the words of their two founders? After a visit to Tuskegee, General
Armstrong said: "The Tuskegee school is a wonderful work and Mr.
Washington is a remarkable man. He has carried out the idea of training
the head, hand, and heart in a wonderfully complete and perfect way.
This school is very much like the one at Hampton, and any one can
recognize the similarity, but he has made many improvements. It is not
merely an imitation. It is the Hampton Idea adapted and worked into a
most sensible and efficient application to the needs of the Alabama
Negroes." In the same memorial address at General Armstrong's funeral
from which I quoted at the beginning of this paper, Mr. Washington said,
"The rose I place on his grave is _his_ work at Tuskegee."
Hampton and Tuskegee, striving along common lines for common ends,
intimate in relationship, interdependent, each frankly criticizing and
freely advising, each profiting by the failures of the other, each
benefiting by the successes of the other, are both working as best they
may toward that "far-off divine event to which the whole creation
moves."
_PART II_
_AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY GRADUATES OF THE SCHOOL_
I
A COLLEGE PRESIDENT'S STORY
BY ISAAC FISHER
I was born January 18, 1877, on a plantation called Perry's place, in
East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, and was the sixteenth and last child of
my parents. My early childhood was uneventful, save during the year
1882, when, by reason of the breaking of the Mississippi River levee
near my home, I was compelled, together with my parents, to live six
months in the plantation cotton-gin, fed by the Federal Government and
by the determination never to live so close to the "Big Muddy" again;
and during 1886, in which year my mother died.
Up to this latter year my life had been nothing more than that of the
average Negro boy on a cotton-farm. While I had been too young to feel
the burden of farm-life toil, I had not been spared a realization of the
narrowness and the dwarfing tendencies of the lives which the Negro
farmers and their families were living, and, in my heart, I cursed the
farm and all its environs as being in verity an inferno on earth. A
broader knowledge of the causes which operated to produce the cheerless
life against which my child-nature rebelled, and a clearer insight into
the possibilities of rural life, have altered this early impression; and
to-day I find myself thinking some thoughts relative to the life lived
near to nature's heart which are not at all complimentary to the bustle
and selfishness of city life.
The death of my mother furnished the opportunity to leave the farm and
go to a city; and I took advantage of this, going to Vicksburg, Miss.,
to live with an older sister. I had always desired to go to school, and
had spent four terms of six months each in the country school near my
home; but for some reason, which I can not now remember, I attended the
city school in Vicksburg but one year, after which I was employed as a
cake-baker's assistant and bread-wagon driver. A short time before this
I was a house-boy in the city. I was, at the time of my employment in
the bakery, an omnivorous reader of the newspapers, and, in fact, of all
kinds of literature; but my hours of labor at both places were so long
and incessant that I found it almost impossible to do any reading during
my employment at either place.
Finally I saw and took advantage of an opportunity to secure employment
with the drug firm of W. H. Jones & Brother; and I count my work in this
store, and with these gentlemen as employers, as the turning-point in my
life, because there my work demanded some intelligence above the
average. I had some chance to study, and in addition, when it was found
by these white men that I loved to read, all magazines, newspapers, and
drug journals, not needed by the firm and the physicians whose offices
were with them, were given to me. I never make any mention of my life in
Vicksburg without mentioning, in particular, Mr. W. H. Jones; for not
only was he a kind and considerate employer, but I learned from his
actions that a white man could be kind and interested in a Negro--a fact
which no amount of reasoning could have driven into my stubborn
understanding previous to that time.
