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$Title{Up From Slavery An Autobiography
Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education}
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$Author{Washington, Booker T.}
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$Subject{hampton
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$Date{1902}
$Log{See Hampton Institute*0010001.scf
}
Title:       Up From Slavery An Autobiography
Author:      Washington, Booker T.
Date:        1902

Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education

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

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

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

[See Hampton Institute: A shop in the Normal and Agricultural Institute at
Hampton, Va.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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