The Struggle For An Education
One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two
miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in
Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about
any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little
coloured school in our town.
In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to
the two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not only
was the school established for the members of any race, but the
opportunities that it provided by which poor but worthy students could
work out all or a part of the cost of a board, and at the same time be
taught some trade or industry.
As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be
the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more
attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.
After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few
months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a
vacant position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of
the salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General
Ruffner, was a “Yankee” woman from Vermont. Mrs. Ruffner had a
reputation all through the vicinity for being very strict with her
servants, and especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few of
them remained with her more than two or three weeks. They all left with
the same excuse: she was too strict. I decided, however, that I would
rather try Mrs. Ruffner’s house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my
mother applied to her for the vacant position. I was hired at a salary
of $5 per month.
I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner’s severity that I was almost
afraid to see her, and trembled when I went into her presence. I had
not lived with her many weeks, however, before I began to understand
her. I soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything
kept clean about her, that she wanted things done promptly and
systematically, and that at the bottom of everything she wanted
absolute honesty and frankness. Nothing must be sloven or slipshod;
every door, every fence, must be kept in repair.
I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to
Hampton, but I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate,
I here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons
that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as
any education I have ever gotten anywhere else. Even to this day I
never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that
I do not want to pick them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I
do not want to clean it, a paling off of a fence that I do not want to
put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to
paint or whitewash it, or a button off one’s clothes, or a grease-spot
on them or on a floor, that I do not want to call attention to it.
From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my
best friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so
implicitly. During the one or two winters that I was with her she gave
me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a
portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at
night, sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom I could hire to
teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all
my efforts to get an education. It was while living with her that I
began to get together my first library. I secured a dry-goods box,
knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting
into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called
it my “library.”
Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner’s I did not give up the idea
of going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I determined to
make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no
definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it
would cost to go there. I do not think that any one thoroughly
sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless it was my
mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out
on a “wild-goose chase.” At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent
from her that I might start. The small amount of money that I had
earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the
family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very
little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. My
brother John helped me all that he could, but of course that was not a
great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn
much, and most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying the
household expenses.
Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with
my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older
coloured people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of
their lives in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time
when they would see a member of their race leave home to attend a
boarding-school. Some of these older people would give me a nickel,
others a quarter, or a handkerchief.
Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton. I had only a
small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing I could
get. My mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I
hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more
sad. She, however, was very brave through it all. At that time there
were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with
eastern Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the
remainder of the distance was travelled by stage-coaches.
The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had
not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton. One
experience I shall long remember. I had been travelling over the
mountains most of the afternoon in an old-fashion stage-coach, when,
late in the evening, the coach stopped for the night at a common,
unpainted house called a hotel. All the other passengers except myself
were whites. In my ignorance I supposed that the little hotel existed
for the purpose of accommodating the passengers who travelled on the
stage-coach. The difference that the colour of one’s skin would make I
had not thought anything about. After all the other passengers had been
shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, I shyly presented myself
before the man at the desk. It is true I had practically no money in my
pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I had hoped in some way
to beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, for at that season
in the mountains of Virginia the weather was cold, and I wanted to get
indoors for the night. Without asking as to whether I had any money,
the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of
providing me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in
finding out what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I managed to
keep warm by walking about, and so got through the night. My whole soul
was so bent upon reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish
any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper.
By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and
dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city, and
this rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond, I was
completely out of money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place,
and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied
at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was
what I did not have. Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the
streets. In doing this I passed by many food-stands where fried chicken
and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most
tempting appearance. At that time it seemed to me that I would have
promised all that I expected to possess in the future to have gotten
hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. But I could not
get either of these, nor anything else to eat.
I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so
exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired, I was hungry, I was
everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme
physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board
sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till I
was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the
sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of
clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet
over my head. The next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I
was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since I had had
sufficient food. As soon as it became light enough for me to see my
surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and that this ship
seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron. I went at once to the
vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in
order to get money for food. The captain, a white man, who seemed to be
kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn money for my
breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have been about
the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.
