most imposing brick structure I had ever seen. Then came Alabama Hall,
where the girls lived. How wonderful! I could hardly believe that I was
not dreaming, and I was almost afraid I should awake. When I went to bed
that night I got between two sheets--something I had not been accustomed
to do. About twelve o'clock an officer came in, threw the cover off me,
and asked some questions about nightshirts, comb and brush, and
tooth-brush, with all of which I was but meagerly acquainted. He made me
get up, pull off my socks, necktie, collar, and shirt, and told me I
would rest better without them. I didn't believe him, but I obeyed.
The next morning I saw more activity among Negroes than I had ever seen
before in my life. Not only was everybody at work, but every soul seemed
to be in earnest. I heard the ringing of the anvil, the click of
machinery, the music of the carpenters' hammers. Before my eyes was a
pair of big fat mules drawing a piece of new and improved farm
machinery, which literally gutted the earth as the mules moved. Here was
a herd of cattle, there a herd of swine; here thumped the mighty
steam-engine that propelled the machine which delivered up its many
thousand of brick daily; there was another machine, equally powerful,
turning out thousands of feet of pine lumber every day. Then there were
the class-rooms, with their dignified teachers and worthy-looking young
men and women. Amid it all moved that wonderful figure, Booker T.
Washington.
I began at once a new existence. I made a vow that I would educate
myself there, or I would die and be buried in the school cemetery. When
Mr. Washington stood at the altar in the first service which I attended
and uttered a fervent prayer asking for guidance, and for spiritual and
financial strength to carry on that great work, I felt that the Lord
would surely answer his prayer. Since then I have traveled practically
all over this country, and in one foreign country, without once seeing
anything that made so deep an impression on me.
[Illustration: MORNING AT THE BARNS ON THE SCHOOL FARM.
Teams of horses and cattle ready to start for the day's work.]
Simultaneously with this opportunity for self-education came many real
hardships--to say nothing of imaginary hardships--which nearly resulted
disastrously to my health. I was poorly clad for the extraordinary
winter then setting in. I had only one undershirt and one pair of
drawers. I could not, of course, put these articles in the laundry, and
therefore had to pull them off on Saturday nights, wash them, and get
them dry enough to wear by breakfast on Sunday morning. It followed that
many Sunday mornings found me sitting at the table wearing damp
underwear. I could do no better, without leaving school, and this I was
determined not to do. I was earnest in my work, and was promoted from a
common laborer to be a hostler in charge of all boys dealing with
horses, and then to the much-sought position of special assistant to the
farm manager.
I was beginning to see the mistakes of my former life, the time I had
lost, and now applied myself diligently. I carried a book with me
everywhere I went, and not a second of time would I lose. While driving
my mules with a load of wood, I would read until I reached the place of
unloading. Mr. Washington took note of this, and upon one occasion,
while admonishing the students to make good use of their time, said:
"There is a young man on the grounds who will be heard from some day
because of his intense application to study and diligence in his work."
I listened. I knew he was speaking of me, and the fact that I was to be
"heard from" later made me double my resolutions.
In September, 1891, I had to my credit in the treasury of the
institution $100, and I was now ready to enter the day-school, to
measure arms with the more fortunate students. But, alas! sickness
overtook me, and when I emerged from the hospital, after about two
months' sickness, my doctor's bill was exactly $100. My accumulated
credit went to pay it.
This was the penalty for making the transit from a lower to a higher
civilization. When I went without undergarments at home, my health was
saved because of uniformity of habit. Now it was injured because I could
wear them this week, but might not be able to do so the
next--irregularity of habit. Then, too, Tuskegee gave me such
living-rooms as I had never lived in, or hoped to. I had lived in log
houses, which are self-ventilating. Now I had either overventilated or
failed to ventilate my room. It is a difficult matter to make the
transit from a lower to a higher civilization. There are many obstacles,
and many have fallen by the way.
I went home to recuperate, but returned to Tuskegee in a few weeks, and
as I had no money I was again permitted to enter the night-school and
work during the day. This time I took up the printers' trade. Here I
broke over the conventional rule of acting "devil" six months, and began
setting type after one month in the office. In six months I was one of
the school's regular compositors; and in one term I had sufficient
credit with the treasurer to enter the day-school.
But I was not yet to enter. A letter came from my father, saying, "If
you wish to see me again alive, I think it would be well to come at
once." I went. My father died a few days after I got home, June 27,
1893.
All hope of future schooling seemed now at an end. My only concern was
to do the best I could with the exceedingly heavy load now left on my
hands. I pulled off my school-clothes, went to the field, and finished
the crop father had left. There was a heavy debt, and I began to teach
school to pay this debt. Of course I knew very little, but I taught what
I knew--and, I suppose, some things I didn't know.
