Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0010/00104.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00104}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Up From Slavery An Autobiography
Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Washington, Booker T.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{coloured
white
family
tuskegee
found
school
country
time
town
seemed}
$Date{1902}
$Log{}
Title:       Up From Slavery An Autobiography
Author:      Washington, Booker T.
Date:        1902

Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee

     During the time that I had charge of the Indians and the night-school at
Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under the direction of the instructors
there.  One of these instructors was the Rev. Dr. H. B. Frissell, the present
Principal of the Hampton Institute, General Armstrong's successor.

     In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the
night-school, in a way that I had not dared expect, the opportunity opened for
me to begin my life-work.  One night in the chapel, after the usual chapel
exercises were over, General Armstrong referred to the fact that he had
received a letter from some gentlemen in Alabama asking him to recommend some
one to take charge of what was to be a normal school for the coloured people
in the little town of Tuskegee in that state.  These gentlemen seemed to take
it for granted that no coloured man suitable for the position could be
secured, and they were expecting the General to recommend a white man for the
place.  The next day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and,
much to my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill the position in
Alabama.  I told him that I would be willing to try.  Accordingly, he wrote to
the people who had applied to him for the information, that he did not know of
any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing to take a coloured man,
he had one whom he could recommend.  In this letter he gave them my name.

     Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter. Some
time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, 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 will suit us.  Send him at once."

     There was a great deal of joy expressed among the students and teachers,
and I received very hearty congratulations.  I began to get ready at once to
go to Tuskegee.  I went by way of my old home in West Virginia, where I
remained for several days, after which I proceeded to Tuskegee.  I found
Tuskegee to be a town of about two thousand inhabitants, nearly one-half of
whom were coloured.  It was in what was known as the Black Belt of the South.
In the county in which Tuskegee is situated the coloured people outnumbered
the whites by about three to one.  In some of the adjoining and near-by
counties the proportion was not far from six coloured persons to one white.

     I have often been asked to define the term "Black Belt." So far as I can
learn, the term was first used to designate a part of the country which was
distinguished by the colour of the soil.  The part of the country possessing
this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the
South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken
there in the largest numbers.  Later, and especially since the war, the term
seems to be used wholly in a political sense - that is, to designate the
counties where the black people outnumber the white.

     Before going to Tuskegee I had expected to find there a building and 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 can supply, - hundreds of hungry, earnest souls who
wanted to secure knowledge.

     Tuskegee seemed an ideal place for the school.  It was in the midst of
the great bulk of the Negro population, and was rather secluded, being five
miles from the main line of railroad, with which it was connected by a short
line.  During the days of slavery, and since, the town had been a centre for
the education of the white people.  This was an added advantage, for the
reason that I found the white people possessing a degree of culture and
education that is not surpassed by many localities.  While the coloured people
were ignorant, they had not, as a rule, degraded and weakened their bodies by
vices such as are common to the lower class of people in the large cities.  In
general, I found the relations between the two races pleasant.  For example,
the largest, and I think at that time the only hardware store in the town was
owned and operated jointly by a coloured man and a white man.  This
copartnership continued until the death of the white partner.

     I found that about a year previous to my going to Tuskegee some of the
coloured people who had heard something of the work of education being done at
Hampton had applied to the state Legislature, through their representatives,
for a small appropriation to be used in starting a normal school in Tuskegee.
This request the Legislature had complied with to the extent of granting an
annual appropriation of two thousand dollars.  I soon learned, however, that
this money could be used only for the payment of the salaries of the
instructors, and that there was no provision for securing land, buildings, or
apparatus.  The task before me did not seem a very encouraging one.  It seemed
much like making bricks without straw.  The coloured people were overjoyed,
and were constantly offering their services in any way in which they could be
of assistance in getting the school started.

     My first task was to find a place in which to open the school.  After
looking the town over with some care, the most suitable place that could be
secured seemed to be a rather dilapidated shanty near the coloured Methodist
church, together with the church itself as a sort of assembly-room.  Both the
church and the shanty were in about as bad condition as was possible.  I
recall that during the first months of school that I taught in this building
it was in such poor repair that, whenever it rained, one of the older students
would very kindly leave his lessons and hold an umbrella over me while I heard
the recitations of the others.  I remember, also, that on more than one
occasion my landlady held an umbrella over me while I ate breakfast.

     At the time I went to Alabama the coloured people were taking
considerable interest in politics, and they were very anxious that I should
become one of them politically, in every respect.  They seemed to have a
little distrust of strangers in this regard.  I recall that one man, who
seemed to have been designated by the others to look after my political
destiny, came to me on several occasions and said, with a good deal of
earnestness: "We wants you to be sure to vote jes' like we votes.  We can't
read de newspapers very much, but we knows how to vote, an' we wants you to
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 de white man's gwine to
vote; an' when we finds out which way de white man's gwine to vote, den we
votes 'xactly de other way.  Den we knows we's right."

     I am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition to
vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely disappearing,
and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what the voter considers
to be for the best interests of both races.

     I reached Tuskegee, as I have said, early in June, 1881.  The first month
I spent in finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling through
Alabama, examining into the actual life of the people, especially in the
country districts, and in getting the school advertised among the class of
people that I wanted to have attend it.  The most of my travelling was done
over the country roads, with a mule and a cart or a mule and a buggy wagon for
conveyance.  I ate and slept with the people, in their little cabins.  I saw
their farms, their schools, their churches.  Since, in the case of the most of
these visits, there had been no notice given in advance that a stranger was
expected, I had the advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people.

