Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee

by Booker T. Washington

　　During the time that I had charge of the Indians and thenight-school at Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under thedirection of the instructors there. One of these instructors wasthe Rev. Dr. H.B. Frissell, the present Principal of the HamptonInstitute, General Armstrong's successor.In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching thenight-school, in a way that I had not dared expect, theopportunity opened for me to begin my life-work. One night in thechapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, GeneralArmstrong referred to the fact that he had received a letter fromsome gentlemen in Alabama asking him to recommend some one totake charge of what was to be a normal school for the colouredpeople in the little town of Tuskegee in that state. Thesegentlemen seemed to take it for granted that no coloured mansuitable for the position could be secured, and they wereexpecting the General to recommend a white man for the place. Thenext day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office,and, much to my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill theposition in Alabama. I told him that I would be willing to try.Accordingly, he wrote to the people who had applied to him forthe information, that he did not know of any white man tosuggest, but if they would be willing to take a coloured man, hehad one whom he could recommend. In this letter he gave them myname.Several days passed before anything more was heard about thematter. Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapelexercises, a messenger came in and handed the general a telegram.At the end of the exercises he read the telegram to the school.In substance, these were its words: "Booker T. Washington willsuit us. Send him at once."There was a great deal of joy expressed among the students andteachers, and I received very hearty congratulations. I began toget ready at once to go to Tuskegee. I went by way of my old homein West Virginia, where I remained for several days, after whichI proceeded to Tuskegee. I found Tuskegee to be a town of abouttwo thousand inhabitants, nearly one-half of whom were coloured.It was in what was known as the Black Belt of the South. In thecounty in which Tuskegee is situated the coloured peopleoutnumbered the whites by about three to one. In some of theadjoining and near-by counties the proportion was not far fromsix coloured persons to one white.I have often been asked to define the term "Black Belt." So faras I can learn, the term was first used to designated a part ofthe country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil.The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, andnaturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South wherethe slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were takenthere in the largest numbers. Later, and especially since thewar, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense--thatis, to designate the counties where the black people outnumberthe white.Before going to Tuskegee I had expected to find there a buildingand all the necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching.To my disappointment, I found nothing of the kind. I did find,though, that which no costly building and apparatus cansupply,--hundreds of hungry, earnest souls who wanted to secureknowledge.Tuskegee seemed an ideal place for the school. It was in themidst of the great bulk of the Negro population, and was rathersecluded, being five miles from the main line of railroad, withwhich it was connected by a short line. During the days ofslavery, and since, the town had been a centre for the educationof the white people. This was an added advantage, for the reasonthat I found the white people possessing a degree of culture andeducation that is not surpassed by many localities. While thecoloured people were ignorant, they had not, as a rule, degradedand weakened their bodies by vices such as are common to thelower class of people in the large cities. In general, I foundthe relations between the two races pleasant. For example, thelargest, and I think at that time the only hardware store in thetown was owned and operated jointly by a coloured man and a whiteman. This copartnership continued until the death of the whitepartner.I found that about a year previous to my going to Tuskegee someof the coloured people who had heard something of the work ofeducation being done at Hampton had applied to the stateLegislature, through their representatives, for a smallappropriation to be used in starting a normal school in Tuskegee.This request the Legislature had complied with to the extent ofgranting an annual appropriation of two thousand dollars. I soonlearned, however, that this money could be used only for thepayment of the salaries of the instructors, and that there was noprovision for securing land, buildings, or apparatus. The taskbefore me did not seem a very encouraging one. It seemed muchlike making bricks without straw. The coloured people wereoverjoyed, and were constantly offering their services in any wayin which they could be of assistance in getting the schoolstarted.My first task was to find a place in which to open the school.After looking the town over with some care, the most suitableplace that could be secured seemed to be a rather dilapidatedshanty near the coloured Methodist church, together with thechurch itself as a sort of assembly-room. Both the church and theshanty were in about as bad condition as was possible. I recallthat during the first months of school that I taught in thisbuilding it was in such poor repair that, whenever it rained, oneof the older students would very kindly leave his lessons andhold an umbrella over me while I heard the recitations of theothers. I remember, also, that on more than one occasion mylandlady held an umbrella over me while I ate breakfast.At the time I went to Alabama the coloured people were takingconsiderable interest in politics, and they were very anxiousthat I should become one of them politically, in every respect.They seemed to have a little distrust of strangers in thisregard. I recall that one man, who seemed to have been designatedby the others to look after my political destiny, came to me onseveral occasions and said, with a good deal of earnestness: "Wewants you to be sure to vote jes' like we votes. We can't read denewspapers very much, but we knows how to vote, an' we wants youto vote jes' like we votes." He added: "We watches de white man,and we keeps watching de white man till we finds out which way dewhite man's gwine to vote; an' when we finds out which way dewhite man's gwine to vote, den we votes 'xactly de other way. Denwe knows we's right."I am glad to add, however, that at the present time thedisposition to vote against the white man merely because he iswhite is largely disappearing, and the race is learning to votefrom principle, for what the voter considers to be for the bestinterests of both races.I reached Tuskegee, as I have said, early in June, 1881. Thefirst month I spent in finding accommodations for the school, andin travelling through Alabama, examining into the actual life ofthe people, especially in the court districts, and in getting theschool