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All these I had not only to get, but had to learn to wear them. My shirts and collars were bought second-hand from a white neighbor and were all too large by three numbers. The last day of September, 1890, I left for Tuskegee. When I reached there, although I was a young man, I could not tell what county I lived in, in answer to Mr. Washington's question.
How many times, in the South, I heard white men speak in high admiration of some Negro farmer who had been successful, or of some Negro blacksmith who was a worthy citizen, or of some Negro doctor who was a leader of his race. I remember asking a prominent white citizen of a town in Central Georgia if he knew anything about Tuskegee. He said, 'Yes: I had rather a curious experience last fall.
This year this scheme worked successfully by an arrangement that placed one division in the Academic Department on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while the other was at work, and the other division in the Trades Department on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, while the other was in school, and so on regularly. Girl life at Tuskegee is strenuous.
Finally she married again, for no higher reason than to permit me, and the other children growing up, to go to school. My hope for an education was again renewed, and I went back to Tuskegee. Nearly everybody had forgotten that I had ever been there. Notwithstanding I had been out nearly three terms, I had kept pace with my class, making one class each year, the same as if I had been in school.
While it can not be claimed that the best teachers in the South are all at Tuskegee, it can be said that no other school has so large a number of colored men and women who have had the advantage of the highest industrial and intellectual, moral and religious training. The teaching force is made up largely of graduates from nearly every first-class educational institution in America.
I returned to Tuskegee, and, with the help of the fifteen dollars, rallied our rather demoralized and discouraged forces and began a fourth attempt to make bricks. This time, I am glad to say, we were successful. Before I got hold of any money, the time-limit on my watch had expired, and I have never seen it since; but I have never regretted the loss of it.
At the present moment that brother, as well as a friend, who as a child was adopted by the family, are valued assistants in the Tuskegee Institution. When the school was established the classes were soon crowded by those who, on account of their anxiety to improve, deserved to be distinguished as the most diligent and persevering of learners.
It is through the dairy farm, the truck garden, the trades, and commercial life, largely, that the negro is to find his way to the enjoyment of all his rights. Whether he will or not, a white man respects a negro who owns a two-story brick house. What is the permanent value of the Tuskegee system of training to the South in a broader sense?
More than a dozen times, when bills figuring up into the hundreds of dollars were falling due, I applied to the white men of Tuskegee for small loans, often borrowing small amounts from as many as a half-dozen persons, to meet our obligations.
At the present time the institution at Tuskegee represents a value of £100,000, if we include the endowment fund; and the annual cost of training 1100 or more students is not less than £16,000. The work continues to expand, as must ever be the case with all healthy enterprises of the kind.
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