MY LARGER EDUCATION
[Illustration:
A NEW PORTRAIT OF MR. WASHINGTON
“When I had something to say about the white people I said it to the
white people; when I had something to say about coloured people I
said it to coloured people.”
]
MY LARGER EDUCATION
BEING CHAPTERS FROM MY EXPERIENCE
BY
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
_Author of “Up From Slavery,” “The Story of the Negro,” “Character
Building,” etc._
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration: [Logo]]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Learning from Men and Things 3
II. Building a School Around a Problem 21
III. Some Exceptional Men, and What I Have Learned from Them 51
IV. My Experience with Reporters and Newspapers 81
V. The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob 102
VI. A Commencement Oration on Cabbages 128
VII. Colonel Roosevelt and What I Have Learned from Him 158
VIII. My Educational Campaigns Through the South and What They
Taught Me 183
IX. What I Have Learned from Black Men 205
X. Meeting High and Low in Europe 239
XI. What I Learned About Education in Denmark 262
XII. The Mistakes and the Future of Negro Education 287
ILLUSTRATIONS
A new portrait of Mr. Washington _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
A partial view of Hampton Institute 10
The site of Tuskegee Institute when it was first bought 22
The house in Malden, W. Va., in which Mr. Washington
lived when he began teaching 46
Hon. P. B. S. Pinchback, of Louisiana 104
Blanche K. Bruce, of Mississippi 104
Major John R. Lynch, U. S. A. 104
Charles Banks 104
A type of the unpretentious cabin which an Alabama Negro
formerly occupied and the modern home in which he now
lives 124
The “Rising Star” schoolhouse 146
Two types of coloured churches 152
“Little Texas” schoolhouse, Alabama 164
“Washington Model School,” Alabama 164
Mr. Washington addressing an audience of Virginia
Negroes 186
Rufus Herron, of Camp Hill, Ala. 218
Major Robert Russa Moton 218
Professor George Washington Carver 218
Bishop George W. Clinton 218
A meeting of the Negro ministers of Macon County,
Alabama 234
Tompkins Memorial Hall, Hampton Institute 248
Trade School at Hampton Institute 248
Bricklaying at Hampton Institute 268
Blacksmithing at Hampton Institute 268
Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building, Tuskegee
Institute 300
The Office Building in which are located the
administrative offices of the school 300
MY LARGER EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
LEARNING FROM MEN AND THINGS
It has been my fortune to be associated all my life with a problem—a
hard, perplexing, but important problem. There was a time when I looked
upon this fact as a great misfortune. It seemed to me a great hardship
that I was born poor, and it seemed an even greater hardship that I
should have been born a Negro. I did not like to admit, even to myself,
that I felt this way about the matter, because it seemed to me an
indication of weakness and cowardice for any man to complain about the
condition he was born to. Later I came to the conclusion that it was not
only weak and cowardly, but that it was a mistake to think of the matter
in the way in which I had done. I came to see that, along with his
disadvantages, the Negro in America had some advantages, and I made up
my mind that opportunities that had been denied him from without could
be more than made up by greater concentration and power within.
Perhaps I can illustrate what I mean by a fact I learned while I was in
school. I recall my teacher’s explaining to the class one day how it was
that steam or any other form of energy, if allowed to escape and
dissipate itself, loses its value as a motive power. Energy must be
confined; steam must be locked in a boiler in order to generate power.
The same thing seems to have been true in the case of the Negro. Where
the Negro has met with discriminations and with difficulties because of
his race, he has invariably tended to get up more steam. When this steam
has been rightly directed and controlled, it has become a great force in
the upbuilding of the race. If, on the contrary, it merely spent itself
in fruitless agitation and hot air, no good has come of it.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the difficulties that the Negro has met
since emancipation have, in my opinion, not always, but on the whole,
helped him more than they have hindered him. For example, I think the
progress which the Negro has made within less than half a century in the
matter of learning to read and write the English language has been due
in large part to the fact that, in slavery, this knowledge was forbidden
him. My experience and observation have taught me that people who try to
withhold the best things in civilization from any group of people, or
race of people, not infrequently aid that people to the very things that
they are trying to withhold from them. I am sure that, in my own case, I
should never have made the efforts that I did make in my early boyhood
to get an education and still later to develop the Tuskegee Institute in
Alabama if I had not been conscious of the fact that there were a large
number of people in the world who did not believe that the Negro boy
could learn or that members of the Negro race could build up and conduct
a large institution of learning.
