Booker T. Washington

Foundation for the Madison Philosophy of Education

Two M. BESSIE DEGRAW articles on Booker T. Washington

Written for the August 17 and

24, 1909 editions of The Youth’s Instructor

No. 1

(Most of the quote are from his autobiography Up From Slavery)

THERE are some persons with whom every young man and woman ought to be acquainted, and Dr. Booker T. Washington is one of them. Not only should each of you learn about this man, but there are many things for you to learn from him.

As Paul was known as the apostle to the Gentiles, and as John Eliot became the apostle to the Indians, so Booker Washington is the apostle of industrial education to the negro race. He is best known as principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, located at Tuskegee, Alabama, in what is called the Black Belt, some forty miles from the city of Montgomery.

Emerson once said that an institution is but the lengthened shadow of some great man. It has been thought by some that a negro could not cast such a shadow, but if one wants to know the real Booker Washington, let him visit the school that he has built up, and which reflects in every part the thought of its founder and principal. But Tuskegee did not grow up overnight. It is the outgrowth of a life which one can not but feel has been guided by the hand of God.

Humble Origin

About the year 1857, in a little log cabin on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia, a black slave woman gave birth to a son. Booker Washington says : " I was born in a typical log cabin about fourteen by sixteen feet square. . . . The cabin was not only our living place, but was also used as a kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. Of my father I know even less than my mother. I do not even know his name."

The cabin was without glass windows ; it had only openings in the side, which let in the light and also the cold. There was a door to the cabin,— that is, something that was called a door,— but the uncertain hinges by which it swung, and the large cracks in it, made the room a very uncomfortable one. I can not remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free. Three children — John, my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself — slept in or on a mass of filthy rags laid upon the earth floor."

During the period I spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service. Still I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yard, carrying water to the men in the field, or going to the mill to which I used to take corn once a week to be ground."

“I can not remember a single instance in my boyhood when our family sat down to the table together, and God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner. Meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a piece of bread here, and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at one time, and some potatoes at another.

"The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch thick, were of wood.

"Until I had grown to be quite a youth, a single garment made of rough flax was all I wore. Even to this day I can recall accurately the torture that I underwent in putting on these garments for the first time."

His Education

" I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave," writes Booker Washington, but when he caught a glimpse of the white boys and girls in the schoolroom, he says, " I had the feeling that to get into the schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise."

When freedom was proclaimed, Booker Washington's mother and stepfather moved to the salt mines near Malden, West Virginia, and Booker was put to work at a furnace. He wanted to learn to read. His mother procured for him a copy of Webster's blueback speller, and from this, the first book he had ever owned, he learned the alphabet. Freedom brought to all the negroes a strong desire to learn to read. A man capable of teaching came from Ohio to Malden, and a school was opened. Washington says: " Few were too young and none were too old to make an attempt to learn. As fast as any kind of teachers could be procured, not only were day-schools filled, but night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view, men and women fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found in night-school."

But as Booker was capable of earning money, his stepfather refused to let him attend the day-school. This keen disappointment led him to make arrangements with the teacher for instruction at night. " These lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more at night than the other children did during the day. My own experience in the night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which, in after years, I had to do both at Hampton and at Tuskegee. . . . Often I would have to walk several miles to recite my night-school lessons. There was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me, and that was to secure an education at any cost."

Going to Hampton Institute

While working in a coal-mine, Booker heard some men talking of a school in which boys could earn their way while learning a trade. He resolved to go there. The distance was five hundred miles, and he had neither money nor clothes. He worked a year and a half for a Mrs. Ruffner, at five dollars a month, and the value of her instruction in order and neatness was worth more than the money. Of this experience he says: " Even to this day I never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street without wishing to pick them up. I never see a filthy yard without wishing to clean it, a paling off a fence without wishing to put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house without wishing to paint or whitewash it, or a button off one's clothes, or a grease-spot on them, without wishing to call attention to it."

When he started for Hampton, his money took him as far as Richmond. Here he slept several nights under the sidewalk, and by day helped unload a ship to get food and money to resume his journey. Finally he reached Hampton and applied for admission, and after waiting several hours for a decision, he was told to sweep one of the recitation rooms.

" It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive an order with more delight. I swept the recitation room three times. Then I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, I went over four times. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved, and every closet and corner of the room had been thoroughly swept. I had a feeling that in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room."

The teacher inspected the room, wiped the furniture with her handkerchief, and told the young man that he might register me as a student of Hampton Institute.

Booker Washington was given the position of janitor, and by working early and late he paid his board at the school. His tuition of seventy dollars a year was a gift from a Massachusetts man, while much of his clothing came out of barrels sent from the North.

General Armstrong, founder and principal of Hampton Institute, commanded the most profound respect of all his students. Mr. Washington says : " My anxiety about my clothing was increased because of the fact that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished, there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots."

Dr. Frissell, the present principal of Hampton Institute and successor of General Armstrong, emphasizes the value to a student of working his way through school, and speaks especially of Hampton Institute's plan to teach students to be self-governing. He says: On account of the lack of a feeling of personal responsibility on the part of the negro, there is an imperative need of the right kind of leaders among them. In order to develop this capacity for leadership they must gain the power of self-government, and learn how to control others during their school life. The more a student can be made to feel a sense of responsibility for.the good conduct of the institution, the better. Self-government and self-support ought to be prominent features in every colored normal. Nothing should be given that the student can earn. The power of initiation that belongs to Mr. Booker Washington could only have come through a training which placed heavy responsibility on the individual. Not only did he work his own way through school, but during his school life he had much to do with the government and instruction of his fellow students. He was trained in an institution that was a sort of an industrial village, where he had a taste of the duties and responsibilities of actual life."