There came a time when I learned that at the Tuskegee Institute, in
Alabama, any poor Negro boy who was willing to work could pay for all
his education in labor. To hear was to act. I wrote to Mr. Washington,
asking if my information was correct. The affirmative answer came at
once. It was the middle of August, and school began in September, but I
determined to be present at the opening of the school year. I was then a
boy wearing short trousers, but I immediately set about preparing to
deliver a "lecture" to help raise funds for my trip. With a knowledge of
the subject, and an assurance which I have never since assumed, I spoke
to a large audience in Vicksburg on the question, Will America Absorb
the Negro? I settled the question then and there to my own satisfaction,
even if I did not convince the nation that my affirmative conclusion was
rational. The "lecture" netted me my fare to Tuskegee, with a few
dollars over, and brought me from Rev. O. P. Ross, pastor of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Vicksburg, the offer of a scholarship at
Wilberforce College at the expense of his church. I respectfully
declined the offer, feeling that I did not want to bind myself to any
particular denomination by accepting so great a gift; but I have always
felt very kindly toward that church ever since.
My first glimpse of Mr. Washington was had in the depot in Montgomery,
Ala., where a friend and I, on our way to Tuskegee, had changed cars for
the Tuskegee train. Two gentlemen came into the waiting-room where we
were seated, one a man of splendid appearance and address, the other a
most ordinary appearing individual, we thought. The latter, addressing
us, inquired our destination. Upon being told that we were going to
Tuskegee, he remarked that he had heard that Tuskegee was a very hard
place--a place where students were given too much work to do, and where
the food was very simple and coarse. He was afraid we would not stay
there three months. We assured him that we were not afraid of hard work,
and meant to finish the course of study at Tuskegee at all hazards. He
then left us. Very soon after, the gentleman who had so favorably
impressed us, and whom we afterward found to be the capable treasurer of
the Tuskegee Institute, Mr. Warren Logan, came back and told us that our
interlocutor was none other than the President of the school to which we
were going.
Arriving at Tuskegee, I found what it meant to be in a school without a
penny, without assurance of help from the outside, and wholly dependent
upon one's own resources and labor; and I found further that in the
severe, trying process through which Mr. John H. Washington,
superintendent of industries, brother of Mr. Booker T. Washington, and
familiarly though very respectfully known to the students as "old man
John," put all students who offered to work for their education, only
the fittest, and the fittest of the fit at that, survived.
I was assigned work with the resident physician, a very efficient woman
doctor from Philadelphia; and I have a recollection, by no means dim,
that when this good woman made her monthly report to the treasurer, she
could write, "Health Department to Isaac Fisher, Dr., $12.50--value
received." Every morning before breakfast it was my duty to go to the
rooms of six hundred young men to see if any were ill, have those who
were, carried to the hospital, report all such to four departments, take
meals to those confined in the hospital, attend to all their wants, keep
their building heated and supplied with fuel, and-- But space will not
permit the full catalogue of duties. At the end of such a day's work I
would attend the night-school during its session of two hours.
Desiring to learn a trade, I asked permission to enter the
printing-office for the next year. This was not granted until it was
found that I would not leave the school during the summer, but would
remain and work until the beginning of the next school year.
Accordingly, when my second year began I entered the printing-office as
an apprentice. During that year I suffered actual want and privation in
the matter of shoes and clothes; but later came under the notice of Mrs.
Booker T. Washington, who made arrangements by which I could procure
some of the second-hand clothes and shoes sent from the North to the
school for just such cases. At the end of this year my health, as a
result of my work in the office, was so poor that the resident physician
recommended my removal therefrom. To the surprise of Mr. J. H.
Washington, I asked to be transferred to the farm; and I think I proved
while working on the school-farm that I was sincere when I said that I
would work wherever I was placed.
It was during this summer that Mr. Booker T. Washington showed me that I
had come favorably under his notice. At one of the weekly
prayer-meetings, conducted by the chaplain, Mr. Penney, and at which Mr.
Washington was present, I made some remarks relative to the agnosticism
of the late Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. The following day Mr. Washington
sent for me, inquired my age and class in the school, and then said some
very kind things about the talk which I had made in the prayer-meeting,
and made me a conditional promise of his friendship, which, despite my
oft-proven unworthiness, he has ever since given me in unstinted
measure. After that second year my hardships as a "work-student" were
practically over.
In my third year I entered the day-school, working one day in every week
and every other Saturday, and going to school the remainder of the time.
