SUCCESS AS EDUCATIONAL LEADER
Booker Washington spent his life in the education of the negro. Negroes
of ability in his day usually became preachers or they entered politics.
The negro preacher had rendered a greater service to his people,
perhaps, than any one else. Before 1865, the ministry was practically
the only place where negro leadership could find expression. It was much
the same way for many years after the Civil War. However, after
emancipation, there was an opportunity for leadership in politics, and a
great many negroes of ability entered this field, many of them holding
offices.
Washington was urged by some of his friends to enter the ministry.
Others urged him to study law and enter politics. Undoubtedly he could
have made a great success in either of these fields of work. But from
the very beginning of his education, he had a strong conviction that his
life must be spent in helping to educate his people.
He felt that education was the greatest need of his race. Before the
war, it had been against the law for a slave to be taught from books. At
the close of the war, then, there were no schools, no teachers, and no
books. The whole race could neither read nor write. The whole race had
had no training of any kind except in agriculture. It is true a few, but
a very few, had had a little training in certain trades such as
bricklaying, blacksmithing, and carpentry. The race, therefore, through
no fault of its own, was very ignorant. It had never had an opportunity.
[Illustration:
CHEMISTRY CLASS, TUSKEGEE ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT
]
But now that the opportunity had come with emancipation, the entire race
was eager to learn. Old men and old women, as well as boys and girls,
began with great zeal to learn to read and write. The race started to
school. It was determined to get an education, and it was to help in
this great work that Washington early determined to devote his life.
Just after the war there was much confusion and doubt about the best
plan to follow in educating the negro. The Freedmen’s Bureau brought a
large number of teachers from the North to assist in the task, and much
valuable work was done in the negro schools by these teachers. The
different Southern states also began to make provision for the negro’s
education, by organizing schools, building schoolhouses, and making
provision for training teachers.
There was much difference of opinion as to just what should be taught
the negro. As a rule, the plan followed was to teach him just what had
been taught in the white schools. This meant that he would study
reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar, and later, Latin, Greek,
mathematics and literature.
So much of this kind of teaching was done, and it was so poorly done,
and it was so poorly adapted to the needs of the negro at the time, that
a great many people began to doubt the wisdom of trying to educate the
negro at all. But Washington insisted that the mistake was made in the
kind of education they were trying to give him. In answer to the
question, “Does it pay to educate the negro?” Washington often told the
story of what had taken place in Macon County, Alabama, the county in
which Tuskegee is located. In that county, he and Mr. H. H. Rogers
decided to build, with the coöperation of the people themselves, a
system of excellent schools, and try out as thoroughly as possible the
question of the effect of education upon the negro, under favorable
conditions. They put up good schoolhouses, secured good teachers, taught
practical subjects, and ran the schools for eight or nine months in the
year.
What was the result? In a short time people began to come from all parts
of the state and outside the state to buy land or to work within reach
of these excellent schools. Land advanced in price. Desirable citizens
flocked in. Homes were improved. Good roads were built. Better farms
appeared. Crime diminished. The sheriff said that he practically had no
further use for the jail. Cordial relations existed between the white
and negro people. In every way Macon County came to be a better place to
live in. The race problem was solved in that county. People were happy
and prosperous. They were living clean, wholesome, contented lives. The
whole problem of living was, in a large measure, solved. And it was all
due to education of the people, and education of the right kind. What
was good for Macon County, Alabama, would be good for every county in
the country.
Washington’s ideas of education were very simple. He had studied
carefully the needs of his people. What he wanted was a system of
education that would help people directly and immediately; that would
enable them to make better crops; build better homes; wear better
clothes; eat better food; live cleaner and purer and happier lives. He
wanted his people to learn to live; and he believed the school was the
place to learn that lesson.
[Illustration:
TRUCK GARDENING, TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE
]
He wanted the children to study practical things; the things they
needed. He thought, therefore, that the school ought to be very closely
related to life. His idea was that that school was best which turned out
students who could earn their own living at once; who had the ability to
take care of themselves in whatever environment they happened to be; and
who had genuine character. “My experience has taught me,” he says, “that
the surest way to success in education, and in any other line for that
matter, is to stick close to the common and familiar things—things that
concern the greater part of the people the greater part of the
time.”[26]
It was this belief in the close relation between school and life that
caused him to have his students, at the beginning of the building of
Tuskegee, cut down the trees, plant the crops, make the bricks, build
the buildings, cook the food, care for the dormitories, look after the
live stock, and do everything that was to be done about the place. He
wanted his students to learn to do well all these tasks that they would
face in later life. And he also wanted them to learn that it was a
perfectly honorable and dignified and sensible thing to labor, to work,
to do anything that was honest and useful.
Perhaps there is no better way of understanding Washington’s ideas of
education and just what he was striving to do at Tuskegee than to
describe the commencement exercises at this school.
