
the mandates of law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity,
will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

The first thing that I remember, after I had finished speaking, was that
Governor Bullock rushed across the platform and took me by the hand, and
that others did the same. I received so many and such hearty
congratulations that I found it difficult to get out of the building. I
did not appreciate to any degree, however, the impression which my address
seemed to have made, until the next morning, when I went into the business
part of the city. As soon as I was recognized, I was surprised to find
myself pointed out and surrounded by a crowd of men who wished to shake
hands with me. This was kept up on every street on to which I went, to an
extent which embarrassed me so much that I went back to my boarding-place.
The next morning I returned to Tuskegee. At the station in Atlanta, and at
almost all of the stations at which the train stopped between that city
and Tuskegee, I found a crowd of people anxious to shake hands with me.

The papers in all parts of the United States published the address in
full, and for months afterward there were complimentary editorial
references to it. Mr. Clark Howell, the editor of the Atlanta
Constitution, telegraphed to a New York paper, among other words, the
following, “I do not exaggerate when I say that Professor Booker T.
Washington’s address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches, both
as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever delivered to a
Southern audience. The address was a revelation. The whole speech is a
platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with full justice to each
other.”

The Boston Transcript said editorially: “The speech of Booker T.
Washington at the Atlanta Exposition, this week, seems to have dwarfed all
the other proceedings and the Exposition itself. The sensation that it has
caused in the press has never been equalled.”

I very soon began receiving all kinds of propositions from lecture
bureaus, and editors of magazines and papers, to take the lecture
platform, and to write articles. One lecture bureau offered me fifty
thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if I would
place my services at its disposal for a given period. To all these
communications I replied that my life-work was at Tuskegee; and that
whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of Tuskegee school and my
race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a
mere commercial value upon my services.

Some days after its delivery I sent a copy of my address to the President
of the United States, the Hon. Grover Cleveland. I received from him the
following autograph reply:—

Gray Gables, Buzzard’s Bay, Mass.,

October 6, 1895.

Booker T. Washington, Esq.:

My Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered
at the Atlanta Exposition.

I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read it
with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully justified
if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery. Your
words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your
race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your utterances
gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable
advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed.

Yours very truly,

Grover Cleveland.

Later I met Mr. Cleveland, for the first time, when, as President, he
visited the Atlanta Exposition. At the request of myself and others he
consented to spend an hour in the Negro Building, for the purpose of
inspecting the Negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in
attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him. As soon as I met Mr.
Cleveland I became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged
honesty. I have met him many times since then, both at public functions
and at his private residence in Princeton, and the more I see of him the
more I admire him. When he visited the Negro Building in Atlanta he seemed
to give himself up wholly, for that hour, to the coloured people. He
seemed to be as careful to shake hands with some old coloured “auntie”
clad partially in rags, and to take as much pleasure in doing so, as if he
were greeting some millionaire. Many of the coloured people took advantage
of the occasion to get him to write his name in a book or on a slip of
paper. He was as careful and patient in doing this as if he were putting
his signature to some great state document.

Mr. Cleveland has not only shown his friendship for me in many personal
ways, but has always consented to do anything I have asked of him for our
school. This he has done, whether it was to make a personal donation or to
use his influence in securing the donations of others. Judging from my
personal acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland, I do not believe that he is
conscious of possessing any colour prejudice. He is too great for that. In
my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little,
narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do
not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come
into contact with other souls—with the great outside world. No man
whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is
highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in many places, I have
found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the
most miserable are those who do the least. I have also found that few
things, if any, are capable of making one so blind and narrow as race
prejudice. I often say to our students, in the course of my talks to them
on Sunday evenings in the chapel, that the longer I live and the more
experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all,
the one thing that is most worth living for—and dying for, if need
be—is the opportunity of making some one else more happy and more
useful.

The coloured people and the coloured newspapers at first seemed to be
greatly pleased with the character of my Atlanta address, as well as with
its reception. But after the first burst of enthusiasm began to die away,
and the coloured people began reading the speech in cold type, some of
them seemed to feel that they had been hypnotized. They seemed to feel
that I had been too liberal in my remarks toward the Southern whites, and
that I had not spoken out strongly enough for what they termed the
“rights” of my race. For a while there was a reaction, so far as a certain
element of my own race was concerned, but later these reactionary ones
seemed to have been won over to my way of believing and acting.

While speaking of changes in public sentiment, I recall that about ten
years after the school at Tuskegee was established, I had an experience
that I shall never forget. Dr. Lyman Abbott, then the pastor of Plymouth
Church, and also editor of the Outlook (then the Christian Union), asked
me to write a letter for his paper giving my opinion of the exact
condition, mental and moral, of the coloured ministers in the South, as
based upon my observations. I wrote the letter, giving the exact facts as
I conceived them to be. The picture painted was a rather black one—or,
since I am black, shall I say “white”? It could not be otherwise with a
race but a few years out of slavery, a race which had not had time or
opportunity to produce a competent ministry.

What I said soon reached every Negro minister in the country, I think, and
the letters of condemnation which I received from them were not few. I
think that for a year after the publication of this article every
association and every conference or religious body of any kind, of my
race, that met, did not fail before adjourning to pass a resolution
condemning me, or calling upon me to retract or modify what I had said.
Many of these organizations went so far in their resolutions as to advise
parents to cease sending their children to Tuskegee. One association even
appointed a “missionary” whose duty it was to warn the people against
sending their children to Tuskegee. This missionary had a son in the
school, and I noticed that, whatever the “missionary” might have said or
done with regard to others, he was careful not to take his son away from
the institution. Many of the coloured papers, especially those that were
the organs of religious bodies, joined in the general chorus of
condemnation or demands for retraction.

During the whole time of the excitement, and through all the criticism, I
did not utter a word of explanation or retraction. I knew that I was
right, and that time and the sober second thought of the people would
vindicate me. It was not long before the bishops and other church leaders
began to make careful investigation of the conditions of the ministry, and
they found out that I was right. In fact, the oldest and most influential
bishop in one branch of the Methodist Church said that my words were far
too mild. Very soon public sentiment began making itself felt, in
demanding a purifying of the ministry. While this is not yet complete by
any means, I think I may say, without egotism, and I have been told by
many of our most influential ministers, that my words had much to do with
starting a demand for the placing of a higher type of men in the pulpit. I
have had the satisfaction of having many who once condemned me thank me
heartily for my frank words.

The change of the attitude of the Negro ministry, so far as regards
myself, is so complete that at the present time I have no warmer friends
among any class than I have among the clergymen. The improvement in the
character and life of the Negro ministers is one of the most gratifying
evidences of the progress of the race. My experience with them, as well as
other events in my life, convince me that the thing to do, when one feels
sure that he has said or done the right thing, and is condemned, is to
stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.

In the midst of the discussion which was going on concerning my Atlanta
speech, I received the letter which I give below, from Dr. Gilman, the
President of Johns Hopkins University, who had been made chairman of the
judges of award in connection with the Atlanta Exposition:—

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,

President’s Office, September 30, 1895.

Dear Mr. Washington: Would it be agreeable to you to be one of the Judges
of Award in the Department of Education at Atlanta? If so, I shall be glad
to place your name upon the list. A line by telegraph will be welcomed.

Yours very truly,

D.C. Gilman

I think I was even more surprised to receive this invitation than I had
been to receive the invitation to speak at the opening of the Exposition.
It was to be a part of my duty, as one of the jurors, to pass not only
upon the exhibits of the coloured schools, but also upon those of the
white schools. I accepted the position, and spent a month in Atlanta in
performance of the duties which it entailed. The board of jurors was a
large one, containing in all of sixty members. It was about equally
divided between Southern white people and Northern white people. Among
them were college presidents, leading scientists and men of letters, and
specialists in many subjects. When the group of jurors to which I was
assigned met for organization, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, who was one of the
number, moved that I be made secretary of that division, and the motion
was unanimously adopted. Nearly half of our division were Southern people.
In performing my duties in the inspection of the exhibits of white schools
I was in every case treated with respect, and at the close of our labours
I parted from my associates with regret.

I am often asked to express myself more freely than I do upon the
political condition and the political future of my race. These
recollections of my experience in Atlanta give me the opportunity to do so
briefly. My own belief is, although I have never before said so in so many
words, that the time will come when the Negro in the South will be
accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and
material possessions entitle him to. I think, though, that the opportunity
to freely exercise such political rights will not come in any large degree
through outside or artificial forcing, but will be accorded to the Negro
by the Southern white people themselves, and that they will protect him in
the exercise of those rights. Just as soon as the South gets over the old
feeling that it is being forced by “foreigners,” or “aliens,” to do
something which it does not want to do, I believe that the change in the
direction that I have indicated is going to begin. In fact, there are
indications that it is already beginning in a slight degree.

Let me illustrate my meaning. Suppose that some months before the opening
of the Atlanta Exposition there had been a general demand from the press
and public platform outside the South that a Negro be given a place on the
opening programme, and that a Negro be placed upon the board of jurors of
award. Would any such recognition of the race have taken place? I do not
think so. The Atlanta officials went as far as they did because they felt
it to be a pleasure, as well as a duty, to reward what they considered
merit in the Negro race. Say what we will, there is something in human
nature which we cannot blot out, which makes one man, in the end,
recognize and reward merit in another, regardless of colour or race.

I believe it is the duty of the Negro—as the greater part of the
race is already doing—to deport himself modestly in regard to
political claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed
from the possession of property, intelligence, and high character for the
full recognition of his political rights. I think that the according of
the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural,
slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair. I do not believe that
the Negro should cease voting, for a man cannot learn the exercise of
self-government by ceasing to vote, any more than a boy can learn to swim
by keeping out of the water, but I do believe that in his voting he should
more and more be influenced by those of intelligence and character who are
his next-door neighbours.

I know coloured men who, through the encouragement, help, and advice of
Southern white people, have accumulated thousands of dollars’ worth of
property, but who, at the same time, would never think of going to those
same persons for advice concerning the casting of their ballots. This, it
seems to me, is unwise and unreasonable, and should cease. In saying this
I do not mean that the Negro should truckle, or not vote from principle,
for the instant he ceases to vote from principle he loses the confidence
and respect of the Southern white man even.

I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an ignorant
and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black man in the
same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust, but it will
react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of such a law is to
encourage the Negro to secure education and property, and at the same time
it encourages the white man to remain in ignorance and poverty. I believe
that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race
relations, all cheating at the ballot-box in the South will cease. It will
become apparent that the white man who begins by cheating a Negro out of
his ballot soon learns to cheat a white man out of his, and that the man
who does this ends his career of dishonesty by the theft of property or by
some equally serious crime. In my opinion, the time will come when the
South will encourage all of its citizens to vote. It will see that it pays
better, from every standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have
that political stagnation which always results when one-half of the
population has no share and no interest in the Government.

As a rule, I believe in universal, free suffrage, but I believe that in
the South we are confronted with peculiar conditions that justify the
protection of the ballot in many of the states, for a while at least,
either by an education test, a property test, or by both combined; but
whatever tests are required, they should be made to apply with equal and
exact justice to both races.

Chapter XV. The Secret Of Success In Public Speaking

As to how my address at Atlanta was received by the audience in the
Exposition building, I think I prefer to let Mr. James Creelman, the noted
war correspondent, tell. Mr. Creelman was present, and telegraphed the
following account to the New York World:—

Atlanta, September 18.