Referring to his second year at Hampton, Mr. Washington says : " Perhaps the most valuable thing I got was an understanding of the use and value of the Bible. One of the teachers taught me to use and love the Bible."

In June, 1875, Booker Washington completed the regular course at Hampton. He says : " At Hampton I learned that it was not only not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor's own sake, and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings."

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Booker T. Washington — No. 2

NOTE.- Booker T. Washington's book, " Working With the Hand," will give the reader a good conception of his practical ideas of manual training as developed in Tuskegee. Those who have not read the article referred to in the note last week, will be interested in a few items concerning Mrs. Washington. She was reared in a Quaker home. At fourteen she began to teach. Later we find her as a student in the Fisk University at Nashville, Tennessee. She met her expenses there by working some in the college, and by teaching during vacations. After graduation, she took up work in Tuskegee. Aside from her immediate duties there, she has done much to elevate home life among her people. She is president of the Southern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, and is also editor of a woman's paper.

His Life-Work Begins

AFTER teaching school in West Virginia for two years, Mr. Washington was, in 188o, given a position as teacher in Hampton Institute. In May, 1881, General Armstrong was asked by some of the citizens of Alabama to select a teacher to act as principal of a colored normal in their State. Booker Washington was General Armstrong's choice.

"Before going to Tuskegee," Mr. Washington writes, "I had expected to find a building there and all the necessary apparatus ready to begin teaching. To my disappointment, I found nothing of the kind. I did find, though, hundreds of earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge."

Mr. Washington spent a month visiting the people in their homes, searching for a school site, and advertising the school. He found most of the people living in one-room cabins, on a diet of fat pork and cornbread,— the meat, and the meal of which the bread was made, having been bought at a high price at a store in town, notwithstanding the fact that the land all about the cabin homes could easily have been made to produce many kinds of garden vegetables. Their one object seemed to be to plant cotton.

Decides to Make Tuskegee an Industrial School

"After spending this month in seeing the actual life of the colored people, I felt more strongly convinced than ever 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 that 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 teaching for a few months in a shanty in Tuskegee, Booker Washington was joined by Miss Davidson, later Mrs. Washington, a graduate of Hampton and of a Massachusetts State normal. " We wanted to teach the students what to eat and how to eat 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 and thrift and economy, that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they left us. We wanted to teach them to study actual things instead of books alone." Experience has proved the wisdom of this plan.

Tuskegee Institute Becomes an Agricultural School

"We learned that about eighty-five per cent of the colored people in the Gulf States depended upon agriculture for a 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. 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."

An opportunity presented itself to purchase an old, abandoned farm of one hundred acres one mile from Tuskegee. The price was five hundred dollars,— cheap for even that land,— but the teachers had no money.

The first two hundred fifty dollars was lent by an instructor at Hampton. The school was moved to the farm, and the first classes were held in the barn and in an old chicken-house.

Some reluctance was shown when Mr. Washington suggested that students help clear the land for the first crops, but it disappeared when, each afternoon after school hours, he took his ax and led the way to the woods.

"Our next effort, after raising the five hundred dollars to pay for the farm, was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of the land, so as to secure some returns from it, and at the same time give the students training in agriculture. All the industries at Tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of the needs of a community settlement.

" Many of the students also, were able to remain in school but a few weeks at a time because they had so little money. Thus another object that made it advisable to get an industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means of helping the students earn enough to remain in school during the nine months' session.``

Building With Student Labor

Limited space forbids relating incidents of thrilling interest concerning the raising of money for buildings, and the difficulties overcome in the erection of buildings with student labor. Mr. Washington says : " From the very beginning at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the students not only do the agricultural and domestic work, but erect their own buildings. I told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan, that the majority of our students came from the cabins of the cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the South, and that while I knew it would please the students very much to place them at once in finely constructed. buildings, I felt that it would be following a more natural process of development to teach them how to construct their own buildings. Mistakes would be made, but these would teach us valuable lessons for the future."

Tuskegee as It Is To-day

From the one little cabin, Tuskegee has become a large institution. Dr. Washington says : " We now have ninety-six buildings, large and small, and all except four have been almost wholly built by the labor of the students. A very large proportion of these students could never have remained there long enough to finish a course except for the chance to help themselves through these industrial opportunities given upon the grounds." Tuskegee now enrols about fifteen hundred students, some of whom pay all or part of their way in cash, but all work some, and many work their entire way. For the latter, night classes are conducted. Tuskegee students not only build houses, but they make the brick out of which the houses are constructed. In their shops they make their own carriages, wagons, and harnesses, the furniture for the buildings, and nearly everything used about the place. On the farm and in the orchards they raise practically all they eat. When the story of their work is written, it can be put before the public by their own printing plant. It is Mr. Washington's purpose to send forth from his school students proficient in some trade, to make the negro master of the industries, to encourage him to work the land and to own a comfortable country home. As a result of his labors, over six thousand students have graduated from Tuskegee.

What Some Tuskegee Students Have Done

Mr. Washington tells of one girl from Tuskegee who began teaching a school at eleven dollars a month for three months in the year. In that community to-day you will find a complete revolution. " When I was there last, I saw that girl close her school at two o'clock in the afternoon. I saw her take her hoe and lead her boys and girls into a field about the schoolhouse. I saw her work on four acres of land, and at the end of the year she produced two bales of cotton, which she sold, that the school term might last nine months a year. The people in that community are now owning their farms, and living in neat, well-kept houses."

" A short time ago one of our men at Tuskegee tried to find how many bushels of sweet potatoes he could produce on an acre of land. He got a yield last year of two hundred sixty-six bushels. The average production in that community had been forty-nine bushels an acre."

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