THE EAGERNESS FOR LEARNING
Necessity compels most of the coloured youth seeking education to work
with their hands and pay as they go. It is better thus, even for those
who do not expect to follow trades. I do not believe that any young man
who has worked his way through Yale or Harvard regrets the experience.
All whom I have met were proud of the achievement, and considered it an
important part of the training that was to make them useful and capable
men.
Many thousand letters of application for admission to the Tuskegee
Institute are on file in my office. Their general trend is one of the
strongest arguments for the gospel of hard work with head and hands.
These young men and women from nearly every state of the Union and many
foreign countries are writing me scores of letters daily, asking for a
chance to get an education. With them there is no such thing as taking
it for granted that they will be sent to school by somebody else. They
have felt the force of newly awakened ambition, and lacking money to
support themselves for three, four or five years in school, are eager
to work for it. If their parents share this ambition, it is often the
case that prayers, and heartfelt wishes, and hopes are all they can
give their children to help them along the rough road to freedom.
For lack of room, we are forced to refuse each year thousands of
applicants, earnest, pleading candidates, most of them, who are willing
to make any sacrifices, to endure any burden of toil, to get the
training that is to help them and enable them to help others. Merely to
look through these piles of letters as they have accumulated for years
would require many days' labour. I have chosen a few of them at random,
for they show why Tuskegee students are in earnest from the beginning
of their school work to the end, and why they go out to earn a living,
armed with sincerity of purpose.
I have taken the liberty of making them easier to read by correcting
the crude spelling and expression in some of them.
[Illustration: CARNEGIE LIBRARY. BUILT BY INSTITUTE STUDENTS]
Here is one in which the writer has a fondness for imposing words
without quite knowing how to handle them:
_Dear President_: I that delights in education have by
recommendation conceived an idea of applying to your worthy
school, if possible, for education, provided I am qualified to
enter. Believing that your catalogue will give me a thorough
understanding of the same, I will hereby [ask] that you send me
one of your complete catalogues that I may prepare to enter the
ensueing fall. Now, sir, you will please excuse me if I give you
knowledge of my disposition. I am full of delight in education.
Therefore I will try to be one of the most pious students of the
time. This would also cause me to be grateful for the privileges,
especially those of labour, for this is my first inquiry whether I
might remain in school during vacation and work. In fact, I would
have, please, sir, a prompt and continual job in school. Please,
sir, to interest yourself in my welfare in this circumstance.
_Dear Sir_: Wishing to enter the Tuskegee Institute, I hereby
write you for information. I wish to enter night school and work
in the day as an apprentice in the machine department. My parents
are poor and not able so assist me in going to school, so my only
chance is to work my way if there be any chance at all. I am now
twenty-one years old. I am working with my father on a farm where
I have been working ever since I have been large enough. I have
been going so school some, but a very little, while I were very
small, and I had not been in several years until this Mr. ----
came here, and now I am working every day and going to school at
night. I am proud to say that he has done me good two ways by
telling me of the chances afforded in the Tuskegee Institute for
poor boys and girls to educate themselves, and he has enthused my
ambition for educating and bettering my condition. Please send me
a catalogue of the school, that I may see just how I must start to
enter.
Yours truly, desiring an education.
_Dear Sir_: I have heard so much and read so much of your school,
until I am craving to come and take a part with the leading people
of my colour. Mr. Washington, I've heard that a poor person who
desires to make a mark in the world and haven't the means, you
would take them and let them work the first year for two hours
lessons at night, and let this help on their expenses for the
next year. If this is correct, will you please write me at once,
for I am a poor girl, and is so very anxious to learn some good
trade, also have good learning in books, and I am too poor to go
to school and pay. So if you will let me in, I am willing to work
very hard, indeed I am. Please send me a clear understanding of
the school, for I am anxious to be a great woman. Please write me
at an early date.
_Dear Sir_: I have read and heard a great deal of your school, and
I want to attend it this summer. I would like to know whether I
could work all of my way or not, as my parents is not able to send
me, and I want to go to school, I want to take a special course in
sewing.
_Kind Sir_: I received your immediate reply, and I was truly glad
to hear from you, and to receive your circular of information and
its meanings. But there is a few questions of importance I wish
to ask. Can I enter the night school at once, or is there any
limited time the school closes, and when are the sessions? Now,
I hope I can enter at once, and stay the year around, or as long
as I can be employed at the place, so that I can pay my board and
schooling, as I have no parents and I am trying to make a start
for an education. I am a member of the church and a lover of the
Sunday School, also I feel that I have a superior calling from on
high. Therefore I wish to secure even a good English education.
May God provide for your success is the prayer of your humble
servant.
_Kind Sir_: I have thought to write you since your lecture up here
in the adjoining county last fall. Mr. Washington, I have a great
desire for an education and it seems that I have many besetments
in life that prohibits me from saving just the amount of money
that I need to educate myself as I desire so do, and I will
inquire of you if your college has any way that a young man could
work his tuition out. If so, please let me know just what terms I
could enter on, as I have fully made up my mind to try to educate
myself, provided any school will help me in my struggle. I see
the need of an education, and I see that there is fields of work
for a young man of my age. Mr. Washington, if you please, give me
a chance if you can, I am willing to work my way through at any
position you would put me at to pay for my learning. I am not too
proud to do any work I can help to educate myself. I want to join
that goodly number of Negroes that is making such success at your
school. Please pardon such a long letter.
Your humble questioner.
_Mr. Washington_: I would be more than glad to appreciate your
school, inasmuch as to come down and attend about two terms, if
you are not filled. I am not able to pay my board in money, and if
there is any vacancy in your school where I can work and pay, I
would be more than glad. Please let me know immediately, so I will
know what to do. Let me know all about your charges per month.