While the school made compulsory the earning of some money on the part
of all students, it set no maximum limit on the amounts to be earned. I
elected to earn as much as I could under the circumstances, earning, by
reason of the many odd jobs which I did, often as much as $20 per month,
going to school every day in the meantime. The average amount usually
earned is $5 and $6 per month. At one time I worked eight days per month
on the farm, sent notes of the school to 127 Negro newspapers, cleaned
one laboratory every day, played in both the brass band and the
orchestra, blew the bugle for the battalion, and taught two classes in
the night-school, for each of which duties I received pay; and even
though I broke down under the accumulated strain soon after my
graduation, I carried my point and completed the course of study as I
had planned.
[Illustration: THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY BUILDING.]
In my fourth year I won the Trinity Church (Boston) Prize of $25 for
oratory; and in my senior year won the Loughridge Book Prize for
scholarship, and also the valedictory of my class, graduating in 1898.
I was immediately sent to the Schofield School, a Quaker institution for
Negroes in Aiken, S. C., to organize farmers' conferences on the order
of those conducted by the Tuskegee Institute, and to serve as a teacher
in the school. After one year's service in that position Mr. Washington
asked me to accept the position of Assistant Northern Financial Agent
for Tuskegee. I accepted, and remained two years in New England, helping
to interest friends in my _alma mater_. At my own request I was
transferred from the Northern work to the South, being assigned this
time to the Negro Conference work in Alabama. Before beginning this work
I was married to a Tuskegee girl, Miss Sallie McCann.
Within a few months a principal was needed for the Swayne Public School
of Montgomery, Ala., and this in the middle of the school year. Mr.
Washington recommended me for the work, and I was elected to the
position. At the close of the term I went to New York to study the
public-school system of that city as far as possible. While there I was
reelected principal of the Swayne School, and a notice of the election
reached me one morning. Three hours later I received a letter from the
secretary of the University of Arkansas (white) informing me that my
name had been presented to the board of trustees of that institution,
and I had been elected to the presidency of the State Branch Normal
College at Pine Bluff, Ark. I was not a candidate for the position, but
seeing in it an opportunity for greater usefulness, I accepted the
position in my twenty-fifth year, and have just been reelected to serve
a third term as president of the school. The Branch Normal College was
established in 1875 as one of the Land Grant colleges, and has a
property valuation of $100,000.
Over my desk hangs a picture of the Principal of Tuskegee; and in my
desk are views of the institution which he has built. But these may be
removed. In the book of my memory and in the secret chambers of my heart
I have enshrined the two names which, with God and the parents now on
the other side of the Great Divide, have shaped and given direction to
my whole life--Tuskegee and Booker T. Washington.
II
A SCHOOL PRINCIPAL'S STORY
BY WILLIAM H. HOLTZCLAW
I was born in Randolph County, Ala., near the little town of Roanoke.
The house in which I first saw the light--or that part of it which
streamed through the cracks, for there were no windows--was a little log
cabin 12 by 16 feet. I know very little of my ancestry, except that my
mother was the daughter of her mother's master, born in the days of
slavery, and up to 1864 herself the slave of her half-brother. She was
born in the State of Georgia. My father was born in Elmore County, Ala.
He never knew his father, but remembered his mother and eleven brothers.
My mother was married twice before she married my father. She married
first at the age of fifteen. I am the fifth of fifteen children, and my
father's oldest child. Neither my father nor my mother could read or
write; mother could get a little out of some pages of the Bible by
spelling each word as she came to it.
My early years were spent on a farm. When only four years old I was put
to such work as I could do--such as riding a deaf and blind mule, while
my brother plowed him in order to make him go forward, for he cared
nothing for assault from the rear. We worked for a white man for
one-fourth of the crop. He furnished the stock, land, and seeds, and we
did the work, although he was supposed to help. He furnished money to
"run" us at fifteen to a hundred per cent, according to the time of the
year. He grew wealthier; we grew, if possible, poorer. Before I was
fifteen years old I instinctively felt the injustice of the scheme. When
the crop was divided he got three loads of corn to our one, and somehow
he always got all the cotton: never did a single bale come to us.