My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I
could continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad
to do. I continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After
buying food with the small wages I received there was not much left to
add on the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to
economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a
reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave
me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. Many years after that the
coloured citizens of Richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at
which there must have been two thousand people present. This reception
was held not far from the spot where I slept the first night I spent in
the city, and I must confess that my mind was more upon the sidewalk
that first gave me shelter than upon the recognition, agreeable and
cordial as it was.
When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
started again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a
surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me
it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large,
three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all
that I had undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who
gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence
the sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths,
they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed
to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen.
The sight of it seemed to give me new life. I felt that a new kind of
existence had now begun—that life would now have a new meaning. I felt
that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle
prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to
accomplish the most good in the world.
As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton
Institute, I presented myself before the head teacher for an assignment
to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and a
change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable
impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in
her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I
could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless
loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither
did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and
to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the
meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to
my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as
well as they, if I could only get a chance to show what was in me.
After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: “The
adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it.”
It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive
an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner
had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.
I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and
dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench,
table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides,
every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in
the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large
measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher
in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the
head teacher. She was a “Yankee” woman who knew just where to look for
dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then
she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the
walls, and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one
bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the
furniture, she quietly remarked, “I guess you will do to enter this
institution.”
I was one of the happiest souls on Earth. The sweeping of that room was
my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for
entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction.
I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt
that this was the best one I ever passed.
I have spoken of my own experience in entering the Hampton Institute.
Perhaps few, if any, had anything like the same experience that I had,
but about the same period there were hundreds who found their way to
Hampton and other institutions after experiencing something of the same
difficulties that I went through. The young men and women were
determined to secure an education at any cost.
The sweeping of the recitation-room in the manner that I did it seems
to have paved the way for me to get through Hampton. Miss Mary F.
Mackie, the head teacher, offered me a position as janitor. This, of
course, I gladly accepted, because it was a place where I could work
out nearly all the cost of my board. The work was hard and taxing but I
stuck to it. I had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work
late into the night, while at the same time I had to rise by four
o’clock in the morning, in order to build the fires and have a little
time in which to prepare my lessons. In all my career at Hampton, and
ever since I have been out in the world, Miss Mary F. Mackie, the head
teacher to whom I have referred, proved one of my strongest and most
helpful friends. Her advice and encouragement were always helpful in
strengthening to me in the darkest hour.
I have spoken of the impression that was made upon me by the buildings
and general appearance of the Hampton Institute, but I have not spoken
of that which made the greatest and most lasting impression on me, and
that was a great man—the noblest, rarest human being that it has ever
been my privilege to meet. I refer to the late General Samuel C.
Armstrong.
It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great
characters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say
that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of
General Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave
plantation and the coal-mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be
permitted to come into direct contact with such a character as General
Armstrong. I shall always remember that the first time I went into his
presence he made the impression upon me of being a perfect man: I was
made to feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. It
was my privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered
Hampton till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in
my estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings,
class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women
there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General
Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. The
older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which
one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which
can be gotten from contact with great men and women. Instead of
studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges
might learn to study men and things!
General Armstrong spent two of the last six months of his life in my
home at Tuskegee. At that time he was paralyzed to the extent that he
had lost control of his body and voice in a very large degree.
Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and
day for the cause to which he had given his life. I never saw a man who
so completely lost sight of himself. I do not believe he ever had a
selfish thought. He was just as happy in trying to assist some other
institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton. Although
he fought the Southern white man in the Civil War, I never heard him
utter a bitter word against him afterward. On the other hand, he was
constantly seeking to find ways by which he could be of service to the
Southern whites.
It would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the
students at Hampton, or the faith they had in him. In fact, he was
worshipped by his students. It never occurred to me that General
Armstrong could fail in anything that he undertook. There is almost no
request that he could have made that would not have been complied with.
When he was a guest at my home in Alabama, and was so badly paralyzed
that he had to be wheeled about in an invalid’s chair, I recall that
one of the General’s former students had occasion to push his chair up
a long, steep hill that taxed his strength to the utmost. When the top
of the hill was reached, the former pupil, with a glow of happiness on
his face, exclaimed, “I am so glad that I have been permitted to do
something that was real hard for the General before he dies!” While I
was a student at Hampton, the dormitories became so crowded that it was
impossible to find room for all who wanted to be admitted. In order to
help remedy the difficulty, the General conceived the plan of putting
up tents to be used as rooms. As soon as it became known that General
Armstrong would be pleased if some of the older students would live in
the tents during the winter, nearly every student in school volunteered
to go.