A wider acquaintance with men in all the different grades of life taught
me that the Negro’s case is not peculiar. The majority of successful men
are persons who have had difficulties to overcome, problems to master;
and, in overcoming those difficulties and mastering those problems, they
have gained strength of mind and a clearness of vision that few persons
who have lived a life of ease have been able to attain. Experience has
taught me, in fact, that no man should be pitied because, every day in
his life, he faces a hard, stubborn problem, but rather that it is the
man who has no problem to solve, no hardships to face, who is to be
pitied. His misfortune consists in the fact that he has nothing in his
life which will strengthen and form his character; nothing to call out
his latent powers, and deepen and widen his hold on life. It has come
home to me more in recent years that I have had, just because my life
has been connected with a problem, some unusual opportunities. I have
had unusual opportunities for example in getting an education in the
broader sense of the word.
If I had not been born a slave, for example, I never could have had the
opportunity, perhaps, of associating day by day with the most ignorant
people, so far as books are concerned, and thus coming in contact with
people of this class at first hand. The most fortunate part of my early
experience was that which gave me the opportunity of getting into direct
contact and of communing with and taking lessons from the old class of
coloured people who have been slaves. At the present time few
experiences afford me more genuine pleasure than to get a day or a half
a day off and go out into the country, miles from town and railroad, and
spend the time in close contact with a coloured farmer and his family.
And then I have felt for a long while that, if I had not been a slave
and lived on a slave plantation, I never would have had the opportunity
to learn nature, to love the soil, to love cows and pigs and trees and
flowers and birds and worms and creeping things. I have always been
intensely fond of outdoor life. Perhaps the explanation for this lies
partly in the fact that I was born nearly out of doors. I have also,
from my earliest childhood, been very fond of animals and fowls. When I
was but a child, and a slave, I had close and interesting acquaintances
with animals.
During my childhood days, as a slave, I did not see very much of my
mother, since she was obliged to leave her children very early in the
morning to begin her day’s work. The early departure of my mother often
made the matter of my securing breakfast uncertain. This led to my first
intimate acquaintance with animals.
In those days it was the custom upon the plantation to boil the Indian
corn that was fed to the cows and pigs. At times, when I had failed to
get any other breakfast, I used to go to the places where the cows and
pigs were fed and make my breakfast off this boiled corn, or else go to
the place where it was the custom to boil the corn, and get my share
there before it was taken to the animals.
If I was not there at the exact moment of feeding, I could still find
enough corn scattered around the fence or the trough to satisfy me. Some
people may think that this was a pretty bad way in which to get one’s
food, but, leaving out the name and the associations, there was nothing
very bad about it. Any one who has eaten hard-boiled corn knows it has a
delicious taste. I never pass a pot of boiled corn now without yielding
to the temptation to eat a few grains.
I think that I owe a great deal of my present strength and ability to
work to my love of outdoor life. It is true that the amount of time that
I can spend in the open air is now very limited. Taken on an average, it
is perhaps not more than an hour a day, but I make the most of that
hour. In addition to this I get much pleasure out of the anticipation
and the planning for that hour.
When I am at my home at Tuskegee, I usually find a way, by rising early
in the morning, to spend at least half an hour in my garden, or with my
fowls, pigs, or cows. As far as I can get the time, I like to find the
new eggs each morning myself, and when at home am selfish enough to
permit no one else to do this in my place. As with the growing plants,
there is a sense of freshness and newness and of restfulness in
connection with the finding and handling of newly laid eggs that is
delightful to me. Both the anticipation and the realization are most
pleasing. I begin the day by seeing how many eggs I can find, or how
many little chickens there are that are just beginning to peep through
the shells.