Those were hard times for us; for it must be remembered that this was in
the days of reconstruction and the Ku-Klux-Klan, and if to this be added
the fact that my father, a young and inexperienced man, had started out
with a family of six on his hands, some idea of the situation may be
had. I can recall having been without food many a day, and the pangs of
hunger drove me almost to desperation. But mother and father would come
late at night from a day of depressing toil and excruciating inward
pain, the result of their inability to relieve our suffering, and pacify
us for the night with such things as they had been able to get. When I
awoke the next morning they were gone again on a food mission.
Hunger would sometimes nearly drive us mad. My brother and I were given
a meal of pie-crusts from the white folks' table one day, and as we ate
them, Old Buck, the family dog, who resembled an emaciated panther,
stole one of the crusts. It was our dinner. We loved Old Buck, but we
had to live first; so my brother lit on him, and a battle royal took
place over that crust. Brother was losing ground, so I joined in, and,
coming up from the rear, we conquered and saved the crust, but not till
both of us were well scratched and bitten.
I was put to school at the age of six. Both mother and father were
determined that their children should be educated. School lasted two
months in the year--July and August. The schoolhouse was three miles
from our house, but we walked every day, my oldest sister carrying me
astride her neck when I gave out. Sometimes we had an ear of roasted
green corn in our basket for dinner, or a roasted sweet potato, but more
often simply persimmons, or fruit and nuts picked from our landlord's
orchard and from the forest.
When cotton began to open, in the latter part of August, the landlord
wanted us to stop school and pick cotton, and I can distinctly remember
how my mother used to outgeneral him by slipping me off to school
through the woods, following me through the swamps and dark places, with
her hand on my back, shoving me on till I was well on the way, and then
returning to try to do as much in the field that day as she and I
together would be expected to do. When the landlord came to the quarters
early to look for me, my mother would hide me behind the cook-pot and
other vessels. When I was a little older I had to play my part on the
farm. Mother now worked another scheme. I took turns with my brother at
school and at the plow. What he learned at school on his school-day was
taught to me at night, and vice versa. In this way we got a month of
schooling each during the year, and got the habit of home study.
Our family was increasing rapidly, and to keep the children even roughly
clothed and fed was about all that could be done under the
circumstances. When the school exhibition took place and every girl was
expected to have a white dress and every boy a pair of white
pantaloons, my mother was often put to her trumps to get these things.
Father would not trouble himself about them, as he said they were
useless. But the teacher said they were necessary, and his word was law
and gospel with most parents in our community. An exhibition was near at
hand and three of us had no white pantaloons. Mother manipulated every
scheme, but no cloth yet to make them! Finally the day arrived, but not
till mother solved the problem by getting up before dawn that morning
and making three pairs of white pantaloons for us out of her Sunday
petticoat. Mother was of a determined disposition, and seldom failed to
solve a domestic problem. We looked about as well as other people's
children in that exhibition--at least we thought we did, and that was
sufficient. But it must be remembered that there is just so much cloth,
and no more, in a petticoat. So our suits were necessarily made tight. I
had to be careful how I got around on the stage.
I usually had different teachers every year, as one teacher seldom cared
to stay at a place for more than a session. I well remember the
disadvantages of this custom. One teacher would have me in a Third
Reader and fractions, another in Fifth Reader and addition. When I
reached the point where the teacher ordered me to get a United States
History, the book-store did not have one, but sold me a biography of
Martin Luther instead, which I studied for some time, thinking that I
was learning something about the United States. I did not know what the
United States was or was like, although I had studied geography and knew
something about South America and Africa; and my teacher did not tell
me. My teacher at this time was a good man, but that was all. Many of my
teachers knew very little, but I thought they knew everything, and that
was sufficient, for their teaching was wholesome. I remember one or two,
however, whose work, under the circumstances, would be hard to match
even now.