I think even now that I did the people some good. I had not learned much
at Tuskegee in books, but I had learned much from Mr. Washington's
Sunday evening talks in the chapel. I had listened carefully to him and
had treasured up in my heart what he had said from time to time. Now I
was teaching it to others. I felt I was to this little community what
Mr. Washington was to Tuskegee. So I made the people whitewash their
fences and fix up their houses and premises generally. They were very
poor, and when the school closed they could not pay me. I told them I
would take corn, peas, potatoes, sirup, pork, shucks, cotton-seed--in
fact, anything with which they wished to pay me.
Wagons were secured and loaded, and for several days all sorts of
provisions were hauled to my mother's house and stored away for winter.
I went to the house of one good widow, who said:
"'Fesser, I ain't got nothin' to pay you wid but dis 'ere house-cat, and
he's a good'n. I owes you twenty-five cents, and I wants to pay it. You
done my little gal good--more'n any teacher ever did. She ain't stop'
washin' her face yit when she gits up in de mornin'."
"Very well," I said, "I'll take the cat with thanks and call the debt
square."
Another said: "'Fesser, I heard you was coming, and I hid all my meat
in de smoke-house, and says: 'I'll tell him I ain't got none;' but when
I seed you coming I tole de chillen to go open de smoke-house. Anybody
who do my chillens as much good as you, can get every bit de meat I
got." From that woman I got fifty pounds of meat.
Another good woman wanted me to take her only pair of scissors, and when
I refused to do so, she put them into my coat-pocket, saying the man who
taught her child so much must be paid.
For three years I taught school with one personal object in view--the
support of my mother and her family. Mother was not satisfied with this;
she wanted me educated. 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. Upon a very critical examination, in which I averaged
ninety-three for all subjects, I entered the B Middle class in the
day-school.
Financially I was very little better off than when I left, but I had
learned how to manipulate things in such a way as to make it possible to
remain in school. I knew a trade at which I could easily make a dollar a
day in credit, and I could teach during the vacation. Things went
smoothly for one year. Then my brother came, and I had to support him in
part. Just about the time I was getting myself adjusted to this, my
sister came. I knew I should have to support her almost wholly, so I
felt like giving up under such a triple burden; but I held on. I had to
deny myself many of the pleasures of school life in order to make two
ends meet. I had to wear two pairs of pantaloons and one pair of
drawers; and I remember one Sunday, while the school was enjoying a good
sermon by a great bishop, I was in the shop melting some glue, with
which I glued patches on my only pair of pantaloons, which had reached a
condition where thread would no longer hold the patches on. I will not
tell what happened when the patches had been on for a few days.
But amid all these conflicting affairs of my school-days ran an immense
amount of pleasure, more than I had ever known before. I was gradually
coming to see things as they are in the affairs of men. I thought then,
and I still think, that no sacrifice was too great when there was such
a golden opportunity. To sit and listen to one Sunday evening talk by
Principal Washington was worth all the trouble one had to undergo for a
year.
Two years before I graduated I began to inquire what I was made
for--what calling should I follow? It was hard to decide. Mr.
Washington's teaching had impressed me that I should do something to
help those less fortunate than myself, and that in the very darkest
place I could find. My father had called me to his death-bed and said to
me: "Son, I want you to become a teacher of your people. I have done
what I could in that direction. The people need your services." I
recalled how in his last moments I had promised him I would carry out
his wishes. There was nothing else left for me to do but to go into
those dark places. But there was the rub; and every Sunday evening Mr.
Washington thundered that same theme: "Go into the darkest places, the
places where you are most needed, and there give your life with little
thought of self." I knew about those dark places. I had been born in one
of them. I had been spending my vacations teaching in them.
Once, while teaching in the State of Georgia, I boarded with a family
where there were fifteen besides myself, all sleeping, eating, and
cooking in the same room. There were three young women in the family.
When bedtime came I had to go out of doors and amuse myself with the
stars till all the women were in bed; then they would extinguish the
hearth-light by putting some ashes on it and let me come in and go to
bed. I had to keep my head under the cover the next morning while they
got up and dressed. I used to sleep with my nose near a crack in the
wall in order to get fresh air. One little girl in the family, while
saying her prayers one night, begged the Lord to let the angels come
down and stay with them that night. Her little brother promptly
interrupted her by saying that she ought to have sense enough to know
that there was no room in that bed for angels, as there were already
five persons in it. I was used to the country and its worst conditions.
I prayed over the matter till finally I gave myself, heart and mind, to
whatever place should call me.
During my last year at Tuskegee I was made a substitute salaried teacher
in the night-school. My financial burdens were now lifted and my school
life became one great pleasure. Toward the end of my Senior year I
decided to try for the Trinity Prize of $25 for the best original
oration. I remembered what Mr. Washington had so often said: that a man
usually gets out of a thing what he puts into it. I determined to put
$100 worth of effort into this contest. I was awarded the prize.
