 CHAPTER VIII. 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 worthwhile for me to try. Of one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending this month and seeing the actual life of the colored 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 in church which had been secured for its accommodation. The white people, as well as the colored, 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 disfavor upon the project. They questioned its value to the colored 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 eyeglasses, 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 colored 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-slave holder, Mr. George W. Campbell. The other is a black man and an ex-slave, Mr. Louis 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 a 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-slave holder, 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 today into any southern town and asks for the leading and most reliable colored 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 anyone in the neighborhood 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. Everyone 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, Tennessee, 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 Davidson'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 Hemingway of Boston was attracted to her rare ability. Through Mrs. Hemingway'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, someone suggested to Miss Davidson that, since she was so very light in color, she might find it more comfortable not to be known as a colored woman in this school in Massachusetts. She at once replied that under no circumstances and for no considerations would she consent to deceive anyone 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 equaled. No single individual did more toward laying the foundations of the Tuskegee Institute so as to ensure 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 development of 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 85% of the colored 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 colored 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 traveled 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 colored 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, Oh Lord, the cotton them so grassy to work them so hard and the sun them so hot that I believe this docum 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 was standing upon it a cabin formerly used as a dining room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old henhouse. 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 henhouse was utilized for the same purpose. I recall that one morning when I told an old colored 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 henhouse 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 surely ain't going to clean out the henhouse in today 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 have been school teachers and they question 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 20 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 canvas among the white and colored 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 colored 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 canvas 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 colored 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 colored woman 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. Washington, God knows I spent the best days of my life in slavery. God knows I is ignorant and poor but, she added, I know what you and Miss Davidson is trying to do. I know you is trying to make better men and better women for the colored race. I ain't got no money but I want you to take these six eggs what I've been saving up and I want you to put these six eggs into education of these boys and 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. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Up From Slavery This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jay Vance Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Chapter 9 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 four-day visits of scores of children wrapping at our doors asking for Christmas gifts, Christmas 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 today. During the days of slavery it was a custom quite generally observed throughout all the southern states to give the colored people a week of holiday at Christmas or to allow the holiday to continue as long as the eulog 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 colored people in and around Tuskegee dropped work the day before Christmas and that it was difficult for anyone 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 side 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 noticed 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 only had 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 colored 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 plantations. 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 colored 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 labor and that therefore it was not a good thing that God had cursed all labor 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 colored woman who was about 75 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 favorable. 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 neighbor whether he be a black man or a white man. I have also advised them where no principal 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 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 what we were looking for had been gotten from the white and colored 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 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 of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able to remain in school during the nine month 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 200 horses, colts, mules, cows, calves and oxen 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 the building that was estimated to cost about $6000. 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 of a 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 to erect the lumber on the grounds. After we had secured some portion of the money we permitted him to do this. Ms. Davison again began the work of securing in various ways small contributions for the new building from the white and colored people in and near Tuskegee. I think I never saw a community of people so happy over anything as were the colored people over the prospect of this new building. One day when we were holding a meeting to secure funds for its erection an old antebellum colored man came a distance of 12 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. After the 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 Ms. Davison 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 Ms. Davison 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 Ms. Davison was handed a check for fifty dollars for some time before our marriage and also after it Ms. Davison kept up the work of securing money in the north and in the south by interesting people by personal visits and through correspondence with 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 and going from door to door she could not undress herself a lady upon whom she called in Boston afterward told me that at one time when Ms. Davison called her to see and send up her card the lady was detained a little before she could see Ms. Davison and when she entered the parlor she found Ms. Davison 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, New York had come 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 $400 on the morning of that day we did not have a dollar the mail arrived at the school at 10 o'clock and in this mail there was a check sent by Ms. Davison for exactly $400 I could relate many instances of almost the same character this $400 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 $6000 words cannot describe our surprise or the encouragement that the gift brought to us perhaps I might add here that for 14 years these same friends have sent us $6000 a year as soon as the plans were drawn for the new building the students begin 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 favor 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 cornerstone when it is considered that the laying of this cornerstone took place in the heart of the south in the black belt in the center of that part of our country that was most devoted to slavery that at that time slavery had been abolished only about 16 years that only 16 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 honorable Wadi Thompson the superintendent of education for the county about the cornerstone 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 exercised the privilege of placing under the cornerstone 