While President Cleveland was waiting at Gray Gables to-day, to send the
electric spark that started the machinery of the Atlanta Exposition, a
Negro Moses stood before a great audience of white people and delivered an
oration that marks a new epoch in the history of the South; and a body of
Negro troops marched in a procession with the citizen soldiery of Georgia
and Louisiana. The whole city is thrilling to-night with a realization of
the extraordinary significance of these two unprecedented events. Nothing
has happened since Henry Grady’s immortal speech before the New England
society in New York that indicates so profoundly the spirit of the New
South, except, perhaps, the opening of the Exposition itself.

When Professor Booker T. Washington, Principal of an industrial school for
coloured people in Tuskegee, Ala. stood on the platform of the Auditorium,
with the sun shining over the heads of his auditors into his eyes, and
with his whole face lit up with the fire of prophecy, Clark Howell, the
successor of Henry Grady, said to me, “That man’s speech is the beginning
of a moral revolution in America.”

It is the first time that a Negro has made a speech in the South on any
important occasion before an audience composed of white men and women. It
electrified the audience, and the response was as if it had come from the
throat of a whirlwind.

Mrs. Thompson had hardly taken her seat when all eyes were turned on a
tall tawny Negro sitting in the front row of the platform. It was
Professor Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee (Alabama) Normal
and Industrial Institute, who must rank from this time forth as the
foremost man of his race in America. Gilmore’s Band played the
“Star-Spangled Banner,” and the audience cheered. The tune changed to
“Dixie” and the audience roared with shrill “hi-yis.” Again the music
changed, this time to “Yankee Doodle,” and the clamour lessened.

All this time the eyes of the thousands present looked straight at the
Negro orator. A strange thing was to happen. A black man was to speak for
his people, with none to interrupt him. As Professor Washington strode to
the edge of the stage, the low, descending sun shot fiery rays through the
windows into his face. A great shout greeted him. He turned his head to
avoid the blinding light, and moved about the platform for relief. Then he
turned his wonderful countenance to the sun without a blink of the
eyelids, and began to talk.

There was a remarkable figure; tall, bony, straight as a Sioux chief, high
forehead, straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong, determined mouth, with
big white teeth, piercing eyes, and a commanding manner. The sinews stood
out on his bronzed neck, and his muscular right arm swung high in the air,
with a lead-pencil grasped in the clinched brown fist. His big feet were
planted squarely, with the heels together and the toes turned out. His
voice range out clear and true, and he paused impressively as he made each
point. Within ten minutes the multitude was in an uproar of enthusiasm—handkerchiefs
were waved, canes were flourished, hats were tossed in the air. The
fairest women of Georgia stood up and cheered. It was as if the orator had
bewitched them.

And when he held his dusky hand high above his head, with the fingers
stretched wide apart, and said to the white people of the South on behalf
of his race, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual
progress,” the great wave of sound dashed itself against the walls, and
the whole audience was on its feet in a delirium of applause, and I
thought at that moment of the night when Henry Grady stood among the
curling wreaths of tobacco-smoke in Delmonico’s banquet-hall and said, “I
am a Cavalier among Roundheads.”

I have heard the great orators of many countries, but not even Gladstone
himself could have pleased a cause with most consummate power than did
this angular Negro, standing in a nimbus of sunshine, surrounded by the
men who once fought to keep his race in bondage. The roar might swell ever
so high, but the expression of his earnest face never changed.

A ragged, ebony giant, squatted on the floor in one of the aisles, watched
the orator with burning eyes and tremulous face until the supreme burst of
applause came, and then the tears ran down his face. Most of the Negroes
in the audience were crying, perhaps without knowing just why.

At the close of the speech Governor Bullock rushed across the stage and
seized the orator’s hand. Another shout greeted this demonstration, and
for a few minutes the two men stood facing each other, hand in hand.

So far as I could spare the time from the immediate work at Tuskegee,
after my Atlanta address, I accepted some of the invitations to speak in
public which came to me, especially those that would take me into
territory where I thought it would pay to plead the cause of my race, but
I always did this with the understanding that I was to be free to talk
about my life-work and the needs of my people. I also had it understood
that I was not to speak in the capacity of a professional lecturer, or for
mere commercial gain.

In my efforts on the public platform I never have been able to understand
why people come to hear me speak. This question I never can rid myself of.
Time and time again, as I have stood in the street in front of a building
and have seen men and women passing in large numbers into the audience
room where I was to speak, I have felt ashamed that I should be the cause
of people—as it seemed to me—wasting a valuable hour of their
time. Some years ago I was to deliver an address before a literary society
in Madison, Wis. An hour before the time set for me to speak, a fierce
snow-storm began, and continued for several hours. I made up my mind that
there would be no audience, and that I should not have to speak, but, as a
matter of duty, I went to the church, and found it packed with people. The
surprise gave me a shock that I did not recover from during the whole
evening.

People often ask me if I feel nervous before speaking, or else they
suggest that, since I speak often, they suppose that I get used to it. In
answer to this question I have to say that I always suffer intensely from
nervousness before speaking. More than once, just before I was to make an
important address, this nervous strain has been so great that I have
resolved never again to speak in public. I not only feel nervous before
speaking, but after I have finished I usually feel a sense of regret,
because it seems to me as if I had left out of my address the main thing
and the best thing that I had meant to say.

There is a great compensation, though, for this preliminary nervous
suffering, that comes to me after I have been speaking for about ten
minutes, and have come to feel that I have really mastered my audience,
and that we have gotten into full and complete sympathy with each other.
It seems to me that there is rarely such a combination of mental and
physical delight in any effort as that which comes to a public speaker
when he feels that he has a great audience completely within his control.
There is a thread of sympathy and oneness that connects a public speaker
with his audience, that is just as strong as though it was something
tangible and visible. If in an audience of a thousand people there is one
person who is not in sympathy with my views, or is inclined to be
doubtful, cold, or critical, I can pick him out. When I have found him I
usually go straight at him, and it is a great satisfaction to watch the
process of his thawing out. I find that the most effective medicine for
such individuals is administered at first in the form of a story, although
I never tell an anecdote simply for the sake of telling one. That kind of
thing, I think, is empty and hollow, and an audience soon finds it out.

I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when
he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that one
should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that he
has a message to deliver. When one feels, from the bottom of his feet to
the top of his head, that he has something to say that is going to help
some individual or some cause, then let him say it; and in delivering his
message I do not believe that many of the artificial rules of elocution
can, under such circumstances, help him very much. Although there are
certain things, such as pauses, breathing, and pitch of voice, that are
very important, none of these can take the place of soul in an address.
When I have an address to deliver, I like to forget all about the rules
for the proper use of the English language, and all about rhetoric and
that sort of thing, and I like to make the audience forget all about these
things, too.

Nothing tends to throw me off my balance so quickly, when I am speaking,
as to have some one leave the room. To prevent this, I make up my mind, as
a rule, that I will try to make my address so interesting, will try to
state so many interesting facts one after another, that no one can leave.
The average audience, I have come to believe, wants facts rather than
generalities or sermonizing. Most people, I think, are able to draw proper
conclusions if they are given the facts in an interesting form on which to
base them.

As to the kind of audience that I like best to talk to, I would put at the
top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake, business men, such,
for example, as is found in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Buffalo. I have
found no other audience so quick to see a point, and so responsive. Within
the last few years I have had the privilege of speaking before most of the
leading organizations of this kind in the large cities of the United
States. The best time to get hold of an organization of business men is
after a good dinner, although I think that one of the worst instruments of
torture that was ever invented is the custom which makes it necessary for
a speaker to sit through a fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the
time feeling sure that his speech is going to prove a dismal failure and
disappointment.

I rarely take part in one of these long dinners that I do not wish that I
could put myself back in the little cabin where I was a slave boy, and
again go through the experience there—one that I shall never forget—of
getting molasses to eat once a week from the “big house.” Our usual diet
on the plantation was corn bread and pork, but on Sunday morning my mother
was permitted to bring down a little molasses from the “big house” for her
three children, and when it was received how I did wish that every day was
Sunday! I would get my tin plate and hold it up for the sweet morsel, but
I would always shut my eyes while the molasses was being poured out into
the plate, with the hope that when I opened them I would be surprised to
see how much I had got. When I opened my eyes I would tip the plate in one
direction and another, so as to make the molasses spread all over it, in
the full belief that there would be more of it and that it would last
longer if spread out in this way. So strong are my childish impressions of
those Sunday morning feasts that it would be pretty hard for any one to
convince me that there is not more molasses on a plate when it is spread
all over the plate than when it occupies a little corner—if there is
a corner in a plate. At any rate, I have never believed in “cornering”
syrup. My share of the syrup was usually about two tablespoonfuls, and
those two spoonfuls of molasses were much more enjoyable to me than is a
fourteen-course dinner after which I am to speak.

Next to a company of business men, I prefer to speak to an audience of
Southern people, of either race, together or taken separately. Their
enthusiasm and responsiveness are a constant delight. The “amens” and
“dat’s de truf” that come spontaneously from the coloured individuals are
calculated to spur any speaker on to his best efforts. I think that next
in order of preference I would place a college audience. It has been my
privilege to deliver addresses at many of our leading colleges including
Harvard, Yale, Williams, Amherst, Fisk University, the University of
Pennsylvania, Wellesley, the University of Michigan, Trinity College in
North Carolina, and many others.

It has been a matter of deep interest to me to note the number of people
who have come to shake hands with me after an address, who say that this
is the first time they have ever called a Negro “Mister.”

When speaking directly in the interests of the Tuskegee Institute, I
usually arrange, some time in advance, a series of meetings in important
centres. This takes me before churches, Sunday-schools, Christian
Endeavour Societies, and men’s and women’s clubs. When doing this I
sometimes speak before as many as four organizations in a single day.

Three years ago, at the suggestion of Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New York,
and Dr. J.L.M. Curry, the general agent of the fund, the trustees of the
John F. Slater Fund voted a sum of money to be used in paying the expenses
of Mrs. Washington and myself while holding a series of meetings among the
coloured people in the large centres of Negro population, especially in
the large cities of the ex-slaveholding states. Each year during the last
three years we have devoted some weeks to this work. The plan that we have
followed has been for me to speak in the morning to the ministers,
teachers, and professional men. In the afternoon Mrs. Washington would
speak to the women alone, and in the evening I spoke to a large
mass-meeting. In almost every case the meetings have been attended not
only by the coloured people in large numbers, but by the white people. In
Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, there was present at the mass-meeting an
audience of not less than three thousand persons, and I was informed that
eight hundred of these were white. I have done no work that I really
enjoyed more than this, or that I think has accomplished more good.

These meetings have given Mrs. Washington and myself an opportunity to get
first-hand, accurate information as to the real condition of the race, by
seeing the people in their homes, their churches, their Sunday-schools,
and their places of work, as well as in the prisons and dens of crime.
These meetings also gave us an opportunity to see the relations that exist
between the races. I never feel so hopeful about the race as I do after
being engaged in a series of these meetings. I know that on such occasions
there is much that comes to the surface that is superficial and deceptive,
but I have had experience enough not to be deceived by mere signs and
fleeting enthusiasms. I have taken pains to go to the bottom of things and
get facts, in a cold, business-like manner.

I have seen the statement made lately, by one who claims to know what he
is talking about, that, taking the whole Negro race into account, ninety
per cent of the Negro women are not virtuous. There never was a baser
falsehood uttered concerning a race, or a statement made that was less
capable of being proved by actual facts.