A place was offered to me at Tuskegee as academic teacher, but I
declined it. I had settled in my mind that I would go to the State of
Mississippi, which I had found by two years of investigation was the
place where my services were most needed. I could not go to Mississippi
at once. I had not money to pay my way, so I accepted a position with my
friend, William J. Edwards, at his school in Snow Hill, Ala., where I
worked for four years, never losing sight of my Mississippi object.
While at Snow Hill I married Miss Mary Ella Patterson, a Tuskegee
graduate of the Class of '95. We put our earnings together and built us
a comfortable little home. One child, William Sidney, was born to us,
but lived only six months.
It took me just two years to convince my wife that there was any wisdom
or judgment in leaving our little home and going to Mississippi, where
neither of us was known. But finally she gave herself, soul and body, to
my way of thinking.
The way was now clear for me to make the start. Just before I left for
Mississippi, one of my old teachers from Tuskegee visited me. He
inquired about my going to Mississippi, and when I explained the scheme
to him, he said jestingly, "You know there is no God in Mississippi." I
simply replied that then I would take "the one that Alabama had" with
me.
I could not take my wife, for she was under the care of a physician at
that time. I decided to leave nearly all my ready cash with her. I did
not take quite enough for my railroad fare, for I had expected to sell
my wife's bicycle when I reached Selma, the nearest town, and thus
secure enough money to finish my trip. But when I got to Selma the wheel
would not sell, so I boarded the train without money enough to reach
Utica, the place in Mississippi to which I was bound.
I had not got far into the State of Mississippi when my purse was empty.
I stopped off at a little town, late at night, where there were no
boarding-houses, and no one would admit me to a private house to sleep.
I wandered about until I came upon an old guano-house, and crawled into
this and slept until the break of day. Then I crawled out, pulled myself
together, jumped astride my bicycle, and made my way toward Utica,
through a wild and unfrequented part of Mississippi. But before I could
reach Utica my wheel broke down, whereupon I put it upon my shoulder,
rolled up my trousers, and continued the journey to Utica. I soon met a
young man who relieved me of my burden by trading me his brass watch for
the wheel and giving me $2 to boot.
I had previously got myself elected principal of the little county
school, which, if I could pass the State examination, would pay me a
little salary, which would be a great help to me while I worked up the
Industrial and Normal School which I had come to build. Much depended on
my ability to pass the examination. Tuskegee's reputation was at
stake--my own reputation was at stake; for, if I failed, the people
would certainly lose confidence in me, and make it impossible for me to
accomplish my purpose.
I was out of money, and this was the only way I could see to get any for
a long time. If I failed, my wife--who was still in Alabama, and who
believed in my ability to do anything--would perhaps lose respect for
me, and, most of all, the failure to pass the examination might upset
all my plans and blast all my hopes. I confess I went to that
examination with a sort of anxious determination. I did not, however,
find it half so difficult as I had expected. I soon succeeded in
obtaining the necessary license to teach in the public schools of the
State.
The little schoolhouse where the school had been heretofore was so much
out of repair that we could not risk having pupils under its roof. I had
hoped to open in the church, but the good deacons would not permit this.
So the few pupils who came the first day were gathered together under an
oak-tree, and there were taught. After some time a temporary cabin was
fixed up, and in this we taught the entire winter. The cabin was
practically no protection against the rain, and less against the winter
winds. The wind literally came through from all directions--from the
sides, ends, above, and beneath.
We soon had the floor stopped up with clay. This brought about another
disadvantage: when it began to rain through the roof, the water would
collect on the floor until it was two or three inches deep. Two young
women were helping me to teach. They often amused me by trying to
maintain their dignity and keep out of the water at the same time. They
would stand upon stools and fire questions at their pupils, who were
standing in the water below while answering them. On such days as this
I usually wore my overcoat and rubber shoes. I would then stand in the
water and teach with as much indifference as possible. We bored holes in
the floor to let the water out, but it usually came through the roof
faster than it could escape. There was much suffering at this time on
the part of both teachers and students, but it was all a joy and
pleasure to me, for I felt that I had found my life-work.
I was a stranger to the people, and they had very little confidence in
me. Some of them questioned my motives in every direction. At the first
meeting of the patrons for the purpose of raising money, seventy-five
cents were collected and were turned over to me to hold. In a couple of
days some one demanded that the collection be taken out of my hands. I
quietly turned it over to them. Then they got up a scramble as to which
one should hold it. They settled the quarrel by selecting a white man in
the town of Utica, in whom all of them had confidence. I then went out
canvassing and got $10, which I promptly turned over. Immediately they
wanted to turn it back to me to hold, together with what the white man
had. They never again questioned my sincerity.