     In the plantation districts I found that, as a rule, the whole family
slept in one room, and that in addition to the immediate family there
sometimes were relatives, or others not related to the family, who slept in
the same room.  On more than one occasion I went outside the house to get
ready for bed, or to wait until the family had gone to bed.  They usually
contrived some kind of a place for me to sleep, either on the floor or in a
special part of another's bed.  Rarely was there any place provided in the
cabin where one could bathe even the face and hands, but usually some
provision was made for this outside the house, in the yard.

     The common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread.  At times I
have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and "black-eye peas"
cooked in plain water.  The people seemed to have no other idea than to live
on this fat meat and corn bread, - 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 nearly every kind of garden vegetable that is raised
anywhere in the country.  Their one object seemed to be to plant nothing but
cotton; and in many cases cotton was planted up to the very door of the cabin.

     In these cabin homes I often found sewing-machines which had been bought,
or were being bought, on instalments, frequently at a cost of as much as sixty
dollars, or showy clocks for which the occupants of the cabins had paid twelve
or fourteen dollars.  I remember that on one occasion when I went into one of
these cabins for dinner, when I sat down to the table for a meal with the four
members of the family, I noticed that, while there were five of us at the
table, there was but one fork for the five of us to use.  Naturally there was
an awkward pause on my part.  In the opposite corner of that same cabin was an
organ for which the people told me they were paying sixty dollars in monthly
instalments.  One fork, and a sixty-dollar organ!

     In most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were so
worthless that they did not keep correct time - and if they had, in nine cases
out of ten there would have been no one in the family who could have told the
time of day - while the organ, of course, was rarely used for want of a person
who could play upon it.

     In the case to which I have referred, where the family sat down to the
table for the meal at which I was their guest, I could see plainly that this
was an awkward and unusual proceeding, and was done in my honour.  In most
cases, when the family got up in the morning, for example, the wife would put
a piece of meat in a frying-pan and put a lump of dough in a "skillet," as
they called it.  These utensils would be placed on the fire, and in ten or
fifteen minutes breakfast would be ready.  Frequently the husband would take
his bread and meat in his hand and start for the field, eating as he walked.
The mother would sit down in a corner and eat her breakfast, perhaps from a
plate and perhaps directly from the "skillet" or frying-pan, while the
children would eat their portion of the bread and meat while running about the
yard.  At certain seasons of the year, when meat was scarce, it was rarely
that the children who were not old enough or strong enough to work in the
fields would have the luxury of meat.

     The breakfast over, and with practically no attention given to the house,
the whole family would, as a general thing, proceed to the cotton-field. Every
child that was large enough to carry a hoe was put to work, and the baby - for
usually there was at least one baby - would be laid down at the end of the
cotton row, so that its mother could give it a certain amount of attention
when she had finished chopping her row.  The noon meal and the supper were
taken in much the same way as the breakfast.

     All the days of the family would be spent after much this same routine,
except Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday the whole family would spend 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 all the shopping that the whole family had money
for could have been attended to in ten minutes by one person.  Still, the
whole family remained in town for most of the day, spending the greater part
of the time in standing on the streets, the women, too often, sitting about
somewhere smoking or dipping snuff.  Sunday was usually spent in going to some
big meeting.  With few exceptions, I found that the crops were mortgaged in
the counties where I went, and that the most of the coloured farmers were in
debt.  The state had not been able to build schoolhouses in the country
districts, and, as a rule, the schools were taught in churches or in log
cabins.  More than once, while on my journeys, I found that there was no
provision made in the house used for school purposes for heating the building
during the winter, and consequently a fire had to be built in the yard, and
teacher and pupils passed in and out of the house as they got cold or warm.
With few exceptions, I found the teachers in these country schools to be
miserably poor in preparation for their work, and poor in moral character. The
schools were in session from three to five months.  There was practically no
apparatus in the schoolhouses, except that occasionally there was a rough
blackboard.  I recall that one day I went into a schoolhouse - or rather into
an abandoned log cabin that was being used as a schoolhouse - and found five
pupils who were studying a lesson from one book.  Two of these, on the front
seat, were using the book between them; behind these were two others peeping
over the shoulders of the first two, and behind the four was a fifth little
fellow who was peeping over the shoulders of all four.

     What I have said concerning the character of the schoolhouses and
teachers will also apply quite accurately as a description of the church
buildings and the ministers.

     I met some very interesting characters during my travels.  As
illustrating the peculiar mental processes of the country people, I remember
that I asked one coloured man, who was about sixty years old, to tell me
something of his history.  He said that he had been born in Virginia, and sold
into Alabama in 1845.  I asked him how many were sold at the same time.  He
said, "There were five of us; myself and brother and three mules."

     In giving all these descriptions of what I saw during my month of travel
in the country around Tuskegee, I wish my readers to keep in mind the fact
that there were many encouraging exceptions to the conditions which I have
described.  I have stated in such plain words what I saw, mainly for the
reason that later I want to emphasize the encouraging changes that have taken
place in the community, not wholly by the work of the Tuskegee school, but by
that of other institutions as well.