No one can come into contact with the race for twenty years, as I have
done in the heart of the South, without being convinced that the race is
constantly making slow but sure progress materially, educationally, and
morally. One might take up the life of the worst element in New York City,
for example, and prove almost anything he wanted to prove concerning the
white man, but all will agree that this is not a fair test.

Early in the year 1897 I received a letter inviting me to deliver an
address at the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston. I
accepted the invitation. It is not necessary for me, I am sure, to explain
who Robert Gould Shaw was, and what he did. The monument to his memory
stands near the head of the Boston Common, facing the State House. It is
counted to be the most perfect piece of art of the kind to be found in the
country.

The exercises connected with the dedication were held in Music Hall, in
Boston, and the great hall was packed from top to bottom with one of the
most distinguished audiences that ever assembled in the city. Among those
present were more persons representing the famous old anti-slavery element
that it is likely will ever be brought together in the country again. The
late Hon. Roger Wolcott, then Governor of Massachusetts, was the presiding
officer, and on the platform with him were many other officials and
hundreds of distinguished men. A report of the meeting which appeared in
the Boston Transcript will describe it better than any words of mine could
do:—

The core and kernel of yesterday’s great noon meeting, in honour of the
Brotherhood of Man, in Music Hall, was the superb address of the Negro
President of Tuskegee. “Booker T. Washington received his Harvard A.M.
last June, the first of his race,” said Governor Wolcott, “to receive an
honorary degree from the oldest university in the land, and this for the
wise leadership of his people.” When Mr. Washington rose in the
flag-filled, enthusiasm-warmed, patriotic, and glowing atmosphere of Music
Hall, people felt keenly that here was the civic justification of the old
abolition spirit of Massachusetts; in his person the proof of her ancient
and indomitable faith; in his strong thought and rich oratory, the crown
and glory of the old war days of suffering and strife. The scene was full
of historic beauty and deep significance. “Cold” Boston was alive with the
fire that is always hot in her heart for righteousness and truth. Rows and
rows of people who are seldom seen at any public function, whole families
of those who are certain to be out of town on a holiday, crowded the place
to overflowing. The city was at her birthright fête in the persons
of hundreds of her best citizens, men and women whose names and lives
stand for the virtues that make for honourable civic pride.

Battle-music had filled the air. Ovation after ovation, applause warm and
prolonged, had greeted the officers and friends of Colonel Shaw, the
sculptor, St. Gaudens, the memorial Committee, the Governor and his staff,
and the Negro soldiers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts as they came upon
the platform or entered the hall. Colonel Henry Lee, of Governor Andrew’s
old staff, had made a noble, simple presentation speech for the committee,
paying tribute to Mr. John M. Forbes, in whose stead he served. Governor
Wolcott had made his short, memorable speech, saying, “Fort Wagner marked
an epoch in the history of a race, and called it into manhood.” Mayor
Quincy had received the monument for the city of Boston. The story of
Colonel Shaw and his black regiment had been told in gallant words, and
then, after the singing of

Booker Washington arose. It was, of course, just the moment for him. The
multitude, shaken out of its usual symphony-concert calm, quivered with an
excitement that was not suppressed. A dozen times it had sprung to its
feet to cheer and wave and hurrah, as one person. When this man of culture
and voice and power, as well as a dark skin, began, and uttered the names
of Stearns and of Andrew, feeling began to mount. You could see tears
glisten in the eyes of soldiers and civilians. When the orator turned to
the coloured soldiers on the platform, to the colour-bearer of Fort
Wagner, who smilingly bore still the flag he had never lowered even when
wounded, and said, “To you, to the scarred and scattered remnants of the
Fifty-fourth, who, with empty sleeve and wanting leg, have honoured this
occasion with your presence, to you, your commander is not dead. Though
Boston erected no monument and history recorded no story, in you and in
the loyal race which you represent, Robert Gould Shaw would have a
monument which time could not wear away,” then came the climax of the
emotion of the day and the hour. It was Roger Wolcott, as well as the
Governor of Massachusetts, the individual representative of the people’s
sympathy as well as the chief magistrate, who had sprung first to his feet
and cried, “Three cheers to Booker T. Washington!”

Among those on the platform was Sergeant William H. Carney, of New
Bedford, Mass., the brave coloured officer who was the colour-bearer at
Fort Wagner and held the American flag. In spite of the fact that a large
part of his regiment was killed, he escaped, and exclaimed, after the
battle was over, “The old flag never touched the ground.”

This flag Sergeant Carney held in his hands as he sat on the platform, and
when I turned to address the survivors of the coloured regiment who were
present, and referred to Sergeant Carney, he rose, as if by instinct, and
raised the flag. It has been my privilege to witness a good many
satisfactory and rather sensational demonstrations in connection with some
of my public addresses, but in dramatic effect I have never seen or
experienced anything which equalled this. For a number of minutes the
audience seemed to entirely lose control of itself.

In the general rejoicing throughout the country which followed the close
of the Spanish-American war, peace celebrations were arranged in several
of the large cities. I was asked by President William R. Harper, of the
University of Chicago, who was chairman of the committee of invitations
for the celebration to be held in the city of Chicago, to deliver one of
the addresses at the celebration there. I accepted the invitation, and
delivered two addresses there during the Jubilee week. The first of these,
and the principal one, was given in the Auditorium, on the evening of
Sunday, October 16. This was the largest audience that I have ever
addressed, in any part of the country; and besides speaking in the main
Auditorium, I also addressed, that same evening, two overflow audiences in
other parts of the city.

It was said that there were sixteen thousand persons in the Auditorium,
and it seemed to me as if there were as many more on the outside trying to
get in. It was impossible for any one to get near the entrance without the
aid of a policeman. President William McKinley attended this meeting, as
did also the members of his Cabinet, many foreign ministers, and a large
number of army and navy officers, many of whom had distinguished
themselves in the war which had just closed. The speakers, besides myself,
on Sunday evening, were Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Father Thomas P. Hodnett,
and Dr. John H. Barrows.

The Chicago Times-Herald, in describing the meeting, said of my address:—

He pictured the Negro choosing slavery rather than extinction; recalled
Crispus Attucks shedding his blood at the beginning of the American
Revolution, that white Americans might be free, while black Americans
remained in slavery; rehearsed the conduct of the Negroes with Jackson at
New Orleans; drew a vivid and pathetic picture of the Southern slaves
protecting and supporting the families of their masters while the latter
were fighting to perpetuate black slavery; recounted the bravery of
coloured troops at Port Hudson and Forts Wagner and Pillow, and praised
the heroism of the black regiments that stormed El Caney and Santiago to
give freedom to the enslaved people of Cuba, forgetting, for the time
being, the unjust discrimination that law and custom make against them in
their own country.

In all of these things, the speaker declared, his race had chosen the
better part. And then he made his eloquent appeal to the consciences of
the white Americans: “When you have gotten the full story of the heroic
conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American war, have heard it from the
lips of Northern soldier and Southern soldier, from ex-abolitionist and
ex-masters, then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus
willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity
to live for its country.”

The part of the speech which seems to arouse the wildest and most
sensational enthusiasm was that in which I thanked the President for his
recognition of the Negro in his appointments during the Spanish-American
war. The President was sitting in a box at the right of the stage. When I
addressed him I turned toward the box, and as I finished the sentence
thanking him for his generosity, the whole audience rose and cheered again
and again, waving handkerchiefs and hats and canes, until the President
arose in the box and bowed his acknowledgements. At that the enthusiasm
broke out again, and the demonstration was almost indescribable.

One portion of my address at Chicago seemed to have been misunderstood by
the Southern press, and some of the Southern papers took occasion to
criticise me rather strongly. These criticisms continued for several
weeks, until I finally received a letter from the editor of the
Age-Herald, published in Birmingham, Ala., asking me if I would say just
what I meant by this part of the address. I replied to him in a letter
which seemed to satisfy my critics. In this letter I said that I had made
it a rule never to say before a Northern audience anything that I would
not say before an audience in the South. I said that I did not think it
was necessary for me to go into extended explanations; if my seventeen
years of work in the heart of the South had not been explanation enough, I
did not see how words could explain. I said that I made the same plea that
I had made in my address at Atlanta, for the blotting out of race
prejudice in “commercial and civil relations.” I said that what is termed
social recognition was a question which I never discussed, and then I
quoted from my Atlanta address what I had said there in regard to that
subject.

In meeting crowds of people at public gatherings, there is one type of
individual that I dread. I mean the crank. I have become so accustomed to
these people now that I can pick them out at a distance when I see them
elbowing their way up to me. The average crank has a long beard, poorly
cared for, a lean, narrow face, and wears a black coat. The front of his
vest and coat are slick with grease, and his trousers bag at the knees.

In Chicago, after I had spoken at a meeting, I met one of these fellows.
They usually have some process for curing all of the ills of the world at
once. This Chicago specimen had a patent process by which he said Indian
corn could be kept through a period of three or four years, and he felt
sure that if the Negro race in the South would, as a whole, adopt his
process, it would settle the whole race question. It mattered nothing that
I tried to convince him that our present problem was to teach the Negroes
how to produce enough corn to last them through one year. Another Chicago
crank had a scheme by which he wanted me to join him in an effort to close
up all the National banks in the country. If that was done, he felt sure
it would put the Negro on his feet.

The number of people who stand ready to consume one’s time, to no purpose,
is almost countless. At one time I spoke before a large audience in Boston
in the evening. The next morning I was awakened by having a card brought
to my room, and with it a message that some one was anxious to see me.
Thinking that it must be something very important, I dressed hastily and
went down. When I reached the hotel office I found a blank and
innocent-looking individual waiting for me, who coolly remarked: “I heard
you talk at a meeting last night. I rather liked your talk, and so I came
in this morning to hear you talk some more.”

I am often asked how it is possible for me to superintend the work at
Tuskegee and at the same time be so much away from the school. In partial
answer to this I would say that I think I have learned, in some degree at
least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do
that which you can do yourself.” My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not
do that which others can do as well.”

One of the most encouraging signs in connection with the Tuskegee school
is found in the fact that the organization is so thorough that the daily
work of the school is not dependent upon the presence of any one
individual. The whole executive force, including instructors and clerks,
now numbers eighty-six. This force is so organized and subdivided that the
machinery of the school goes on day by day like clockwork. Most of our
teachers have been connected with the institutions for a number of years,
and are as much interested in it as I am. In my absence, Mr. Warren Logan,
the treasurer, who has been at the school seventeen years, is the
executive. He is efficiently supported by Mrs. Washington, and by my
faithful secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, who handles the bulk of my
correspondence and keeps me in daily touch with the life of the school,
and who also keeps me informed of whatever takes place in the South that
concerns the race. I owe more to his tact, wisdom, and hard work than I
can describe.

The main executive work of the school, whether I am at Tuskegee or not,
centres in what we call the executive council. This council meets twice a
week, and is composed of the nine persons who are at the head of the nine
departments of the school. For example: Mrs. B.K. Bruce, the Lady
Principal, the widow of the late ex-senator Bruce, is a member of the
council, and represents in it all that pertains to the life of the girls
at the school. In addition to the executive council there is a financial
committee of six, that meets every week and decides upon the expenditures
for the week. Once a month, and sometimes oftener, there is a general
meeting of all the instructors. Aside from these there are innumerable
smaller meetings, such as that of the instructors in the Phelps Hall Bible
Training School, or of the instructors in the agricultural department.