My wife, who was still in Alabama, kept writing me to let her join me.
Explanations would do no good. She laid aside all the comforts of home
life and came to live in a hovel. We rented a little room, bought a
skillet and a frying-pan, a bed and two chairs, and set up housekeeping.
I did the cooking, for my wife was a city girl and did not know how to
cook on the open fireplace. We never contrasted our condition in
Mississippi with that in Alabama; we simply made the best of what we
had.
At first there was difficulty in securing land for a location, and many
of the patrons began to feel that nothing would be accomplished. To
offset this idea I purchased lumber for a building, had it put in the
churchyard, and cut up ready for framing. The enthusiasm had to be kept
up. Land was soon bought and the building started. Everybody felt now
that something was going to be done. At the end of the first year's work
I was able to make to the trustees a creditable report, from which the
following is taken:
As soon as we secured a cabin to teach in, the young people came in
great numbers. We soon had an attendance of 200. One teacher after
another was employed to assist, until seven teachers were daily at
work. After three months in our temporary quarters conditions were
very trying. There was no money to pay teachers or to meet the
grocery bills for teachers' board. The winter was well on, and the
structure in which we were located was little protection against
it. The rain easily came through the roof, and water was often two
inches deep on certain parts of the floor. Several teachers and
students were suffering with pneumonia or kindred disorders, as a
result of all this exposure. I confess that during this dark period
only a carefully planned system and much determination prevented
despair.
During all this time I was trying to secure the interest of the
people. I went from door to door, explaining our efforts; then I
made a tour of the churches; after riding or walking five or ten
miles at night I would return, and then teach the next day. After a
protracted struggle of this kind, and after visiting almost
everybody for many miles, I found that I had secured about $600.
This greatly relieved us. Forty acres of land were purchased, and a
part of the lumber for a good, comfortable building was put upon
the grounds. Some of our trustees in New York city and Boston now
came to our assistance, and with this, and contributions from a few
other friends, we were able to get through the year. Although it
was a great struggle, I found in it some pleasure. To know that
you were doing the work that the world needs, and must have done,
is a pleasure even under trying difficulties.
Starting last October without a cent, in the open air, we have
succeeded in establishing a regularly organized institution
incorporated under the laws of the State of Mississippi, with 225
students and seven teachers, and with property valued at $4,000.
Forty acres of good farm-land about a mile from town have been
secured. A model crop is now growing on this farm. We have erected
a building--a two-story frame--at a cost of something over $2,000.
I hope you will not get, from what I have said, an idea that I am
measuring the success of my efforts by material advancement. I am
not. There are forces which our labors have set to work here, the
results of which can not be measured in facts and figures. One year
ago religious services were held once a month, at which time the
day was spent in singing, praying, and shouting. The way some of
the people lived for the next twenty-nine days would shock a
sensitive individual to read about it. Young people would gamble
with the dice, etc., in a most despicable way, within a short
distance of the church, during services; others would discharge
revolvers at the church door during services; ignorance,
superstition, vice, and immorality were everywhere present,
notwithstanding the handful of determined Christian men and women
who were trying to overcome these evil tendencies. I do not
maintain that these evils have been crushed out. They have not. But
what I do maintain is that the general current has been checked.
The revolution is on; and if we continue the work here, as we
surely will, these evil tendencies will soon be crushed out.
During this year the people themselves furnished $1,000 toward the
support of the school. They have never before spent a tenth as much for
education. The second year eleven teachers were employed and 400
students were admitted. The cost of operations was $10,000, all of which
was raised during the year. We are now entering into our third term.
Fifteen teachers have been employed, and the expenses of operation will
be about $15,000, all of which I must raise by direct effort. Our
property, all deeded to a board of trustees, is valued at $10,000.
I can not feel that I have accomplished much here in Mississippi,
because I see all around me so much to be done--so much that I can not
touch because of lack of means. But, being in the work to stay, I may,
in the end, contribute my share to the betterment of man. If I have
suffered much to build up this work, I can not feel that it is a
sacrifice. It is a colossal opportunity. The greater the sacrifice, the
more extensive the opportunity. Whatever may have been accomplished
already is certainly due more to my wife's superior judgment than to my
own activity. Whatever I have been able to do myself here in Mississippi
for my people has been due, first, to the teachings of my mother, and,
second, to the all-important life-example and matchless teachings of
Booker T. Washington.
III
A LAWYER'S STORY
BY GEORGE W. LOVEJOY
I can give no accurate date as to my birth, as my mother was a slave and
thus it was not recorded, but I think I was born in the month of
February, 1859. I was born in Coosa, one of the middle counties of
Alabama.
I am the third child and the second son of eleven children, seven of
whom are still living.
My father I do not remember, as he died when I was very young, but I
most vividly remember my stepfather, the only father I ever knew.