advertised among the glass of people that I wanted to haveattend it. The most of my travelling was done over the countryroads, with a mule and a cart or a mule and a buggy wagon forconveyance. I ate and slept with the people, in their littlecabins. I saw their farms, their schools, their churches. Since,in the case of the most of these visits, there had been no noticegiven in advance that a stranger was expected, I had theadvantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people.In the plantation districts I found that, as a rule, the wholefamily slept in one room, and that in addition to the immediatefamily there sometimes were relatives, or others not related tothe family, who slept in the same room. On more than one occasionI went outside the house to get ready for bed, or to wait untilthe family had gone to bed. They usually contrived some kind of aplace for me to sleep, either on the floor or in a special partof another's bed. Rarely was there any place provided in thecabin where one could bathe even the face and hands, but usuallysome provision was made for this outside the house, in the yard.The common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread. Attimes I have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and"black-eye peas" cooked in plain water. The people seemed to haveno other idea than to live on this fat meat and corn bread,--themeat, and the meal of which the bread was made, having beenbought at a high price at a store in town, notwithstanding theface that the land all about the cabin homes could easily havebeen made to produce nearly every kind of garden vegetable thatis raised anywhere in the country. Their one object seemed to beto plant nothing but cotton; and in many cases cotton was plantedup to the very door of the cabin.In these cabin homes I often found sewing-machines which had beenbought, or were being bought, on instalments, frequently at acost of as much as sixty dollars, or showy clocks for which theoccupants of the cabins had paid twelve or fourteen dollars. Iremember that on one occasion when I went into one of thesecabins for dinner, when I sat down to the table for a meal withthe four members of the family, I noticed that, while there werefive of us at the table, there was but one fork for the five ofus to use. Naturally there was an awkward pause on my part. Inthe opposite corner of that same cabin was an organ for which thepeople told me they were paying sixty dollars in monthlyinstalments. One fork, and a sixty-dollar organ!In most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were soworthless that they did not keep correct time--and if they had,in nine cases out of ten there would have been no one in thefamily who could have told the time of day--while the organ, ofcourse, was rarely used for want of a person who could play uponit.In the case to which I have referred, where the family sat downto the table for the meal at which I was their guest, I could seeplainly that this was an awkward and unusual proceeding, and wasdone in my honour. In most cases, when the family got up in themorning, for example, the wife would put a piece of meat in afrying-pan and put a lump of dough in a "skillet," as they calledit. These utensils would be placed on the fire, and in ten orfifteen minutes breakfast would be ready. Frequently the husbandwould take his bread and meat in his hand and start for thefield, eating as he walked. The mother would sit down in a cornerand eat her breakfast, perhaps from a plate and perhaps directlyfrom the "skillet" or frying-pan, while the children would eattheir portion of the bread and meat while running about the yard.At certain seasons of the year, when meat was scarce, it wasrarely that the children who were not old enough or strong enoughto work in the fields would have the luxury of meat.The breakfast over, and with practically no attention given tothe house, the whole family would, as a general thing, proceed tothe cotton-field. Every child that was large enough to carry ahoe was put to work, and the baby--for usually there was at leastone baby--would be laid down at the end of the cotton row, sothat its mother could give it a certain amount of attention whenshe had finished chopping her row. The noon meal and the supperwere taken in much the same way as the breakfast.All the days of the family would be spent after much this sameroutine, except Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday the whole familywould spent at least half a day, and often a whole day, in town.The idea in going to town was, I suppose, to do shopping, but allthe shopping that the whole family had money for could have beenattended to in ten minutes by one person. Still, the whole familyremained in town for most of the day, spending the greater partof the time in standing on the streets, the women, too often,sitting about somewhere smoking or dipping snuff. Sunday wasusually spent in going to some big meeting. With few exceptions,I found that the crops were mortgaged in the counties where Iwent, and that the most of the coloured farmers were in debt. Thestate had not been able to build schoolhouses in the countrydistricts, and, as a rule, the schools were taught in churches orin log cabins. More than once, while on my journeys, I found thatthere was no provision made in the house used for school purposesfor heating the building during the winter, and consequently afire had to be built in the yard, and teacher and pupils passedin and out of the house as they got cold or warm. With fewexceptions, I found the teachers in these country schools to bemiserably poor in preparation for their work, and poor in moralcharacter. The schools were in session from three to five months.There was practically no apparatus in the schoolhouses, exceptthat occasionally there was a rough blackboard. I recall that oneday I went into a schoolhouse--or rather into an abandoned logcabin that was being used as a schoolhouse--and found five pupilswho were studying a lesson from one book. Two of these, on thefront seat, were using the book between them; behind these weretwo others peeping over the shoulders of the first two, andbehind the four was a fifth little fellow who was peeping overthe shoulders of all four.What I have said concerning the character of the schoolhouses andteachers will also apply quite accurately as a description of thechurch buildings and the ministers.I met some very interesting characters during my travels. Asillustrating the peculiar mental processes of the country people,I remember that I asked one coloured man, who was about sixtyyears old, to tell me something of his history. He said that hehad been born in Virginia, and sold into Alabama in 1845. I askedhim how many were sold at the same time. He said, "There werefive of us; myself and brother and three mules."In giving all these descriptions of what I saw during my mouth oftravel in the country around Tuskegee, I wish my readers to keepin mind the fact that there were many encouraging exceptions tothe conditions which I have described. I have stated in suchplain words what I saw, mainly for the reason that later I wantto emphasize the encouraging changes that have taken place in thecommunity, not wholly by the work of the Tuskegee school, but bythat of other institutions as well.