In order that I may keep in constant touch with the life of the
institution, I have a system of reports so arranged that a record of the
school’s work reaches me every day of the year, no matter in what part of
the country I am. I know by these reports even what students are excused
from school, and why they are excused—whether for reasons of ill
health or otherwise. Through the medium of these reports I know each day
what the income of the school in money is; I know how many gallons of milk
and how many pounds of butter come from the dairy; what the bill of fare
for the teachers and students is; whether a certain kind of meat was
boiled or baked, and whether certain vegetables served in the dining room
were bought from a store or procured from our own farm. Human nature I
find to be very much the same the world over, and it is sometimes not hard
to yield to the temptation to go to a barrel of rice that has come from
the store—with the grain all prepared to go in the pot—rather
than to take the time and trouble to go to the field and dig and wash
one’s own sweet potatoes, which might be prepared in a manner to take the
place of the rice.

I am often asked how, in the midst of so much work, a large part of which
is for the public, I can find time for any rest or recreation, and what
kind of recreation or sports I am fond of. This is rather a difficult
question to answer. I have a strong feeling that every individual owes it
to himself, and to the cause which he is serving, to keep a vigorous,
healthy body, with the nerves steady and strong, prepared for great
efforts and prepared for disappointments and trying positions. As far as I
can, I make it a rule to plan for each day’s work—not merely to go
through with the same routine of daily duties, but to get rid of the
routine work as early in the day as possible, and then to enter upon some
new or advance work. I make it a rule to clear my desk every day, before
leaving my office, of all correspondence and memoranda, so that on the
morrow I can begin a new day of work. I make it a rule never to let
my work drive me, but to so master it, and keep it in such complete
control, and to keep so far ahead of it, that I will be the master instead
of the servant. There is a physical and mental and spiritual enjoyment
that comes from a consciousness of being the absolute master of one’s
work, in all its details, that is very satisfactory and inspiring. My
experience teaches me that, if one learns to follow this plan, he gets a
freshness of body and vigour of mind out of work that goes a long way
toward keeping him strong and healthy. I believe that when one can grow to
the point where he loves his work, this gives him a kind of strength that
is most valuable.

When I begin my work in the morning, I expect to have a successful and
pleasant day of it, but at the same time I prepare myself for unpleasant
and unexpected hard places. I prepared myself to hear that one of our
school buildings is on fire, or has burned, or that some disagreeable
accident has occurred, or that some one has abused me in a public address
or printed article, for something that I have done or omitted to do, or
for something that he had heard that I had said—probably something
that I had never thought of saying.

In nineteen years of continuous work I have taken but one vacation. That
was two years ago, when some of my friends put the money into my hands and
forced Mrs. Washington and myself to spend three months in Europe. I have
said that I believe it is the duty of every one to keep his body in good
condition. I try to look after the little ills, with the idea that if I
take care of the little ills the big ones will not come. When I find
myself unable to sleep well, I know that something is wrong. If I find any
part of my system the least weak, and not performing its duty, I consult a
good physician. The ability to sleep well, at any time and in any place, I
find of great advantage. I have so trained myself that I can lie down for
a nap of fifteen or twenty minutes, and get up refreshed in body and mind.

I have said that I make it a rule to finish up each day’s work before
leaving it. There is, perhaps, one exception to this. When I have an
unusually difficult question to decide—one that appeals strongly to
the emotions—I find it a safe rule to sleep over it for a night, or
to wait until I have had an opportunity to talk it over with my wife and
friends.

As to my reading; the most time I get for solid reading is when I am on
the cars. Newspapers are to me a constant source of delight and
recreation. The only trouble is that I read too many of them. Fiction I
care little for. Frequently I have to almost force myself to read a novel
that is on every one’s lips. The kind of reading that I have the greatest
fondness for is biography. I like to be sure that I am reading about a
real man or a real thing. I think I do not go too far when I say that I
have read nearly every book and magazine article that has been written
about Abraham Lincoln. In literature he is my patron saint.

Out of the twelve months in a year I suppose that, on an average, I spend
six months away from Tuskegee. While my being absent from the school so
much unquestionably has its disadvantages, yet there are at the same time
some compensations. The change of work brings a certain kind of rest. I
enjoy a ride of a long distance on the cars, when I am permitted to ride
where I can be comfortable. I get rest on the cars, except when the
inevitable individual who seems to be on every train approaches me with
the now familiar phrase: “Isn’t this Booker Washington? I want to
introduce myself to you.” Absence from the school enables me to lose sight
of the unimportant details of the work, and study it in a broader and more
comprehensive manner than I could do on the grounds. This absence also
brings me into contact with the best work being done in educational lines,
and into contact with the best educators in the land.

But, after all this is said, the time when I get the most solid rest and
recreation is when I can be at Tuskegee, and, after our evening meal is
over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife and Portia and Baker
and Davidson, my three children, and read a story, or each take turns in
telling a story. To me there is nothing on earth equal to that, although
what is nearly equal to it is to go with them for an hour or more, as we
like to do on Sunday afternoons, into the woods, where we can live for a
while near the heart of nature, where no one can disturb or vex us,
surrounded by pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers, and the
sweet fragrance that springs from a hundred plants, enjoying the chirp of
the crickets and the songs of the birds. This is solid rest.

My garden, also, what little time I can be at Tuskegee, is another source
of rest and enjoyment. Somehow I like, as often as possible, to touch
nature, not something that is artificial or an imitation, but the real
thing. When I can leave my office in time so that I can spend thirty or
forty minutes in spading the ground, in planting seeds, in digging about
the plants, I feel that I am coming into contact with something that is
giving me strength for the many duties and hard places that await me out
in the big world. I pity the man or woman who has never learned to enjoy
nature and to get strength and inspiration out of it.

Aside from the large number of fowls and animals kept by the school, I
keep individually a number of pigs and fowls of the best grades, and in
raising these I take a great deal of pleasure. I think the pig is my
favourite animal. Few things are more satisfactory to me than a high-grade
Berkshire or Poland China pig.

Games I care little for. I have never seen a game of football. In cards I
do not know one card from another. A game of old-fashioned marbles with my
two boys, once in a while, is all I care for in this direction. I suppose
I would care for games now if I had had any time in my youth to give to
them, but that was not possible.

Chapter XVI. Europe

In 1893 I was married to Miss Margaret James Murray, a native of
Mississippi, and a graduate of Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., who
had come to Tuskegee as a teacher several years before, and at the time we
were married was filling the position of Lady Principal. Not only is Mrs.
Washington completely one with me in the work directly connected with the
school, relieving me of many burdens and perplexities, but aside from her
work on the school grounds, she carries on a mothers’ meeting in the town
of Tuskegee, and a plantation work among the women, children, and men who
live in a settlement connected with a large plantation about eight miles
from Tuskegee. Both the mothers’ meeting and the plantation work are
carried on, not only with a view to helping those who are directly
reached, but also for the purpose of furnishing object-lessons in these
two kinds of work that may be followed by our students when they go out
into the world for their own life-work.

Aside from these two enterprises, Mrs. Washington is also largely
responsible for a woman’s club at the school which brings together, twice
a month, the women who live on the school grounds and those who live near,
for the discussion of some important topic. She is also the President of
what is known as the Federation of Southern Coloured Women’s Clubs, and is
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Federation of Coloured
Women’s Clubs.

Portia, the oldest of my three children, has learned dressmaking. She has
unusual ability in instrumental music. Aside from her studies at Tuskegee,
she has already begun to teach there.

Booker Taliaferro is my next oldest child. Young as he is, he has already
nearly mastered the brickmason’s trade. He began working at this trade
when he was quite small, dividing his time between this and class work;
and he has developed great skill in the trade and a fondness for it. He
says that he is going to be an architect and brickmason. One of the most
satisfactory letters that I have ever received from any one came to me
from Booker last summer. When I left home for the summer, I told him that
he must work at his trade half of each day, and that the other half of the
day he could spend as he pleased. When I had been away from home two
weeks, I received the following letter from him:

Tuskegee, Alabama.

My dear Papa: Before you left home you told me to work at my trade half of
each day. I like my work so much that I want to work at my trade all day.
Besides, I want to earn all the money I can, so that when I go to another
school I shall have money to pay my expenses.

Your son,

Booker.

My youngest child, Ernest Davidson Washington, says that he is going to be
a physician. In addition to going to school, where he studies books and
has manual training, he regularly spends a portion of his time in the
office of our resident physician, and has already learned to do many of
the duties which pertain to a doctor’s office.

The thing in my life which brings me the keenest regret is that my work in
connection with public affairs keeps me for so much of the time away from
my family, where, of all places in the world, I delight to be. I always
envy the individual whose life-work is so laid that he can spend his
evenings at home. I have sometimes thought that people who have this rare
privilege do not appreciate it as they should. It is such a rest and
relief to get away from crowds of people, and handshaking, and travelling,
to get home, even if it be for but a very brief while.

Another thing at Tuskegee out of which I get a great deal of pleasure and
satisfaction is in the meeting with our students, and teachers, and their
families, in the chapel for devotional exercises every evening at
half-past eight, the last thing before retiring for the night. It is an
inspiring sight when one stands on the platform there and sees before him
eleven or twelve hundred earnest young men and women; and one cannot but
feel that it is a privilege to help to guide them to a higher and more
useful life.

In the spring of 1899 there came to me what I might describe as almost the
greatest surprise of my life. Some good ladies in Boston arranged a public
meeting in the interests of Tuskegee, to be held in the Hollis Street
Theatre. This meeting was attended by large numbers of the best people of
Boston, of both races. Bishop Lawrence presided. In addition to an address
made by myself, Mr. Paul Lawrence Dunbar read from his poems, and Dr.
W.E.B. Du Bois read an original sketch.

Some of those who attended this meeting noticed that I seemed unusually
tired, and some little time after the close of the meeting, one of the
ladies who had been interested in it asked me in a casual way if I had
ever been to Europe. I replied that I never had. She asked me if I had
ever thought of going, and I told her no; that it was something entirely
beyond me. This conversation soon passed out of my mind, but a few days
afterward I was informed that some friends in Boston, including Mr.
Francis J. Garrison, had raised a sum of money sufficient to pay all the
expenses of Mrs. Washington and myself during a three or four months’ trip
to Europe. It was added with emphasis that we must go. A year
previous to this Mr. Garrison had attempted to get me to promise to go to
Europe for a summer’s rest, with the understanding that he would be
responsible for raising the money among his friends for the expenses of
the trip. At that time such a journey seemed so entirely foreign to
anything that I should ever be able to undertake that I did confess I did
not give the matter very serious attention; but later Mr. Garrison joined
his efforts to those of the ladies whom I have mentioned, and when their
plans were made known to me Mr. Garrison not only had the route mapped
out, but had, I believe, selected the steamer upon which we were to sail.

The whole thing was so sudden and so unexpected that I was completely
taken off my feet. I had been at work steadily for eighteen years in
connection with Tuskegee, and I had never thought of anything else but
ending my life in that way. Each day the school seemed to depend upon me
more largely for its daily expenses, and I told these Boston friends that,
while I thanked them sincerely for their thoughtfulness and generosity, I
could not go to Europe, for the reason that the school could not live
financially while I was absent. They then informed me that Mr. Henry L.
Higginson, and some other good friends who I know do not want their names
made public, were then raising a sum of money which would be sufficient to
keep the school in operation while I was away. At this point I was
compelled to surrender. Every avenue of escape had been closed.