“On the platform before the audience is a miniature engine to which
steam has been piped, a miniature frame house in course of construction,
and a piece of brick wall in process of erection. A young man in jumpers
comes on the platform, starts the engine and blows the whistle.
Whereupon young men and women come hurrying from all directions, and
each turns to his or her appointed task. A young carpenter completes the
little house, a young mason finishes the laying of the brick wall, a
young farmer leads forth a cow and milks her in full view of the
audience, a sturdy blacksmith shoes a horse, and, after this patient,
educative animal has been shod, he is turned over to a representative of
the veterinary division to have his teeth filed. At the same time, on
the opposite side of the platform one of the girl students is having a
dress fitted by one of her classmates, who is a dressmaker. She at
length walks proudly from the platform in her completed new gown, while
the young dressmaker looks anxiously after to make sure that it ‘hangs
right behind.’ Other girls are doing washing and ironing with the
drudgery removed in accordance with advanced Tuskegee methods. Still
others are hard at work on hats, mats, and dresses, while boys from the
tailoring department sit cross-legged working on suits and uniforms. In
the background are arranged the finest specimens which scientific
agriculture has produced on the farm and mechanical skill has turned out
in the shop. The pumpkin, potatoes, corn, cotton, and other agricultural
products predominate, because agriculture is the chief industry at
Tuskegee, just as it is among the negro people of the South.
[Illustration:
DOMESTIC SCIENCE CLASS AT TUSKEGEE
]
“This form of commencement exercise is one of Booker Washington’s
contributions to education which has been widely copied by schools for
whites as well as blacks. That it appeals to his own people is
eloquently attested by the people themselves, who come in ever-greater
numbers as the commencement days recur. At three o’clock in the morning
of this great day, vehicles of every description, each loaded to
capacity with men, women, and children, begin to roll in, in an unbroken
line which sometimes extends along the road for three miles. Some of the
teachers at times objected to turning a large area of the Institute
grounds into a hitching-post station for the horses and mules of this
great multitude, but to all such objections Mr. Washington replied,
‘This place belongs to the people and not to us.’ Less than a third of
these eight or nine thousand people are able to crowd into the chapel to
see the actual graduation exercises; but all can see the graduation
procession as it marches through the grounds to the chapel, and all are
shown through the shops and over the farm and through the special
agricultural exhibits, and even through the offices, including that of
the principal. It is significant of the respect in which people hold the
Institute, and in which they held Booker Washington, that in all these
years there has never been on these occasions a single instance of
drunkenness or disorderly conduct.”[27]
“One of our students in his commencement oration last May gave a
description of how he planted and raised an acre of cabbages. Piled high
upon the platform by his side were some of the largest and finest
cabbages I have ever seen. He told how and where he had obtained the
seed; he described his method of preparing and enriching the soil, of
working the land, and harvesting the crop; and he summed up by giving
the cost of the whole operation. In the course of his account of this
comparatively simple operation, this student had made use of much that
he had learned in composition, grammar, mathematics, chemistry, and
agriculture. He had not merely woven into his narrative all these
various elements that I have referred to, but he had given the audience
(which was made up largely of colored farmers from the surrounding
country) some useful and practical information in regard to a subject
which they understood and were interested in. I wish that any one who
does not believe it possible to make a subject like cabbages interesting
in a commencement oration could have heard the hearty cheers which
greeted the speaker when, at the close of his speech, he held up one of
the largest cabbages on the platform for the audience to look at and
admire. As a matter of fact there is just as much that is interesting,
strange, mysterious and wonderful; just as much to be learned that is
edifying, broadening, and refining in a cabbage as there is in a page of
Latin. There is, however, this distinction; it will make very little
difference to the world whether one negro boy, more or less, learns to
construe a page of Latin. On the other hand, as soon as one negro boy
has been taught to apply thought and study and ideas to the growing of
cabbages, he has started a process which, if it goes on and continues,
will eventually transform the whole face of things as they exist in the
South to-day.”[28]
It can be readily seen from these two accounts just what kind of
education Washington believed in and tried to give his students at
Tuskegee. It was quite different from most of the training that had been
given the negro after the war. In those early days of freedom, many of
the negroes seemed to have the idea that the bigger the book and the
harder the words in it, the better the education was that they secured.
Some of them thought, too, that they were not educated unless they
studied Latin and Greek and higher mathematics, and other similar
subjects. Booker Washington did not mean that history, literature, and
foreign languages should not be studied and had no value. What he was
emphasizing was the fact that boys and girls should first get a clear
idea of things about them. Then they would be able better to understand
and appreciate such subjects as history and literature.
