This is a story about a Negro. The story has the peculiarity of being
true. The man was born a slave in Virginia. His mother was a slave, and
was thrice sold in the market-place. This man is Booker T. Washington.
The name Booker was a fanciful one given to the lad by playmates on
account of his love for a certain chance dog-eared spelling-book. Before
this he was only Mammy's Pet. The T. stood for nothing, but later a
happy thought made it Taliaferro.
Most Negroes, fresh from slavery, stood sponsor to themselves, and chose
the name Washington; if not this, then Lincoln, Clay or Webster.
This lad when but a child, being suddenly asked for his name, exclaimed,
"Washington," and stuck to it.
The father of this boy was a white man; but children always take the
status of the mother, so Booker T. Washington is a Negro, and proud of
it, as he should be, for he is standard by performance, even if not by
pedigree.
This Negro's father is represented by the sign _x_. By remaining in
obscurity the fond father threw away his one chance for immortality. We
do not even know his name, his social position, or his previous
condition of turpitude. We assume he was happily married and
respectable. Concerning him legend is silent and fable dumb. As for the
child, we are not certain whether he was born in Eighteen Hundred
Fifty-eight or Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and we know not the day or
the month. There were no signs in the East.
The mother lived in a log cabin of one room, say ten by twelve. This
room was also a kitchen, for the mother was cook to the farmhands of her
owner. There were no windows and no floor in the cabin save the
hard-trodden clay. There were a table, a bench and a big fireplace.
There were no beds, and the children at night simply huddled and cuddled
in a pile of straw and rags in the corner. Doubtless they had enough
food, for they ate the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table--who,
by the way, wasn't so very rich.
One of the earliest recollections of Black Baby Booker was of being
awakened in the middle of the night by his mother to eat fried chicken.
Imagine the picture--it is past midnight. No light in the room save the
long, flickering streaks that dance on the rafters. Outside the wind
makes mournful, sighing melody. In the corner huddled the children,
creeping close together with intertwining arms to get the warmth of each
little half-naked body.
The dusky mother moves swiftly, deftly, half-frightened at her task.
She has come in from the night with a chicken! Where did she get it?
Hush! Where do you suppose oppressed colored people get chickens?
She picks the bird--prepares it for the skillet--fries it over the
coals. And then when it is done just right, Maryland style, this mother
full of mother-love, an ingredient which God never omits, shakes each
little piccaninny into wakefulness, and gives him the forbidden
dainty--drumstick, wishbone, gizzard, white meat, or the part that went
through the fence last--anything but the neck.
Feathers, bones, waste are thrown into the fireplace, and what the
village editor calls the "devouring element" hides all trace of the
crime. Then all lie down to sleep, until the faint flush of pink comes
into the East, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain-tops.
* * * * *
This ex-slave remembers a strange and trying time, when all of the
colored folk on the plantation were notified to assemble at the "big
house." They arrived and stood around in groups, waiting and wondering,
talking in whispers. The master came out, and standing on the veranda
read from a paper in a tremulous voice. Then he told them that they were
all free, and shook hands with each. Everybody cried. However, they were
very happy in spite of the tears, for freedom to them meant heaven--a
heaven of rest. Yet they bore only love towards their former owners.
Most of them began to wander--they thought they had to leave their old
quarters. In a few days the wisest came back and went to work just as
usual. Booker T.'s mother quit work for just half a day.
But in a little while her husband arrived--a colored man to whom she had
been married years before, and who had been sold and sent away. Now he
came and took her and the little monochrome brood, and they all started
away for West Virginia, where they heard that colored men were hired to
work in coalmines and were paid wages in real money.
It took months and months to make the journey. They carried all their
belongings in bundles. They had no horses--no cows--no wagon--they
walked. If the weather was pleasant they slept out of doors; if it
rained they sought a tobacco-shed, a barn, or the friendly side of a
straw-stack. For food they depended on a little cornmeal they carried,
with which the mother made pone-cakes in the ashes of a campfire. Kind
colored people on the way replenished the meal-bag, for colored people
are always generous to the hungry and needy if they have anything to be
generous with. Then Providence sent stray, ownerless chickens their way,
at times, just as the Children of Israel were fed on quails in the
wilderness. Once they caught a 'possum--and there was a genuine banquet,
where the children ate until they were as tight as drums.