Deep down in my heart the whole thing seemed more like a dream than like
reality, and for a long time it was difficult for me to make myself
believe that I was actually going to Europe. I had been born and largely
reared in the lowest depths of slavery, ignorance, and poverty. In my
childhood I had suffered for want of a place to sleep, for lack of food,
clothing, and shelter. I had not had the privilege of sitting down to a
dining-table until I was quite well grown. Luxuries had always seemed to
me to be something meant for white people, not for my race. I had always
regarded Europe, and London, and Paris, much as I regarded heaven. And now
could it be that I was actually going to Europe? Such thoughts as these
were constantly with me.

Two other thoughts troubled me a good deal. I feared that people who heard
that Mrs. Washington and I were going to Europe might not know all the
circumstances, and might get the idea that we had become, as some might
say, “stuck up,” and were trying to “show off.” I recalled that from my
youth I had heard it said that too often, when people of my race reached
any degree of success, they were inclined to unduly exalt themselves; to
try and ape the wealthy, and in so doing to lose their heads. The fear
that people might think this of us haunted me a good deal. Then, too, I
could not see how my conscience would permit me to spare the time from my
work and be happy. It seemed mean and selfish in me to be taking a
vacation while others were at work, and while there was so much that
needed to be done. From the time I could remember, I had always been at
work, and I did not see how I could spend three or four months in doing
nothing. The fact was that I did not know how to take a vacation.

Mrs. Washington had much the same difficulty in getting away, but she was
anxious to go because she thought that I needed the rest. There were many
important National questions bearing upon the life of the race which were
being agitated at that time, and this made it all the harder for us to
decide to go. We finally gave our Boston friends our promise that we would
go, and then they insisted that the date of our departure be set as soon
as possible. So we decided upon May 10. My good friend Mr. Garrison kindly
took charge of all the details necessary for the success of the trip, and
he, as well as other friends, gave us a great number of letters of
introduction to people in France and England, and made other arrangements
for our comfort and convenience abroad. Good-bys were said at Tuskegee,
and we were in New York May 9, ready to sail the next day. Our daughter
Portia, who was then studying in South Framingham, Mass., came to New York
to see us off. Mr. Scott, my secretary, came with me to New York, in order
that I might clear up the last bit of business before I left. Other
friends also came to New York to see us off. Just before we went on board
the steamer another pleasant surprise came to us in the form of a letter
from two generous ladies, stating that they had decided to give us the
money with which to erect a new building to be used in properly housing
all our industries for girls at Tuskegee.

We were to sail on the Friesland, of the Red Star Line, and a beautiful
vessel she was. We went on board just before noon, the hour of sailing. I
had never before been on board a large ocean steamer, and the feeling
which took possession of me when I found myself there is rather hard to
describe. It was a feeling, I think, of awe mingled with delight. We were
agreeably surprised to find that the captain, as well as several of the
other officers, not only knew who we were, but was expecting us and gave
us a pleasant greeting. There were several passengers whom we knew,
including Senator Sewell, of New Jersey, and Edward Marshall, the
newspaper correspondent. I had just a little fear that we would not be
treated civilly by some of the passengers. This fear was based upon what I
had heard other people of my race, who had crossed the ocean, say about
unpleasant experiences in crossing the ocean in American vessels. But in
our case, from the captain down to the most humble servant, we were
treated with the greatest kindness. Nor was this kindness confined to
those who were connected with the steamer; it was shown by all the
passengers also. There were not a few Southern men and women on board, and
they were as cordial as those from other parts of the country.

As soon as the last good-bys were said, and the steamer had cut loose from
the wharf, the load of care, anxiety, and responsibility which I had
carried for eighteen years began to lift itself from my shoulders at the
rate, it seemed to me, of a pound a minute. It was the first time in all
those years that I had felt, even in a measure, free from care; and my
feeling of relief it is hard to describe on paper. Added to this was the
delightful anticipation of being in Europe soon. It all seemed more like a
dream than like a reality.

Mr. Garrison had thoughtfully arranged to have us have one of the most
comfortable rooms on the ship. The second or third day out I began to
sleep, and I think that I slept at the rate of fifteen hours a day during
the remainder of the ten days’ passage. Then it was that I began to
understand how tired I really was. These long sleeps I kept up for a month
after we landed on the other side. It was such an unusual feeling to wake
up in the morning and realize that I had no engagements; did not have to
take a train at a certain hour; did not have an appointment to meet some
one, or to make an address, at a certain hour. How different all this was
from the experiences that I have been through when travelling, when I have
sometimes slept in three different beds in a single night!

When Sunday came, the captain invited me to conduct the religious
services, but, not being a minister, I declined. The passengers, however,
began making requests that I deliver an address to them in the
dining-saloon some time during the voyage, and this I consented to do.
Senator Sewell presided at this meeting. After ten days of delightful
weather, during which I was not seasick for a day, we landed at the
interesting old city of Antwerp, in Belgium.

The next day after we landed happened to be one of those numberless
holidays which the people of those countries are in the habit of
observing. It was a bright, beautiful day. Our room in the hotel faced the
main public square, and the sights there—the people coming in from
the country with all kinds of beautiful flowers to sell, the women coming
in with their dogs drawing large, brightly polished cans filled with milk,
the people streaming into the cathedral—filled me with a sense of
newness that I had never before experienced.

After spending some time in Antwerp, we were invited to go with a part of
a half-dozen persons on a trip through Holland. This party included Edward
Marshall and some American artists who had come over on the same steamer
with us. We accepted the invitation, and enjoyed the trip greatly. I think
it was all the more interesting and instructive because we went for most
of the way on one of the slow, old-fashioned canal-boats. This gave us an
opportunity of seeing and studying the real life of the people in the
country districts. We went in this way as far as Rotterdam, and later went
to The Hague, where the Peace Conference was then in session, and where we
were kindly received by the American representatives.

The thing that impressed itself most on me in Holland was the thoroughness
of the agriculture and the excellence of the Holstein cattle. I never
knew, before visiting Holland, how much it was possible for people to get
out of a small plot of ground. It seemed to me that absolutely no land was
wasted. It was worth a trip to Holland, too, just to get a sight of three
or four hundred fine Holstein cows grazing in one of those intensely green
fields.

From Holland we went to Belgium, and made a hasty trip through that
country, stopping at Brussels, where we visited the battlefield of
Waterloo. From Belgium we went direct to Paris, where we found that Mr.
Theodore Stanton, the son of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had kindly
provided accommodations for us. We had barely got settled in Paris before
an invitation came to me from the University Club of Paris to be its guest
at a banquet which was soon to be given. The other guests were
ex-President Benjamin Harrison and Archbishop Ireland, who were in Paris
at the time. The American Ambassador, General Horace Porter, presided at
the banquet. My address on this occasion seemed to give satisfaction to
those who heard it. General Harrison kindly devoted a large portion of his
remarks at dinner to myself and to the influence of the work at Tuskegee
on the American race question. After my address at this banquet other
invitations came to me, but I declined the most of them, knowing that if I
accepted them all, the object of my visit would be defeated. I did,
however, consent to deliver an address in the American chapel the
following Sunday morning, and at this meeting General Harrison, General
Porter, and other distinguished Americans were present.

Later we received a formal call from the American Ambassador, and were
invited to attend a reception at his residence. At this reception we met
many Americans, among them Justices Fuller and Harlan, of the United
States Supreme Court. During our entire stay of a month in Paris, both the
American Ambassador and his wife, as well as several other Americans, were
very kind to us.

While in Paris we saw a good deal of the now famous American Negro
painter, Mr. Henry O. Tanner, whom we had formerly known in America. It
was very satisfactory to find how well known Mr. Tanner was in the field
of art, and to note the high standing which all classes accorded to him.
When we told some Americans that we were going to the Luxembourg Palace to
see a painting by an American Negro, it was hard to convince them that a
Negro had been thus honoured. I do not believe that they were really
convinced of the fact until they saw the picture for themselves. My
acquaintance with Mr. Tanner reenforced in my mind the truth which I am
constantly trying to impress upon our students at Tuskegee—and on
our people throughout the country, as far as I can reach them with my
voice—that any man, regardless of colour, will be recognized and
rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well—learns
to do it better than some one else—however humble the thing may be.
As I have said, I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it
learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so
thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make
its services of indispensable value. This was the spirit that inspired me
in my first effort at Hampton, when I was given the opportunity to sweep
and dust that schoolroom. In a degree I felt that my whole future life
depended upon the thoroughness with which I cleaned that room, and I was
determined to do it so well that no one could find any fault with the job.
Few people ever stopped, I found, when looking at his pictures, to inquire
whether Mr. Tanner was a Negro painter, a French painter, or a German
painter. They simply knew that he was able to produce something which the
world wanted—a great painting—and the matter of his colour did
not enter into their minds. When a Negro girl learns to cook, to wash
dishes, to sew, or write a book, or a Negro boy learns to groom horses, or
to grow sweet potatoes, or to produce butter, or to build a house, or to
be able to practise medicine, as well or better than some one else, they
will be rewarded regardless of race or colour. In the long run, the world
is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or
previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants.

I think that the whole future of my race hinges on the question as to
whether or not it can make itself of such indispensable value that the
people in the town and the state where we reside will feel that our
presence is necessary to the happiness and well-being of the community. No
man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and
moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without
proper reward. This is a great human law which cannot be permanently
nullified.

The love of pleasure and excitement which seems in a large measure to
possess the French people impressed itself upon me. I think they are more
noted in this respect than is true of the people of my own race. In point
of morality and moral earnestness I do not believe that the French are
ahead of my own race in America. Severe competition and the great stress
of life have led them to learn to do things more thoroughly and to
exercise greater economy; but time, I think, will bring my race to the
same point. In the matter of truth and high honour I do not believe that
the average Frenchman is ahead of the American Negro; while so far as
mercy and kindness to dumb animals go, I believe that my race is far
ahead. In fact, when I left France, I had more faith in the future of the
black man in America than I had ever possessed.

From Paris we went to London, and reached there early in July, just about
the height of the London social season. Parliament was in session, and
there was a great deal of gaiety. Mr. Garrison and other friends had
provided us with a large number of letters of introduction, and they had
also sent letters to other persons in different parts of the United
Kingdom, apprising these people of our coming. Very soon after reaching
London we were flooded with invitations to attend all manner of social
functions, and a great many invitations came to me asking that I deliver
public addresses. The most of these invitations I declined, for the reason
that I wanted to rest. Neither were we able to accept more than a small
proportion of the other invitations. The Rev. Dr. Brooke Herford and Mrs.
Herford, whom I had known in Boston, consulted with the American
Ambassador, the Hon. Joseph Choate, and arranged for me to speak at a
public meeting to be held in Essex Hall. Mr. Choate kindly consented to
preside. The meeting was largely attended. There were many distinguished
persons present, among them several members of Parliament, including Mr.
James Bryce, who spoke at the meeting. What the American Ambassador said
in introducing me, as well as a synopsis of what I said, was widely
published in England and in the American papers at the time. Dr. and Mrs.
Herford gave Mrs. Washington and myself a reception, at which we had the
privilege of meeting some of the best people in England. Throughout our
stay in London Ambassador Choate was most kind and attentive to us. At the
Ambassador’s reception I met, for the first time, Mark Twain.