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 labored 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 to the demand 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 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 years work of the school I was married to Miss Fanny N. Smith of Maldon, West Virginia 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 interest 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 end of chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Kenneth Moore Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Chapter 10 a harder task than making bricks without straw from the very beginning at Tuskegee I was deterred 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 labor 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 labor but beauty and dignity so that they would be able to move 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 labor at first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings erect 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 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 and finally 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 in the 18 years existence of the Tuskegee School the plan of having the buildings erected by student labor has been adhered to in this time 40 buildings counting small and large have been built and all except for are almost wholly the product of student labor as an additional result hundreds of men are now scattered throughout the south who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught that their 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 students and instructors 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 by lead pencil marks or by the cuts of a jackknife I have heard an old student remind him don't do that that is our building I helped to put it up in the early days of the school I think my most trying experience was in the matter of brick making as soon as we got the farm work reasonably well started we directed our next efforts toward the industry 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 demand for bricks in the general market I had always sympathized with the children of Israel and their task of making bricks without straw but ours was the task of making bricks with no money and no experience the work was hard and dirty and it was difficult to get the students to help when it came to brick making their distaste for manual labor 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 play I had always supposed that brick making 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 molded about 25,000 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 it 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 were abandoned 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 brick making experiment I returned to Tuskegee 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 brick making has now become such an important industry at the school twelve hundred thousand of first class bricks of a quality stable to be sold in any market aside from this scores of young men have mastered the brick making 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 and in 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 neighborhood 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 as the people of the neighborhood 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 throughout the south wherever one of our brick makers 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 something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit no matter under what color 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 site of a first class house that a negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion that 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 so that 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 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 kill 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 must learn some industry quite a number of letters came from parents protesting against their children engaging in labor while they were in school other parents came to the school to protest in person most of the new students brought a written or 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 of 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 not withstanding 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 150 representing almost all parts of the state of Alabama and including a few from other states in the summer of 1882 Ms. Davidson and I both went north and engaged in the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building I went 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 traveling expenses advice and proceeded on with my journey the first place I went to in the north was Northampton, Massachusetts where I spent nearly a half day in looking for a colored 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 becoming accommodated at a hotel we were successful many 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 someone to preach the Thanksgiving sermon I found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know this was the Reverend Robert C. Bedford a white man from Wisconsin a colored congregational church in Montgomery, Alabama before going to Montgomery to look for someone 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 colored people there had ever observed and what a deep interested they manifested in it 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 18 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 and 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 have ever met a little later there came into the service of the school another man white young at the time without whose service the school never would have become what it is this was Mr. Warren Logan who now for 17 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 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 the boarding department students had become coming from quite a distance and in such increasing numbers 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 anyone 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 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 lots and skillets placed over a fire some of the carpenter's 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 worthwhile 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 to take the place at 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 that I was there where I could hear her we can't even get water to drink at the school I think no one remark ever came so near to 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 there was a 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 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'd 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 oneself 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 spaces 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 11 of Up From Slavery This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Chapter 11 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 who had had faith enough to lend us the first $250 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 At the time of the visits of these Hampton friends the number of teachers at Tuskegee had increased considerably and 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 They colored people from miles around came to the school to get a look at General Armstrong who was 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 men rather cherished a feeling of bitterness toward the white south and was interested in helping only the colored 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 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 color 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 men 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 has 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 Negro's ballot is not wholly the wrong done to the Negro but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white men 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 to break the force of the black man's ballot he soon learns to practice dishonesty and 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 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 charged the students $8 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 $50 a year for each student we had to secure then as now, wherever we could This small charging 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 colored people would not obey and respect each other They were always placed in a position of authority over others In regard to this general belief in these statements I can say that during the 19 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 on their 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 a special degree are privileged 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 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 