As soon as I was old enough I was hired out for wages, to help support
the family. My school opportunities were now almost gone, and for this
reason, together with a desire for more excitement, I began to grow
restless on the farm. I grew morose. I pulled myself loose from all
public functions, ceased to attend any public meetings, save regular
monthly church meetings, and betook me to the woods, where I read
everything I could get. It was during this time that accidentally, I
may say providentially, I got hold of a book containing the life of
Ignacius Sancho; and I have never read anything that has given me more
inspiration. I wish every Negro boy in the land might read it. I read
and worked, and helped to support the family. I had vowed that as soon
as I was twenty-one I would leave for some school and there stay until I
was educated. I was already a little in advance of the young people in
my community, so I spent my long winter evenings teaching a little
night-school to which the young people of the neighborhood came.
All my life up to this time my father had been working as a tenant. He
now determined to strike out for himself--buy stock and rent land. The
mule he bought soon became hopelessly lame in the back. It was a
peculiar sort of illness. Once upon his feet, he could work all day
without difficulty, but when he lay down at night he had to be helped up
the following morning. During that entire season the first thing I heard
each morning was the voice of my father, "Children, children, get up!
let's go and help up the old mule." A neighbor also was called in each
morning to help. Toward the end of the season the school opened. We were
so anxious to enter, that we determined to help the old mule. My
brother and I hitched ourselves to the plow, and sister did the plowing.
Early each morning we plowed in this way, and soon finished the crop and
entered the little school.
My father and some others had built a little school out of pine poles
which they had cut, and hauled to the spot on their shoulders. The
teacher, a married man, easily won all his pupils, but I could never
forgive him for winning and finally eloping with his pretty assistant
teacher.
Christmas eve, 1889, I went to bed a boy. Just after breakfast the next
morning I became a man--my own man. "Sandy Claw" did not come that
night, although I had hung up my stocking, and I was feeling bad about
it. After breakfast my father called me out into the yard, where we
seated ourselves on the protruding roots of a large oak-tree, and there
he set me free.
"Son," said he, "you are nearing manhood, and you have no education;
besides, if you remain with me I will not be able to help you when you
are twenty-one. We've decided to make you free, if you'll make us one
promise--that you will educate yourself."
By that time my mother had joined the party. I cried, I know not why,
and my mother cried; even my father could not conceal his emotion. I
accepted the proposal immediately, and although we usually took
Christmas till New Year's day, my Christmas that year was then at an
end. Manhood had dawned upon me that morning. I tried to be calm, but
inwardly I was like a fish out of water.
I struck out to find work, that I might make money to go to school. One
mile across the forest brought me to a man who hired me, and promised me
$9.25 a month for nine months.
At the end of six months I came across the Tuskegee Student, published
at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. I read every line in
it. On the first page was a note: "There is an opportunity for a limited
number of able-bodied young men to enter the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute and work their way through, provided application is
made at once. Booker T. Washington, Principal."
Work their way through! I had never heard of such a thing before.
Neither had I heard of Tuskegee. I sent in my application. I did not
know how to address a letter, and so only put "Booker T. Washington" on
the envelope. Somehow he received it and gave me permission to come.
There ensued a general scramble to get ready to go by the opening of
school. I broke off relations with my employer by compromising for a
suit of clothes and $8 in money. My chum, a man of about forty years of
age, seeing the struggle I was making to get off, offered to help me, or
rather to show me how to get the money easily by stealing a few chickens
and selling them. It was a tempting bait, but against all the previous
teachings of my mother. He argued, and my mother, who was not there,
also argued within me. I could not consent. My friend pitied me and
offered to do the job himself.
To get a supply of clothes to take to Tuskegee was the question. Up to
that time I had never worn an undershirt, or a pair of drawers, or a
stiff-bosom shirt, or a stiff collar. 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. I was admitted, after some
hesitancy on the part of Principal Washington, and sent to the farm to
work for one year in the daytime and to attend school at night.