We were the guests several times of Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin, the daughter of
the English statesman, Richard Cobden. It seemed as if both Mr. and Mrs.
Unwin could not do enough for our comfort and happiness. Later, for nearly
a week, we were the guests of the daughter of John Bright, now Mrs. Clark,
of Street, England. Both Mr. and Mrs. Clark, with their daughter, visited
us at Tuskegee the next year. In Birmingham, England, we were the guests
for several days of Mr. Joseph Sturge, whose father was a great
abolitionist and friend of Whittier and Garrison. It was a great privilege
to meet throughout England those who had known and honoured the late
William Lloyd Garrison, the Hon. Frederick Douglass, and other
abolitionists. The English abolitionists with whom we came in contact
never seemed to tire of talking about these two Americans. Before going to
England I had had no proper conception of the deep interest displayed by
the abolitionists of England in the cause of freedom, nor did I realize
the amount of substantial help given by them.

In Bristol, England, both Mrs. Washington and I spoke at the Women’s
Liberal Club. I was also the principal speaker at the Commencement
exercises of the Royal College for the Blind. These exercises were held in
the Crystal Palace, and the presiding officer was the late Duke of
Westminster, who was said to be, I believe, the richest man in England, if
not in the world. The Duke, as well as his wife and their daughter, seemed
to be pleased with what I said, and thanked me heartily. Through the
kindness of Lady Aberdeen, my wife and I were enabled to go with a party
of those who were attending the International Congress of Women, then in
session in London, to see Queen Victoria, at Windsor Castle, where,
afterward, we were all the guests of her Majesty at tea. In our party was
Miss Susan B. Anthony, and I was deeply impressed with the fact that one
did not often get an opportunity to see, during the same hour, two women
so remarkable in different ways as Susan B. Anthony and Queen Victoria.

In the House of Commons, which we visited several times, we met Sir Henry
M. Stanley. I talked with him about Africa and its relation to the
American Negro, and after my interview with him I became more convinced
than ever that there was no hope of the American Negro’s improving his
condition by emigrating to Africa.

On various occasions Mrs. Washington and I were the guests of Englishmen
in their country homes, where, I think, one sees the Englishman at his
best. In one thing, at least, I feel sure that the English are ahead of
Americans, and that is, that they have learned how to get more out of
life. The home life of the English seems to me to be about as perfect as
anything can be. Everything moves like clockwork. I was impressed, too,
with the deference that the servants show to their “masters” and
“mistresses,”—terms which I suppose would not be tolerated in
America. The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a
servant, and so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class
of servants in America has yet reached. In our country the servant expects
to become, in a few years, a “master” himself. Which system is preferable?
I will not venture an answer.

Another thing that impressed itself upon me throughout England was the
high regard that all classes have for law and order, and the ease and
thoroughness with which everything is done. The Englishmen, I found, took
plenty of time for eating, as for everything else. I am not sure if, in
the long run, they do not accomplish as much or more than rushing, nervous
Americans do.

My visit to England gave me a higher regard for the nobility than I had
had. I had no idea that they were so generally loved and respected by the
classes, nor had I any correct conception of how much time and money they
spent in works of philanthropy, and how much real heart they put into this
work. My impression had been that they merely spent money freely and had a
“good time.”

It was hard for me to get accustomed to speaking to English audiences. The
average Englishman is so serious, and is so tremendously in earnest about
everything, that when I told a story that would have made an American
audience roar with laughter, the Englishmen simply looked me straight in
the face without even cracking a smile.

When the Englishman takes you into his heart and friendship, he binds you
there as with cords of steel, and I do not believe that there are many
other friendships that are so lasting or so satisfactory. Perhaps I can
illustrate this point in no better way than by relating the following
incident. Mrs. Washington and I were invited to attend a reception given
by the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, at Stafford House—said to be
the finest house in London; I may add that I believe the Duchess of
Sutherland is said to be the most beautiful woman in England. There must
have been at least three hundred persons at this reception. Twice during
the evening the Duchess sought us out for a conversation, and she asked me
to write her when we got home, and tell her more about the work at
Tuskegee. This I did. When Christmas came we were surprised and delighted
to receive her photograph with her autograph on it. The correspondence has
continued, and we now feel that in the Duchess of Sutherland we have one
of our warmest friends.

After three months in Europe we sailed from Southampton in the steamship
St. Louis. On this steamer there was a fine library that had been
presented to the ship by the citizens of St. Louis, Mo. In this library I
found a life of Frederick Douglass, which I began reading. I became
especially interested in Mr. Douglass’s description of the way he was
treated on shipboard during his first or second visit to England. In this
description he told how he was not permitted to enter the cabin, but had
to confine himself to the deck of the ship. A few minutes after I had
finished reading this description I was waited on by a committee of ladies
and gentlemen with the request that I deliver an address at a concert
which was to begin the following evening. And yet there are people who are
bold enough to say that race feeling in America is not growing less
intense! At this concert the Hon. Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., the present
governor of New York, presided. I was never given a more cordial hearing
anywhere. A large proportion of the passengers were Southern people. After
the concert some of the passengers proposed that a subscription be raised
to help the work at Tuskegee, and the money to support several
scholarships was the result.

While we were in Paris I was very pleasantly surprised to receive the
following invitation from the citizens of West Virginia and of the city
near which I had spent my boyhood days:—

Charleston, W. Va., May 16, 1899.

Professor Booker T. Washington, Paris, France:

Dear Sir: Many of the best citizens of West Virginia have united in
liberal expressions of admiration and praise of your worth and work, and
desire that on your return from Europe you should favour them with your
presence and with the inspiration of your words. We must sincerely indorse
this move, and on behalf of the citizens of Charleston extend to your our
most cordial invitation to have you come to us, that we may honour you who
have done so much by your life and work to honour us.

We are,

Very truly yours,

The Common Council of the City of Charleston,

By W. Herman Smith, Mayor.

This invitation from the City Council of Charleston was accompanied by the
following:—

Professor Booker T. Washington, Paris, France:

Dear Sir: We, the citizens of Charleston and West Virginia, desire to
express our pride in you and the splendid career that you have thus far
accomplished, and ask that we be permitted to show our pride and interest
in a substantial way.

Your recent visit to your old home in our midst awoke within us the
keenest regret that we were not permitted to hear you and render some
substantial aid to your work, before you left for Europe.

In view of the foregoing, we earnestly invite you to share the hospitality
of our city upon your return from Europe, and give us the opportunity to
hear you and put ourselves in touch with your work in a way that will be
most gratifying to yourself, and that we may receive the inspiration of
your words and presence.

An early reply to this invitation, with an indication of the time you may
reach our city, will greatly oblige,

Yours very respectfully,

The Charleston Daily Gazette, The Daily Mail-Tribune; G.W. Atkinson,
Governor; E.L. Boggs, Secretary to Governor; Wm. M.O. Dawson, Secretary of
State; L.M. La Follette, Auditor; J.R. Trotter, Superintendent of Schools;
E.W. Wilson, ex-Governor; W.A. MacCorkle, ex-Governor; John Q. Dickinson,
President Kanawha Valley Bank; L. Prichard, President Charleston National
Bank; Geo. S. Couch, President Kanawha National Bank; Ed. Reid, Cashier
Kanawha National Bank; Geo. S. Laidley, Superintended City Schools; L.E.
McWhorter, President Board of Education; Chas. K. Payne, wholesale
merchant; and many others.

This invitation, coming as it did from the City Council, the state
officers, and all the substantial citizens of both races of the community
where I had spent my boyhood, and from which I had gone a few years
before, unknown, in poverty and ignorance, in quest of an education, not
only surprised me, but almost unmanned me. I could not understand what I
had done to deserve it all.

I accepted the invitation, and at the appointed day was met at the railway
station at Charleston by a committee headed by ex-Governor W.A. MacCorkle,
and composed of men of both races. The public reception was held in the
Opera-House at Charleston. The Governor of the state, the Hon. George W.
Atkinson, presided, and an address of welcome was made by ex-Governor
MacCorkle. A prominent part in the reception was taken by the coloured
citizens. The Opera-House was filled with citizens of both races, and
among the white people were many for whom I had worked when I was a boy.
The next day Governor and Mrs. Atkinson gave me a public reception at the
State House, which was attended by all classes.

Not long after this the coloured people in Atlanta, Georgia, gave me a
reception at which the Governor of the state presided, and a similar
reception was given me in New Orleans, which was presided over by the
Mayor of the city. Invitations came from many other places which I was not
able to accept.

Chapter XVII. Last Words

Before going to Europe some events came into my life which were great
surprises to me. In fact, my whole life has largely been one of surprises.
I believe that any man’s life will be filled with constant, unexpected
encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best
each day of his life—that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly
as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living. I pity
the man, black or white, who has never experienced the joy and
satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist in making
some one else more useful and more happy.

Six months before he died, and nearly a year after he had been stricken
with paralysis, General Armstrong expressed a wish to visit Tuskegee again
before he passed away. Notwithstanding the fact that he had lost the use
of his limbs to such an extent that he was practically helpless, his wish
was gratified, and he was brought to Tuskegee. The owners of the Tuskegee
Railroad, white men living in the town, offered to run a special train,
without cost, out of the main station—Chehaw, five miles away—to
meet him. He arrived on the school grounds about nine o’clock in the
evening. Some one had suggested that we give the General a “pine-knot
torchlight reception.” This plan was carried out, and the moment that his
carriage entered the school grounds he began passing between two lines of
lighted and waving “fat pine” wood knots held by over a thousand students
and teachers. The whole thing was so novel and surprising that the General
was completely overcome with happiness. He remained a guest in my home for
nearly two months, and, although almost wholly without the use of voice or
limb, he spent nearly every hour in devising ways and means to help the
South. Time and time again he said to me, during this visit, that it was
not only the duty of the country to assist in elevating the Negro of the
South, but the poor white man as well. At the end of his visit I resolved
anew to devote myself more earnestly than ever to the cause which was so
near his heart. I said that if a man in his condition was willing to
think, work, and act, I should not be wanting in furthering in every
possible way the wish of his heart.

The death of General Armstrong, a few weeks later, gave me the privilege
of getting acquainted with one of the finest, most unselfish, and most
attractive men that I have ever come in contact with. I refer to the Rev.
Dr. Hollis B. Frissell, now the Principal of the Hampton Institute, and
General Armstrong’s successor. Under the clear, strong, and almost perfect
leadership of Dr. Frissell, Hampton has had a career of prosperity and
usefulness that is all that the General could have wished for. It seems to
be the constant effort of Dr. Frissell to hide his own great personality
behind that of General Armstrong—to make himself of “no reputation”
for the sake of the cause.

More than once I have been asked what was the greatest surprise that ever
came to me. I have little hesitation in answering that question. It was
the following letter, which came to me one Sunday morning when I was
sitting on the veranda of my home at Tuskegee, surrounded by my wife and
three children:—

Harvard University, Cambridge, May 28, 1896.

President Booker T. Washington,

My Dear Sir: Harvard University desired to confer on you at the
approaching Commencement an honorary degree; but it is our custom to
confer degrees only on gentlemen who are present. Our Commencement occurs
this year on June 24, and your presence would be desirable from about noon
till about five o’clock in the afternoon. Would it be possible for you to
be in Cambridge on that day?

Believe me, with great regard,

Very truly yours,

Charles W. Eliot.

This was a recognition that had never in the slightest manner entered into
my mind, and it was hard for me to realize that I was to be honoured by a
degree from the oldest and most renowned university in America. As I sat
upon my veranda, with this letter in my hand, tears came into my eyes. My
whole former life—my life as a slave on the plantation, my work in
the coal-mine, the times when I was without food and clothing, when I made
my bed under a sidewalk, my struggles for an education, the trying days I
had had at Tuskegee, days when I did not know where to turn for a dollar
to continue the work there, the ostracism and sometimes oppression of my
race,—all this passed before me and nearly overcame me.