Please reply at once, because I want to come as early as possible.
[Illustration: THE TAILOR SHOP]
_Dear Sir_: I received your kind circulars some days ago, and I
was more than glad to hear as I did. I would have wrote before
now, but thinking I could come soon, I waited. Though times is so
hard, of course a poor boy that has no one to help him has a hard
time, but by the help of the Lord, I am going to make a man of
myself. I want to come as soon as I can. I am going to bring every
one that will come with me. I want to stay there and work until I
can master a trade.
_Dear Sir_: I takes great pleasure in writing to you a few lines,
and hopes this will find you well. I want to complete the full
course of education, and am not exactly able to bear my expenses
through. I would like to know whether you will give me a position
to work to pay my expenses through. If you will, it will be a
great favour and consolation to me. Write soon, and let me hear
from you, and please send me full particulars.
_Dear Sir_: After reading and hearing so much talk of your school,
I made it up in my mind that I would like to attend your school,
as I have been trying to get an education for the last two years.
I attended school here in Texas for six months this term, but
owing to my money running short I had to quit school and go to
work. I am a poor boy, and I desire to get an education. Do you
think that you could give me work to pay my school? I want an
industrial education, and am not able to pay for it, and I will do
any work I can get to pay for my lesson.
"I would like to attend your school, but being poor I can't
enter as a day student. I write to know if I can enter as a
work student. I would like to enter soon enough so that I can
work during the summer months. Mr. Washington, I am anxious to
get a good training. Being poor and fatherless, I have had few
advantages, and that is why I have applied to you as I have. If
you will or will not receive me, please let me know as soon as
possible."
"I received your circular and was carefully reading the terms.
There is some few more hints I would like to ask you. If I arrive
there with forty dollars, could I attend the whole nine months
of a school year? My occupation has been for the last four years
cooking. Before then it was farming, but I can do a little laundry
work also. In these four years I have attended school two terms in
public school. I am very anxious for an industrial education, so
therefore I desire to attend your school. The industrial studies
I would like to learn are carriage-trimming and laundry work.
My studies are United States History, Arithmetic, English, and
Geography. If you think I can stay the whole term on forty dollars
let me know, and I will be there in August. I am twenty-two years
of age."
"Please let me know whether you can furnish girls work enough to
support them in school. I see in the 'Voice of Missions' where
you will give ministers work to support themselves. Is there any
chance for a girl who wants an education? I have read of your
school, and would like so well to come there, but I live so far
away, until I would not be able to pay my fare from New Orleans
and then pay my school expenses. Please let me know the cheapest
that I could enter school, also the distance and cost from New
Orleans. I would like to enter next season without fail. Please
write me by return mail without fail."
_Dear Sir_: During your recent lecturing tour you stopped here and
I was determined to hear you, and when I heard you I was fired
with the ambition to go to school. I tried to get an audience with
you, but owing to so many others who were as enthusiastic as I, I
could only speak a few words with you. Do you remember the young
man who spoke to you about going to your school? As I said before,
I did not have time to explain it all to you. I am unable to pay
my way through your school, but I am more than willing to work my
way through. You told me that I could when I spoke to you about it.
_Dear Sir_: My boy ran away from home during my absence from home
in January. After he was gone, I learned from his associates that
he said he was going to Tuskegee to school. Please inform me
whether he has made his appearance there or not.
_Dear Sir_: Do you think it best for me to enter as soon as
possible, or wait until the next term, but I would rather enter as
soon as possible. But will do as you think best. I have a mother
and grandmother to support, and if I can get an education I know
that I will be better fitted to support them, and I am sure that
you will agree with me in the matter. And if you will give me a
chance, I will be a man among my people some day.
_Dear Sir_: I am sorry that I cannot be admitted. In case of a
vacancy, will you notify me, or until there is a chance could I
come to the school in the summer? I am a poor girl. If I can't
come in the summer, I am going to try to earn enough money to come
and stay two or three months as soon as you will let me, even if
there is no room to live at the school.
"I will write you a few lines to ask if you please to let me enter
into your band of coloured scholars. That is, I want to come to
your school in the daytime, or at night and work the rest of the
time. If there is any way fixed, let me know whether my name can
be put in your roll book. I have just left school a few days ago,
and I want to get in as soon as possible. I have been striving to
come to your school going on three years, and at last I have got
to the point that if you will let me in I will be over there the
first day of March. Please, sir, let me in, if there is any way
that can be fixed to do so. I would be one of the happiest boys in
the world if you say I could come. Please write me word just as
soon as you read it."
_Dear Sir_: Having just read again a short biography of your life,
and being desirous of obtaining a better education, I thought I
would write you and perhaps gain the necessary information. Last
year I completed the course in the High School here. When school
opened in September, I joined the Normal Training Class here and
since then I have been training in for a second and third grade
teacher. I have had about eight months of piano music and two of
vocal, and one school year in the elements of elocution. I am
desirous of becoming a school teacher, and realise how necessary
it is to have a better education. I have no support but an aged
mother. I had almost given up hope, but when I read of others
working their way through college, I am resolved to try. Is there
any possible way of earning my schooling at Tuskegee? I thought
perhaps I could teach in the primary grades a part of the day to
pay for what I should get. Or perhaps I could work in some other
way. I am willing to do any honest labour to get an education.
You doubtless get letters of this kind daily, but I only ask that
you please answer and tell me if there is any chance for a poor
girl obtaining knowledge. I am so anxious that I would willingly
work during the vacations and holidays. Please answer this, and
if I cannot gain entrance at Tuskegee, perhaps you can tell me
of some school where I can. If your answer is favorable, I will
immediately begin to earn money to pay my way there, for those of
us who are in the training class receive no salary.