I was one of the volunteers. The winter that we spent in those tents
was an intensely cold one, and we suffered severely—how much I am sure
General Armstrong never knew, because we made no complaints. It was
enough for us to know that we were pleasing General Armstrong, and that
we were making it possible for an additional number of students to
secure an education. More than once, during a cold night, when a stiff
gale would be blowing, our tent was lifted bodily, and we would find
ourselves in the open air. The General would usually pay a visit to the
tents early in the morning, and his earnest, cheerful, encouraging
voice would dispel any feeling of despondency.
I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was
but a type of that Christlike body of men and women who went into the
Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in
lifting up my race. The history of the world fails to show a higher,
purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found
their way into those Negro schools.
Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking
me into a new world. The matter of having meals at regular hours, of
eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of
the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all
new to me.
I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the
Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath. I learned there
for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body
healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my
travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always
in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been
the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been
easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have
always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should
be a part of every house.
For some time, while a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single
pair of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I
would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I
might wear them again the next morning.
The charge for my board at Hampton was ten dollars per month. I was
expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder.
To meet this cash payment, as I have stated, I had just fifty cents
when I reached the institution. Aside from a very few dollars that my
brother John was able to send me once in a while, I had no money with
which to pay my board. I was determined from the first to make my work
as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable. This I
succeeded in doing to such an extent that I was soon informed that I
would be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work. The
cost of tuition was seventy dollars a year. This, of course, was wholly
beyond my ability to provide. If I had been compelled to pay the
seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, I
would have been compelled to leave the Hampton school. General
Armstrong, however, very kindly got Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New
Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time
that I was at Hampton. After I finished the course at Hampton and had
entered upon my lifework at Tuskegee, I had the pleasure of visiting
Mr. Morgan several times.
After having been for a while at Hampton, I found myself in difficulty
because I did not have books and clothing. Usually, however, I got
around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more
fortunate than myself. As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had
practically nothing. Everything that I possessed was in a small hand
satchel. My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact
that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in
ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished,
there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots. To wear
one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the schoolroom,
and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard problem for me to
solve. In some way I managed to get on till the teachers learned that I
was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then some of them were kind
enough to see that I was partly supplied with second-hand clothing that
had been sent in barrels from the North. These barrels proved a
blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving students. Without them I
question whether I should ever have gotten through Hampton.
When I first went to Hampton I do not recall that I had ever slept in a
bed that had two sheets on it. In those days there were not many
buildings there, and room was very precious. There were seven other
boys in the same room with me; most of them, however, students who had
been there for some time. The sheets were quite a puzzle to me. The
first night I slept under both of them, and the second night I slept on
top of them; but by watching the other boys I learned my lesson in
this, and have been trying to follow it ever since and to teach it to
others.
I was among the youngest of the students who were in Hampton at the
time. Most of the students were men and women—some as old as forty
years of age. As I now recall the scene of my first year, I do not
believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with
three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest
as these men and women were. Every hour was occupied in study or work.
Nearly all had had enough actual contact with the world to teach them
the need of education. Many of the older ones were, of course, too old
to master the text-books very thoroughly, and it was often sad to watch
their struggles; but they made up in earnest much of what they lacked
in books. Many of them were as poor as I was, and, besides having to
wrestle with their books, they had to struggle with a poverty which
prevented their having the necessities of life. Many of them had aged
parents who were dependent upon them, and some of them were men who had
wives whose support in some way they had to provide for.
The great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every
one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home. No one
seemed to think of himself. And the officers and teachers, what a rare
set of human beings they were! They worked for the students night and
day, in seasons and out of season. They seemed happy only when they
were helping the students in some manner. Whenever it is written—and I
hope it will be—the part that the Yankee teachers played in the
education of the Negroes immediately after the war will make one of the
most thrilling parts of the history off this country. The time is not
far distant when the whole South will appreciate this service in a way
that it has not yet been able to do.