I had never sought or cared for what the world calls fame. I have always
looked upon fame as something to be used in accomplishing good. I have
often said to my friends that if I can use whatever prominence may have
come to me as an instrument with which to do good, I am content to have
it. I care for it only as a means to be used for doing good, just as
wealth may be used. The more I come into contact with wealthy people, the
more I believe that they are growing in the direction of looking upon
their money simply as an instrument which God has placed in their hand for
doing good with. I never go to the office of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who
more than once has been generous to Tuskegee, without being reminded of
this. The close, careful, and minute investigation that he always makes in
order to be sure that every dollar that he gives will do the most good—an
investigation that is just as searching as if he were investing money in a
business enterprise—convinces me that the growth in this direction
is most encouraging.

At nine o’clock, on the morning of June 24, I met President Eliot, the
Board of Overseers of Harvard University, and the other guests, at the
designated place on the university grounds, for the purpose of being
escorted to Sanders Theatre, where the Commencement exercises were to be
held and degrees conferred. Among others invited to be present for the
purpose of receiving a degree at this time were General Nelson A. Miles,
Dr. Bell, the inventor of the Bell telephone, Bishop Vincent, and the Rev.
Minot J. Savage. We were placed in line immediately behind the President
and the Board of Overseers, and directly afterward the Governor of
Massachusetts, escorted by the Lancers, arrived and took his place in the
line of march by the side of President Eliot. In the line there were also
various other officers and professors, clad in cap and gown. In this order
we marched to Sanders Theatre, where, after the usual Commencement
exercises, came the conferring of the honorary degrees. This, it seems, is
always considered the most interesting feature at Harvard. It is not
known, until the individuals appear, upon whom the honorary degrees are to
be conferred, and those receiving these honours are cheered by the
students and others in proportion to their popularity. During the
conferring of the degrees excitement and enthusiasm are at the highest
pitch.

When my name was called, I rose, and President Eliot, in beautiful and
strong English, conferred upon me the degree of Master of Arts. After
these exercises were over, those who had received honorary degrees were
invited to lunch with the President. After the lunch we were formed in
line again, and were escorted by the Marshal of the day, who that year
happened to be Bishop William Lawrence, through the grounds, where, at
different points, those who had been honoured were called by name and
received the Harvard yell. This march ended at Memorial Hall, where the
alumni dinner was served. To see over a thousand strong men, representing
all that is best in State, Church, business, and education, with the glow
and enthusiasm of college loyalty and college pride,—which has, I
think, a peculiar Harvard flavour,—is a sight that does not easily
fade from memory.

Among the speakers after dinner were President Eliot, Governor Roger
Wolcott, General Miles, Dr. Minot J. Savage, the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge,
and myself. When I was called upon, I said, among other things:—

It would in some measure relieve my embarrassment if I could, even in a
slight degree, feel myself worthy of the great honour which you do me
to-day. Why you have called me from the Black Belt of the South, from
among my humble people, to share in the honours of this occasion, is not
for me to explain; and yet it may not be inappropriate for me to suggest
that it seems to me that one of the most vital questions that touch our
American life is how to bring the strong, wealthy, and learned into
helpful touch with the poorest, most ignorant, and humblest, and at the
same time make one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence of
the other. How shall we make the mansion on yon Beacon Street feel and see
the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama cotton-fields or
Louisiana sugar-bottoms? This problem Harvard University is solving, not
by bringing itself down, but by bringing the masses up.

If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people
and the bringing about of better relations between your race and mine, I
assure you from this day it will mean doubly more. In the economy of God
there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed—there
is but one for a race. This country demands that every race shall measure
itself by the American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed
or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little.
During the next half-century and more, my race must continue passing
through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience,
our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand
temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our ability to
compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the
real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned
and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all.

As this was the first time that a New England university had conferred an
honorary degree upon a Negro, it was the occasion of much newspaper
comment throughout the country. A correspondent of a New York paper said:—

When the name of Booker T. Washington was called, and he arose to
acknowledge and accept, there was such an outburst of applause as greeted
no other name except that of the popular soldier patriot, General Miles.
The applause was not studied and stiff, sympathetic and condoling; it was
enthusiasm and admiration. Every part of the audience from pit to gallery
joined in, and a glow covered the cheeks of those around me, proving
sincere appreciation of the rising struggle of an ex-slave and the work he
has accomplished for his race.

A Boston paper said, editorially:—

In conferring the honorary degree of Master of Arts upon the Principal of
Tuskegee Institute, Harvard University has honoured itself as well as the
object of this distinction. The work which Professor Booker T. Washington
has accomplished for the education, good citizenship, and popular
enlightenment in his chosen field of labour in the South entitles him to
rank with our national benefactors. The university which can claim him on
its list of sons, whether in regular course or honoris causa, may be
proud.

It has been mentioned that Mr. Washington is the first of his race to
receive an honorary degree from a New England university. This, in itself,
is a distinction. But the degree was not conferred because Mr. Washington
is a coloured man, or because he was born in slavery, but because he has
shown, by his work for the elevation of the people of the Black Belt of
the South, a genius and a broad humanity which count for greatness in any
man, whether his skin be white or black.

Another Boston paper said:—

It is Harvard which, first among New England colleges, confers an honorary
degree upon a black man. No one who has followed the history of Tuskegee
and its work can fail to admire the courage, persistence, and splendid
common sense of Booker T. Washington.
Well may Harvard honour the ex-slave, the value of whose services, alike
to his race and country, only the future can estimate.

The correspondent of the New York Times wrote:—

All the speeches were enthusiastically received, but the coloured man
carried off the oratorical honours, and the applause which broke out when
he had finished was vociferous and long-continued.

Soon after I began work at Tuskegee I formed a resolution, in the secret
of my heart, that I would try to build up a school that would be of so
much service to the country that the President of the United States would
one day come to see it. This was, I confess, rather a bold resolution, and
for a number of years I kept it hidden in my own thoughts, not daring to
share it with any one.

In November, 1897, I made the first move in this direction, and that was
in securing a visit from a member of President McKinley’s Cabinet, the
Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture. He came to deliver an address
at the formal opening of the Slater-Armstrong Agricultural Building, our
first large building to be used for the purpose of giving training to our
students in agriculture and kindred branches.

In the fall of 1898 I heard that President McKinley was likely to visit
Atlanta, Georgia, for the purpose of taking part in the Peace Jubilee
exercises to be held there to commemorate the successful close of the
Spanish-American war. At this time I had been hard at work, together with
our teachers, for eighteen years, trying to build up a school that we
thought would be of service to the Nation, and I determined to make a
direct effort to secure a visit from the President and his Cabinet. I went
to Washington, and I was not long in the city before I found my way to the
White House. When I got there I found the waiting rooms full of people,
and my heart began to sink, for I feared there would not be much chance of
my seeing the President that day, if at all. But, at any rate, I got an
opportunity to see Mr. J. Addison Porter, the secretary to the President,
and explained to him my mission. Mr. Porter kindly sent my card directly
to the President, and in a few minutes word came from Mr. McKinley that he
would see me.

How any man can see so many people of all kinds, with all kinds of
errands, and do so much hard work, and still keep himself calm, patient,
and fresh for each visitor in the way that President McKinley does, I
cannot understand. When I saw the President he kindly thanked me for the
work which we were doing at Tuskegee for the interests of the country. I
then told him, briefly, the object of my visit. I impressed upon him the
fact that a visit from the Chief Executive of the Nation would not only
encourage our students and teachers, but would help the entire race. He
seemed interested, but did not make a promise to go to Tuskegee, for the
reason that his plans about going to Atlanta were not then fully made; but
he asked me to call the matter to his attention a few weeks later.

By the middle of the following month the President had definitely decided
to attend the Peace Jubilee at Atlanta. I went to Washington again and saw
him, with a view of getting him to extend his trip to Tuskegee. On this
second visit Mr. Charles W. Hare, a prominent white citizen of Tuskegee,
kindly volunteered to accompany me, to reenforce my invitation with one
from the white people of Tuskegee and the vicinity.

Just previous to my going to Washington the second time, the country had
been excited, and the coloured people greatly depressed, because of
several severe race riots which had occurred at different points in the
South. As soon as I saw the President, I perceived that his heart was
greatly burdened by reason of these race disturbances. Although there were
many people waiting to see him, he detained me for some time, discussing
the condition and prospects of the race. He remarked several times that he
was determined to show his interest and faith in the race, not merely in
words, but by acts. When I told him that I thought that at that time
scarcely anything would go farther in giving hope and encouragement to the
race than the fact that the President of the Nation would be willing to
travel one hundred and forty miles out of his way to spend a day at a
Negro institution, he seemed deeply impressed.

While I was with the President, a white citizen of Atlanta, a Democrat and
an ex-slaveholder, came into the room, and the President asked his opinion
as to the wisdom of his going to Tuskegee. Without hesitation the Atlanta
man replied that it was the proper thing for him to do. This opinion was
reenforced by that friend of the race, Dr. J.L.M. Curry. The President
promised that he would visit our school on the 16th of December.

When it became known that the President was going to visit our school, the
white citizens of the town of Tuskegee—a mile distant from the
school—were as much pleased as were our students and teachers. The
white people of this town, including both men and women, began arranging
to decorate the town, and to form themselves into committees for the
purpose of cooperating with the officers of our school in order that the
distinguished visitor might have a fitting reception. I think I never
realized before this how much the white people of Tuskegee and vicinity
thought of our institution. During the days when we were preparing for the
President’s reception, dozens of these people came to me and said that,
while they did not want to push themselves into prominence, if there was
anything they could do to help, or to relieve me personally, I had but to
intimate it and they would be only too glad to assist. In fact, the thing
that touched me almost as deeply as the visit of the President itself was
the deep pride which all classes of citizens in Alabama seemed to take in
our work.

The morning of December 16th brought to the little city of Tuskegee such a
crowd as it had never seen before. With the President came Mrs. McKinley
and all of the Cabinet officers but one; and most of them brought their
wives or some members of their families. Several prominent generals came,
including General Shafter and General Joseph Wheeler, who were recently
returned from the Spanish-American war. There was also a host of newspaper
correspondents. The Alabama Legislature was in session in Montgomery at
this time. This body passed a resolution to adjourn for the purpose of
visiting Tuskegee. Just before the arrival of the President’s party the
Legislature arrived, headed by the governor and other state officials.

The citizens of Tuskegee had decorated the town from the station to the
school in a generous manner. In order to economize in the matter of time,
we arranged to have the whole school pass in review before the President.
Each student carried a stalk of sugar-cane with some open bolls of cotton
fastened to the end of it. Following the students the work of all
departments of the school passed in review, displayed on “floats” drawn by
horses, mules, and oxen. On these floats we tried to exhibit not only the
present work of the school, but to show the contrasts between the old
methods of doing things and the new. As an example, we showed the old
method of dairying in contrast with the improved methods, the old methods
of tilling the soil in contrast with the new, the old methods of cooking
and housekeeping in contrast with the new. These floats consumed an hour
and a half of time in passing.

In his address in our large, new chapel, which the students had recently
completed, the President said, among other things:—

To meet you under such pleasant auspices and to have the opportunity of a
personal observation of your work is indeed most gratifying. The Tuskegee
Normal and Industrial Institute is ideal in its conception, and has
already a large and growing reputation in the country, and is not unknown
abroad. I congratulate all who are associated in this undertaking for the
good work which it is doing in the education of its students to lead lives
of honour and usefulness, thus exalting the race for which it was
established.