who 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 the carriage 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 condrive 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 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 had a different role for 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 advisor and not as their overseer It has been my aim to have them speak with directness to the life of the school Two or three times a year I asked the students to write me a letter criticizing 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 the future These meetings, it seems to me are all the concerns of 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 our labor 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 the employees of consulting and advising them and letting them feel that the interest of the two 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 or some kind of 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 carpenter's 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 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 forest nearby I'm 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 by the businesses that now come out of the mattress shop at Tuskegee or 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 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 for dirt Another thing that has been insisted upon at the school is the use of the toothbrush The gospel of the toothbrush 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 toothbrush Several times in recent years students have come to us who brought with them almost no other article except a toothbrush They had heard from the lips and so to make a good impression they brought at least a toothbrush 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 toothbrushes one of the girls replied pointing to a brush Yes sir, this is our brush we bought it together yesterday It did not take them long to learn It has been interesting to note the effect that the use of the toothbrush 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 toothbrush 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 as regularly as they 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 to see 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 the button is found to be missing End of Chapter 11 Making their beds before they could lie on them Recording by Bill Gray Chapter 12 of Up From Slavery This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Carol Newkirk Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Chapter 12 Chapter 12 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 $10,000 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 honor of the state in which we were laboring Again Miss Davidson began making efforts to enlist the interest and help of the colored 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 traveling 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 quartet 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 center 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 At these meetings General Armstrong pleased together with myself for help not for Hampton but for Tuskegee At these meetings and a special 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 15 years I had 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 The 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 reached 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 of losing 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 patients 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 I 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 20 calls a day for help but 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 which 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 in 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 quote begging I often tell people that I have never quote begged any money and that I am not a quote 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 does have 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 She 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 un-gentlemanly 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 an opportunity to ask 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 to 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 honor is being conferred upon them and they are being permitted to give Nowhere else have I met with a rich and Christ-like 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 and opportunity for help In the early years of the Tuskegee School I walked the streets all the way north for days and days without receiving a dollar Often as it happened when during the week I had been disappointed and 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 someone 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 this country from Stamford, Connecticut 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 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 Inclosed I send you a New York draft for ten thousand dollars to be used in furtherance of your work I had placed the sum in my will in 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 when the institution had been officers by white persons and had failed it would have injured the cause of Negro education but I knew that the failure of our institution officers 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 would not only mean the loss of a school but would also mean the loss of a community and the loss of a community and the loss of a community 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 the school will always be supported in proportion as the inside of the institution but a few months before he died he gave me $50,000 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 us this gift of $50,000 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 $2 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 to what Mr. Huntington 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 found myself in Providence, Rhode Island 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 25 cent piece in the middle of the street track I not only had this 25 cents for my breakfast but within a few minutes I started to call at one of our commencements I was bold enough to invite the Reverend 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 arbor 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 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 they had decided to give us the money for such a chapel as we needed a short time ago we received $20,000 from Mr. Andrew Carnegie 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 and a letter reading as follows December 15, 1900 Mr. Andrew Carnegie 5 West 51st Street, 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 about 200 students 86 officers and instructors together with their families and about 200 colored 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 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 brick making brick masonry, carpentry, black smithing 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 to 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 principle the next mail brought back the following reply I will be very glad to pay the bills for the library building that they are incurred to the extent of $20,000 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 patients and deep interest of the ministers for the hours of the day for help if no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life the Christ-like work which the church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 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 endeavor societies 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 25 cents up to $10 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 the state legislature of Alabama increased its annual appropriation from $2,000 to $3,000 I might add that still later it increased the sum to $4,500 a year the effort to secure this increase was led by the honorable M.F. Foster the member of the legislature from Tuskegee second we received $1,000 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 $11,000 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 $500 but it has since been increased to $1,500 the effort to secure help from the Slater and Peabody Fund has been adding to 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 honorable 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 than Dr. Curry or one who is more free from race prejudice he enjoys the unique distinction of possessing to an equal degree of confidence of the black man and the southern white man I shall never forget the first time I met him it was in Richmond, Virginia 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 and 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 of 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 has been placed on its present footing End of Chapter 12 Kirk