One other feature of the kind of education that Tuskegee stands for
ought to be mentioned, and that is the extension work. This work has
become a very large part of the Institute. The extension work is not so
much a matter of teaching, of education in the usual sense, as it is an
effort to give direct and practical help to people outside the college
walls. Most of this extension work has been done in Macon and adjoining
counties. From the first month of his school, Washington began to go
into the country round about and mingle with his people. He went to
their homes, their churches, their schools. He saw their poor farms,
their lean stock, their dilapidated houses, their lack of the comforts
and necessities of good living. The homes, the churches, the
schoolhouses were in bad condition. Washington had the greatest sympathy
for these people, knowing why they were in poverty and ignorance, and he
had a great desire to help them. And it is through this extension work
that these people are helped.
[Illustration:
The students’ band of this rural school is instructed by a band
student of Tuskegee Institute.
]
The Institute sends its workers throughout the surrounding country to
show the farmers improved farm machinery, better methods of farming,
better breeds of live stock of all kinds, better methods of dairying,
and better ways of preparing food, keeping house, and caring for the
children. They insist on improving the school buildings, the churches,
and the homes. As a result of this work, there are now in Macon County a
number of neat new schoolhouses, with a teacher’s house alongside each
school, several acres of land adjoining, and a good church close by.
Thus clean, pleasant, and thoroughly happy communities are created. In
such communities there is the smallest amount of crime, and there is the
largest amount of prosperity and contentment and enjoyment.
All the graduates of Tuskegee are enthusiasts for education and
community builders. Wherever they go, they stand for the best in life.
They are devoted to Tuskegee and its spirit and its ideals. It is this
devotion which makes them industrious and capable and law-abiding and
helpful in every possible way in the communities in which they live.
Hundreds of small schools have been established all over the South by
these graduates, patterned on Tuskegee. It is impossible to overestimate
the good they have done.
[Illustration:
TAILORING DIVISION, TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE
]
Tuskegee has grown to be one of the greatest schools in the country, and
the greatest of all schools for the negroes. It has grown from 100 acres
and three little buildings to a plant of 2100 acres and 111 buildings.
Instead of one teacher with 30 pupils there are now more than 200
teachers and 1500 students. The institution has a large endowment, and
it owns 20,000 acres of land given it by the United States Government.
It keeps a large dairy herd, runs a large farm, a poultry farm, and
keeps a large number of pigs, horses and sheep. Every phase of education
is taught, but the main work is industrial,—carpentry, brick masonry,
basket making, metal working, draughting, auto-mechanics, blacksmithing,
telegraphy, farming, dairying, lumbering, building, cooking, sewing,
nursing, housekeeping—all these and a large number of other callings are
taught. It is through such training as this that Washington believed
that the negroes, in largest numbers, would first get their best start
in life.
Life is strenuous in this school. Here is an outline of the daily work:
“5 A.M., rising bell; 5:50 A.M., warning breakfast bell; 6:00 A.M.,
breakfast bell; 6:20 A.M., breakfast over; 6:20–6:50 A.M., rooms
cleaned; 6:50 A.M., work bell; 7:30 A.M., morning study hour; 8:20 A.M.,
morning school bell; 8:25 A.M., inspection of young men’s dress in
ranks; 8:40 A.M., devotional exercises in chapel; 8:55 A.M., ‘five
minutes with the daily news’; 9:00 A.M., class work begins; 12:00 M.,
class work ends; 12:15 P.M., dinner; 1:00 P.M., work bell; 1:30 P.M.,
class work begins; 3:30 P.M., class work ends; 5:30 P.M., bell to ‘knock
off’ work; 6:00 P.M., supper; 7:10 P.M., evening prayers; 7:30 P.M.,
evening study hour: 8:45 P.M., evening study hour closes; 9:20 P.M.,
warning bell; 9:30 P.M., retiring bell.”[29]
Washington has done more for the education of the negro than any other
one man, white or black. His work at Tuskegee, his great educational
campaigns, and his speeches and writings have combined to make his
accomplishments of supreme value. Not only has he done this for the
negro, but his work has helped the cause of education for the white
people very greatly. All education in the South was backward. Like his
great teacher, General Armstrong, Washington realized that in their
progress the two races were bound together in the South, and that they
must grow or step backward together. It is impossible for the negro to
make his best progress unless the white man does so at the same time.
And of course this works both ways. Because he believed this, Washington
was anxious for school conditions for white people to change just as
well as the school conditions for negroes. Besides, he wanted all the
people to have the advantages of education. He did not hate anybody, and
consequently did not want anybody to be deprived of the best there was
in life. He did not want anybody, white or black, to fail to have his
best opportunity. So he worked for the advancement of the cause of the
white schools as well as the black, and his services to the white
schools were great.
The future of negro education is very bright. Schools and colleges are
being built every year. Better teachers are being prepared. Children are
going to school in larger numbers than ever before, and their work is
more satisfactory.
Every year the states appropriate more and more money for negro
education. The negro is now able to pay a large part of the cost of his
own education, and he is very willingly doing so.
The negro is determined to get an education. When he gets it, he will be
a better citizen. And the better the citizens of a country are, the
better life is in every way, and the more completely are all our
problems solved.