Nowhere, I think, could a more delightful location have been chosen for
this unique educational experiment, which has attracted the attention and
won the support even of conservative philanthropists in all sections of
the country.

To speak of Tuskegee without paying special tribute to Booker T.
Washington’s genius and perseverance would be impossible. The inception of
this noble enterprise was his, and he deserves high credit for it. His was
the enthusiasm and enterprise which made its steady progress possible and
established in the institution 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.

The Hon. John D. Long, the Secretary of the Navy, said in part:—

I cannot make a speech to-day. My heart is too full—full of hope,
admiration, and pride for my countrymen of both sections and both colours.
I am filled with gratitude and admiration for your work, and from this
time forward I shall have absolute confidence in your progress and in the
solution of the problem in which you are engaged.

The problem, I say, has been solved. A picture has been presented to-day
which should be put upon canvas with the pictures of Washington and
Lincoln, and transmitted to future time and generations—a picture
which the press of the country should spread broadcast over the land, a
most dramatic picture, and that picture is this: The President of the
United States standing on this platform; on one side the Governor of
Alabama, on the other, completing the trinity, a representative of a race
only a few years ago in bondage, the coloured President of the Tuskegee
Normal and Industrial Institute.

God bless the President under whose majesty such a scene as that is
presented to the American people. God bless the state of Alabama, which is
showing that it can deal with this problem for itself. God bless the
orator, philanthropist, and disciple of the Great Master—who, if he
were on earth, would be doing the same work—Booker T. Washington.

Postmaster General Smith closed the address which he made with these
words:—

We have witnessed many spectacles within the last few days. We have seen
the magnificent grandeur and the magnificent achievements of one of the
great metropolitan cities of the South. We have seen heroes of the war
pass by in procession. We have seen floral parades. But I am sure my
colleagues will agree with me in saying that we have witnessed no
spectacle more impressive and more encouraging, more inspiring for our
future, than that which we have witnessed here this morning.

Some days after the President returned to Washington I received the letter
which follows:—

Executive Mansion, Washington, Dec. 23, 1899.

Dear Sir: By this mail I take pleasure in sending you engrossed copies of
the souvenir of the visit of the President to your institution. These
sheets bear the autographs of the President and the members of the Cabinet
who accompanied him on the trip. Let me take this opportunity of
congratulating you most heartily and sincerely upon the great success of
the exercises provided for and entertainment furnished us under your
auspices during our visit to Tuskegee. Every feature of the programme was
perfectly executed and was viewed or participated in with the heartiest
satisfaction by every visitor present. The unique exhibition which you
gave of your pupils engaged in their industrial vocations was not only
artistic but thoroughly impressive. The tribute paid by the President and
his Cabinet to your work was none too high, and forms a most encouraging
augury, I think, for the future prosperity of your institution. I cannot
close without assuring you that the modesty shown by yourself in the
exercises was most favourably commented upon by all the members of our
party.

With best wishes for the continued advance of your most useful and
patriotic undertaking, kind personal regards, and the compliments of the
season, believe me, always,

Very sincerely yours,

John Addison Porter,

Secretary to the President.

To President Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.

Twenty years have now passed since I made the first humble effort at
Tuskegee, in a broken-down shanty and an old hen-house, without owning a
dollar’s worth of property, and with but one teacher and thirty students.
At the present time the institution owns twenty-three hundred acres of
land, one thousand of which are under cultivation each year, entirely by
student labour. There are now upon the grounds, counting large and small,
sixty-six buildings; and all except four of these have been almost wholly
erected by the labour of our students. While the students are at work upon
the land and in erecting buildings, they are taught, by competent
instructors, the latest methods of agriculture and the trades connected
with building.

There are in constant operation at the school, in connection with thorough
academic and religious training, thirty industrial departments. All of
these teach industries at which our men and women can find immediate
employment as soon as they leave the institution. The only difficulty now
is that the demand for our graduates from both white and black people in
the South is so great that we cannot supply more than one-half the persons
for whom applications come to us. Neither have we the buildings nor the
money for current expenses to enable us to admit to the school more than
one-half the young men and women who apply to us for admission.

In our industrial teaching we keep three things in mind: first, that the
student shall be so educated that he shall be enabled to meet conditions
as they exist now, in the part of the South where he lives—in a
word, to be able to do the thing which the world wants done; second, that
every student who graduates from the school shall have enough skill,
coupled with intelligence and moral character, to enable him to make a
living for himself and others; third, to send every graduate out feeling
and knowing that labour is dignified and beautiful—to make each one
love labour instead of trying to escape it. In addition to the
agricultural training which we give to young men, and the training given
to our girls in all the usual domestic employments, we now train a number
of girls in agriculture each year. These girls are taught gardening,
fruit-growing, dairying, bee-culture, and poultry-raising.

While the institution is in no sense denominational, we have a department
known as the Phelps Hall Bible Training School, in which a number of
students are prepared for the ministry and other forms of Christian work,
especially work in the country districts. What is equally important, each
one of the students works half of each day at some industry, in order to
get skill and the love of work, so that when he goes out from the
institution he is prepared to set the people with whom he goes to labour a
proper example in the matter of industry.

The value of our property is now over $700,000. If we add to this our
endowment fund, which at present is $1,000,000, the value of the total
property is now $1,700,000. Aside from the need for more buildings and for
money for current expenses, the endowment fund should be increased to at
least $3,000,000. The annual current expenses are now about $150,000. The
greater part of this I collect each year by going from door to door and
from house to house. All of our property is free from mortgage, and is
deeded to an undenominational board of trustees who have the control of
the institution.

From thirty students the number has grown to fourteen hundred, coming from
twenty-seven states and territories, from Africa, Cuba, Porto Rico,
Jamaica, and other foreign countries. In our departments there are one
hundred and ten officers and instructors; and if we add the families of
our instructors, we have a constant population upon our grounds of not far
from seventeen hundred people.

I have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together,
and at the same time keep them out of mischief. There are two answers:
that the men and women who come to us for an education are in earnest; and
that everybody is kept busy. The following outline of our daily work will
testify to this:—

5 a.m., rising bell; 5.50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6 a.m., breakfast
bell; 6.20 a.m., breakfast over; 6.20 to 6.50 a.m., rooms are cleaned;
6.50, work bell; 7.30, morning study hours; 8.20, morning school bell;
8.25, inspection of young men’s toilet in ranks; 8.40, devotional
exercises in chapel; 8.55, “five minutes with the daily news;” 9 a.m.,
class work begins; 12, class work closes; 12.15 p.m., dinner; 1 p.m., work
bell; 1.30 p.m., class work begins; 3.30 p.m., class work ends; 5.30 p.m.,
bell to “knock off” work; 6 p.m., supper; 7.10 p.m., evening prayers; 7.30
p.m., evening study hours; 8.45 p.m., evening study hour closes; 9.20
p.m., warning retiring bell; 9.30 p.m., retiring bell.

We try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school is
to be judged by its graduates. Counting those who have finished the full
course, together with those who have taken enough training to enable them
to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least six thousand
men and women from Tuskegee are now at work in different parts of the
South; men and women who, by their own example or by direct efforts, are
showing the masses of our race now to improve their material, educational,
and moral and religious life. What is equally important, they are
exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control which is causing
better relations to exist between the races, and is causing the Southern
white man to learn to believe in the value of educating the men and women
of my race. Aside from this, there is the influence that is constantly
being exerted through the mothers’ meeting and the plantation work
conducted by Mrs. Washington.

Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the
buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in high
moral characters are remarkable. Whole communities are fast being
revolutionized through the instrumentality of these men and women.

Ten years ago I organized at Tuskegee the first Negro Conference. This is
an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight or nine hundred
representative men and women of the race, who come to spend a day in
finding out what the actual industrial, mental, and moral conditions of
the people are, and in forming plans for improvement. Out from this
central Negro Conference at Tuskegee have grown numerous state and local
conferences which are doing the same kind of work. As a result of the
influence of these gatherings, one delegate reported at the last annual
meeting that ten families in his community had bought and paid for homes.
On the day following the annual Negro Conference, there is the “Workers’
Conference.” This is composed of officers and teachers who are engaged in
educational work in the larger institutions in the South. The Negro
Conference furnishes a rare opportunity for these workers to study the
real condition of the rank and file of the people.

In the summer of 1900, with the assistance of such prominent coloured men
as Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, who has always upheld my hands in every effort,
I organized the National Negro Business League, which held its first
meeting in Boston, and brought together for the first time a large number
of the coloured men who are engaged in various lines of trade or business
in different parts of the United States. Thirty states were represented at
our first meeting. Out of this national meeting grew state and local
business leagues.

In addition to looking after the executive side of the work at Tuskegee,
and raising the greater part of the money for the support of the school, I
cannot seem to escape the duty of answering at least a part of the calls
which come to me unsought to address Southern white audiences and
audiences of my own race, as well as frequent gatherings in the North. As
to how much of my time is spent in this way, the following clipping from a
Buffalo (N.Y.) paper will tell. This has reference to an occasion when I
spoke before the National Educational Association in that city.

Booker T. Washington, the foremost educator among the coloured people of
the world, was a very busy man from the time he arrived in the city the
other night from the West and registered at the Iroquois. He had hardly
removed the stains of travel when it was time to partake of supper. Then
he held a public levee in the parlours of the Iroquois until eight
o’clock. During that time he was greeted by over two hundred eminent
teachers and educators from all parts of the United States. Shortly after
eight o’clock he was driven in a carriage to Music Hall, and in one hour
and a half he made two ringing addresses, to as many as five thousand
people, on Negro education. Then Mr. Washington was taken in charge by a
delegation of coloured citizens, headed by the Rev. Mr. Watkins, and
hustled off to a small informal reception, arranged in honour of the
visitor by the people of his race.

Nor can I, in addition to making these addresses, escape the duty of
calling the attention of the South and of the country in general, through
the medium of the press, to matters that pertain to the interests of both
races. This, for example, I have done in regard to the evil habit of
lynching. When the Louisiana State Constitutional Convention was in
session, I wrote an open letter to that body pleading for justice for the
race. In all such efforts I have received warm and hearty support from the
Southern newspapers, as well as from those in all other parts of the
country.

Despite superficial and temporary signs which might lead one to entertain
a contrary opinion, there was never a time when I felt more hopeful for
the race than I do at the present. The great human law that in the end
recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal. The outside
world does not know, neither can it appreciate, the struggle that is
constantly going on in the hearts of both the Southern white people and
their former slaves to free themselves from racial prejudice; and while
both races are thus struggling they should have the sympathy, the support,
and the forbearance of the rest of the world.

As I write the closing words of this autobiography I find myself—not
by design—in the city of Richmond, Virginia: the city which only a
few decades ago was the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and where,
about twenty-five years ago, because of my poverty I slept night after
night under a sidewalk.

This time I am in Richmond as the guest of the coloured people of the
city; and came at their request to deliver an address last night to both
races in the Academy of Music, the largest and finest audience room in the
city. This was the first time that the coloured people had ever been
permitted to use this hall. The day before I came, the City Council passed
a vote to attend the meeting in a body to hear me speak. The state
Legislature, including the House of Delegates and the Senate, also passed
a unanimous vote to attend in a body. In the presence of hundreds of
coloured people, many distinguished white citizens, the City Council, the
state Legislature, and state officials, I delivered my message, which was
one of hope and cheer; and from the bottom of my heart I thanked both
races for this welcome back to the state that gave me birth.