Finally they reached the promised land of West Virginia, and at the
little village of Maiden, near Charleston, they stopped, for here were
the coal mine and the salt-works where colored men were hired and paid
in real money.
Booker's stepfather found a job, and he also found a job for little
Booker. They had nothing to live on until pay-day, so the kind man who
owned the mine allowed them to get things at the store on credit. This
was a brand-new experience--and no doubt they bought a few things they
did not need, for prices and values were absolutely out of their realm.
Besides, they did not know how much wages they were to get, neither
could they figure the prices of the things they bought. At any rate,
when pay-day came they were still in debt, so they saw no real
money--certainly little Booker at this time of his life never did.
* * * * *
General Lewis Ruffner owned the salt-works and the coalmine where little
Booker worked. He was stern, severe, strict. But he believed Negroes
were human beings, and there were those then who disputed the
proposition.
Ruffner organized a night-school for his helpers, and let a couple of
his bookkeepers teach it. At this time there was not a colored person in
the neighborhood who could spell cat, much less write his name. A few
could count five. Booker must have been about ten years old when one day
he boasted a bit of his skill in mathematics. The foreman told him to
count the loads of coal as they came out of the mine. The boy started in
bravely, "One--two--three--four--dere goes one, dere goes anoder,
anoder, anoder, anoder, anoder!"
The foreman laughed.
The boy was abashed, then chagrined. "Send me to the night-school and in
a month I'll show you how to count!"
The foreman wrote the lad an order which admitted him to the
night-school.
But now there was another difficulty--the boy worked until nine o'clock
at night, the last hour's work being to sweep out the office. The
night-school began at nine o'clock and it was two miles away.
The lad scratched his head and thought and thought. A great idea came to
him--he would turn the office clock ahead half an hour. He could then
leave at nine o'clock, and by running part of the way could get to
school at exactly nine o'clock.
The scheme worked for two days, when one of the clerks in the office
said that a spook was monkeying with the clock. They tried the plan of
locking the case, and all was well.
Booker must have been about twelve years old, goin' on thirteen, when
one day as he lay on his back in the coalmine, pushing out the broken
coal with his feet, he overheard two men telling of a very wonderful
school where colored people were taught to read, write and cipher--also,
how to speak in public. The scholars were allowed to work part of the
time to pay for their board.
The lad crawled close in the darkness and listened to the conversation.
He caught the names "Hampton" and "Armstrong." Whether Armstrong was the
place and Hampton was the name of the man, he could not make out, but he
clung to the names.
Here was a school for colored people--he would go there! That night he
told his mother about it. She laughed, patted his kinky head, and
indulged him in his dream.
She was only a poor black woman; she could not spell ab, nor count to
ten, but she had a plan for her boy--he would some day be a preacher.
This was the very height of her imagination--a preacher! Beyond this
there was nothing in human achievement. The night-school came after a
day of fourteen hours' work. Little Booker sat on a bench, his feet
dangling about a foot from the floor. As he sat there one night trying
hard to drink in knowledge, he went to sleep. He nodded, braced up,
nodded again, and then pitched over in a heap on the floor, to the great
amusement of the class, and his own eternal shame.
The next day, however, as he was feeling very sorrowful over his sad
experience, he heard that Mrs. Ruffner wanted a boy for general work at
the big house.
Here was a chance. Mrs. Ruffner was a Vermont Yankee, which meant that
she had a great nose for dirt, and would not stand for a "sassy nigger."
Her reputation had gone abroad, and of how she pinched the ears of her
"help," and got them up at exactly a certain hour, and made them use
soap and water at least once a day, and even compelled them to use a
toothbrush; all this was history, well defined.
Booker said he could please her, even if she was a Yankee. He applied
for the job and got it, with wages fixed at a dollar a week, with a
promise of twenty-five cents extra every week, if he did his work
without talking back and breaking a tray of dishes.
* * * * *
"Genius! No hovel is safe from it!" says Whistler.
Genius consists in doing the right thing without being told more than
three times.
Booker silently studied the awful Yankee woman to see what she really
wanted. He finally decided that she desired her servants to have clean
skins, fairly neat clothing, do things promptly, finish the job and keep
still when they had nothing to say.
He set himself to please her--and he did.
She loaned him books, gave him a lead-pencil, and showed him how to
write with a pen without smearing his hands and face with ink.
He told her of his dream and asked about Armstrong and Hampton. She told
him that Armstrong was the man and Hampton the place.
At last he got her consent to leave and go to Hampton.
When he started she gave him a comb, a toothbrush, two handkerchiefs and
a pair of shoes. He had been working for her for a year, and she
thought, of course, he saved his wages. He never told her that his money
had gone to keep the family, because his stepfather had been on a strike
and therefore out of work.
So the boy started away for Hampton. It was five hundred miles away. He
didn't know how far five hundred miles is--nobody does unless he has
walked it.
He had three dollars, so he gaily paid for a seat in the stage. At the
end of the first day he was forty miles from home and out of money. He
slept in a barn, and a colored woman handed him a ham-bone and a chunk
of bread out of the kitchen-window, and looked the other way.
He trudged on east--always and forever east--towards the rising sun.
He walked weeks--months--years, he thought. He kept no track of the
days. He carried his shoes as a matter of economy.
Finally he sold the shoes for four dollars to a man who paid him ten
cents cash down, and promised to pay the rest when they should meet at
Hampton. Nearly forty years have passed and they have never met.
On he walked--on and on--east, and always forever east.
He reached the city of Richmond, the first big city he had ever seen.
The wide streets--the sidewalks--the street-lamps entranced him. It was
just like heaven. But he was hungry and penniless, and when he looked
wistfully at a pile of cold fried chicken on a street-stand and asked
the price of a drumstick, at the same time telling he had no money, he
discovered he was not in heaven at all. He was called a lazy nigger and
told to move on.
Later he made the discovery that a "nigger" is a colored person who has
no money.
He pulled the piece of rope that served him for a belt a little tighter,
and when no one was looking, crawled under a sidewalk and went to
sleep, disturbed only by the trampling overhead.
When he awoke he saw he was near the dock, where a big ship pushed its
bowsprit out over the street. Men were unloading bags and boxes from the
boat. He ran down and asked the mate if he could help. "Yes!" was the
gruff answer.
He got in line and went staggering under the heavy loads.
He was little, but strong, and best of all, willing, yet he reeled at
the work.
"Have you had any breakfast? Yes, you liver-colored boy--you, I say,
have you had your breakfast?"
"No, sir," said the boy; "and no supper last night nor dinner
yesterday!"
"Well, I reckoned as much. Now you take this quarter and go over to that
stand and buy you a drumstick, a cup of coffee and two fried cakes!"
The lad didn't need urging. He took the money in his palm, went over to
the man who the night before had called him a lazy nigger, and showing
the silver, picked out his piece of chicken.
The man hastened to wait on him, and said it was a fine day and hoped he
was well.
* * * * *
Arriving at Hampton, this colored boy, who had tramped the long, weary
miles, stood abashed before the big brick building which he knew was
Hampton Institute.
He was so little--the place was so big--by what right could he ask to be
admitted?
Finally he boldly entered, and in a voice meant to be firm, but which
was very shaky, said, "I am here!" and pointed to the bosom of his
hickory shirt.
The Yankee woman motioned him to a chair. Negroes coming there were
plentiful. Usually they wanted to live the Ideal Life. They had a call
to preach--and the girls wanted to be music-teachers.
The test was simple and severe: would they and could they do one useful
piece of work well?
Booker sat and waited, not knowing that his patience was being put to
the test.
Then Miss Priscilla, in a hard, Neill Burgess voice, "guessed" that the
adjoining recitation-room needed sweeping and dusting. She handed Booker
a broom and dust-cloth, motioned to the room, and went away.
Oho! Little did she know her lad. The colored boy smiled to
himself--sweeping and dusting were his specialties--he had learned the
trade from a Yankee woman from Vermont! He smiled.
Then he swept that room--moved every chair, the table, the desk. He
dusted each piece of furniture four times. He polished each rung and
followed around the baseboard on hands and knees.
Miss Priscilla came back--pushed the table around and saw at once that
the dirt had not been concealed beneath it. She took out her
handkerchief and wiped the table top, then the desk.
She turned, looked at the boy, and her smile met his half-suppressed
triumphant grin.
"You'll do," she said.
* * * * *
General Samuel C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, and the
grandfather of Tuskegee, was a white man who fought the South valiantly
and well.
He seems about the only man in the North who, at the close of the war,
clearly realized that the war had just begun--that the real enemies were
not subdued, and that these enemies were ignorance, superstition and
incompetence.
The pitiable condition of four million human beings, flung from slavery
into freedom, thrown upon their own resources, with no thought of
responsibility, and with no preparation for the change, meant for them
only another kind of slavery.
General Armstrong's heart went out to them--he desired to show them how
to be useful, helpful, self-reliant, healthy. For the whites of the
South he had only high regard and friendship. He, of all men, knew how
they had suffered from the war--and he realized also that they had
fought for what they believed was right. In his heart there was no hate.
He resolved to give himself--his life--his fortune--his intellect--his
love--his all, for the upbuilding of the South. He saw with the vision
of a prophet that indolence and pride were the actual enemies of white
and black alike. The blacks must be taught to work--to know the dignity
of human labor--to serve society--to help themselves by helping others.
He realized that there are no menial tasks--that all which serves is
sacred.
And this is the man who sowed the seeds of truth in the heart of the
nameless black boy--Booker Washington. Armstrong's shibboleth, too, was,
"With malice toward none, but with charity for all, let us finish the
work God has given us to do."
* * * * *
I do not know very much about this subject of education, yet I believe I
know as much about what others know about it as most people. I have
visited the principal colleges of America and Europe, and the methods of
Preparatory and High Schools are to me familiar. I know the
night-schools of the cities, the "Ungraded Rooms," the Schools for
Defectives, the educational schemes in prisons, the Manual-Training
Schools, the New Education (first suggested by Socrates) as carried out
by G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, and dozens of other good men and women
in America. I am familiar with the School for the Deaf at Malone, New
York, and the School for the Blind at Batavia, where even the sorely
stricken are taught to be self-sufficient, self-supporting and happy. I
have tumbled down the circular fire-escape at Lapeer with the inmates of
the Home of Epileptics, and heard the shouts of laughter from lips that
never laughed before. I have seen the Jewish Manual Training School of
Chicago transform Russian refugees into useful citizens--capable,
earnest and excellent. I know a little about Swarthmore, Wellesley,
Vassar, Radcliffe, and have put my head into West Point and Annapolis,
and had nobody cry, "Genius!"
Of Harvard, Yale and Princeton I know something, having done time in
each. I have also given jobs to graduates of Oxford, Cambridge and
Heidelberg, to my sorrow and their chagrin. This does not prove that
graduates of the great universities are, as a rule, out of work, or that
they are incompetent. It simply means that it is possible for a man to
graduate at these institutions and secure his diploma and yet be a man
who has nothing the world really wants, either in way of ideas or
services.
The reason that my "cum laude" friends did not like me, and the cause of
my having to part with them--getting them a little free transportation
from your Uncle George--was not because they lacked intelligence, but
because they wanted to secure a position, while I simply offered them a
job.
They were like Cave-of-the-Winds of Oshkosh, who is an ice-cutter in
August, and in winter is an out-of-door horticulturist--a hired man is
something else.
As a general proposition, I believe this will not now be disputed: the
object of education is that a man may benefit himself by serving
society.
To benefit others, you must be reasonably happy: there must be animation
through useful activity, good-cheer, kindness and health--health of mind
and health of body. And to benefit society you must also have patience,
persistency, and a firm determination to do the right thing, and to mind
your own business so that others, too, may mind theirs. Then all should
be tinctured with a dash of discontent with past achievements, so you
will constantly put forth an effort to do more and better work.
When what you have done in the past looks large to you, you haven't done
much today.
So there you get the formula of Education: health and happiness through
useful activity--animation, kindness, good-cheer, patience, persistency,
willingness to give and take, seasoned with enough discontent to prevent
smugness, which is the scum that grows over every stagnant pond.
Of course no college can fill this prescription--no institution can
supply the ingredients--all that the college can do is to supply the
conditions so that these things can spring into being. Plants need the
sunlight--mushrooms are different.
The question is, then, what teaching concern in America supplies the
best quality of actinic ray?
And I answer, Tuskegee is the place, and Booker Washington is the man.
"What!" you exclaim. "The Ideal School a school for Negroes, instituted
by a Negro, where only Negroes teach, and only Negroes are allowed to
enter as students?"