I am deeply interested in the different kinds of fowls, and, aside from
the large number grown by the school in its poultry house and yards, I
grow at my own home common chickens, Plymouth Rocks, Buff Cochins and
Brahmas, Peking ducks, and fantailed pigeons.
The pig, I think, is my favourite animal. I do not know how this will
strike the taste of my readers, but it is true. In addition to some
common bred pigs, I keep a few Berkshires and some Poland Chinas; and it
is a real pleasure to me to watch their development and increase from
month to month. Practically all the pork used in my family is of my own
raising.
This will, perhaps, illustrate what I mean when I say that I have gotten
a large part of my education from actual contact with things, rather
than through the medium of books. I like to touch things and handle
them; I like to watch plants grow and observe the behaviour of animals.
For the same reason, I like to deal with things, as far as possible, at
first hand, in the way that the carpenter deals with wood, the
blacksmith with iron, and the farmer with the earth. I believe that
there is something gained by getting acquainted, in the way which I have
described, with the physical world about you that is almost
indispensable.
A number of years ago, in a book called, “Up From Slavery,” I told a
story of my early life, describing the manner in which I got my early
schooling and the circumstances under which I came to start the Tuskegee
Normal and Industrial Institute. At the time that school was organized I
had read very little, and, in fact, few books on the subject of
teaching, and knew very little about the science of education and
pedagogy. I had had the advantage of going through an exceptional school
at Hampton and of coming in contact with an inspired teacher in General
Armstrong; but I had never attempted to formulate the methods of
teaching I used in that school, and I had very little experience in
applying them to the new and difficult problems I met as soon as I
attempted to conduct a school of my own. What I learned about the
science of education I learned in my efforts in working out the plans
for, and organizing and perfecting the educational methods at, Tuskegee.
[Illustration:
A PARTIAL VIEW OF HAMPTON INSTITUTE, VIRGINIA
Where Mr. Washington received a large part of the training and of the
inspiration for his great work
]
The necessity of collecting large sums of money every year to carry on
the work at Tuskegee compelled me to travel much and brought me in
contact with all kinds of people. As soon as I began to meet educated
and cultivated people, people who had had the advantage of study in
higher institutions of learning, as well as the advantages of much
reading and travel, I soon became conscious of my own disadvantages. I
found that the people I met were able to speak fluently and with perfect
familiarity about a great many things with which I was acquainted in
only the vaguest sort of way. In speaking they used words and phrases
from authors whom I had never read and often never heard of. All this
made me feel more keenly my deficiencies, and the more I thought about
it the more it troubled and worried me. It made me feel all the more
badly because I discovered that, if I were to carry on the work I had
undertaken to do, if I was ever going to accomplish any of the things
that it seemed to me important to do, I should never find time, no
matter how diligent and studious I might be, to overtake them and
possess myself of the knowledge and familiarity with books for which I
envied those persons who had been more highly educated than myself.
After a time, however, I found that while I was at a certain
disadvantage among highly educated and cultivated people in certain
directions, I had certain advantages over them in others. I found that
the man who has an intimate acquaintance with some department of life
through personal experience has a great advantage over persons who have
gained their knowledge of life almost entirely through books. I found
also that, by using my personal experience and observation; by making
use of the stories that I had heard, as illustrations; by relating some
incident that happened in my own case or some incident that I had heard
from some one else, I could frequently express what I had to say in a
much clearer and more impressive way than if I made use of the language
of books or the statements and quotations from the authors of books.
More than that, as I reflected upon the matter, I discovered that these
authors, in their books, were after all merely making use of their own
experiences or expressing ideas which they had worked out in actual
life, and that to make use of their language and ideas was merely to get
life second hand.
The result was that I made up my mind that I would try to make up for my
defects in my knowledge of books by my knowledge of men and things. I
said I would take living men and women for my study, and I would give
the closest attention possible to everything that was going on in the
world about me. I determined that I would get my education out of my
work; I would learn about education in solving the problems of the
school as they arose from day to day, and learn about life by learning
to deal with men. I said to myself that I would try to learn something
from every man I met; make him my text-book, read him, study him, and
learn something from him. So I began deliberately to try to learn from
men. I learned something from big men and something from little men,
from the man with prejudice and the man without prejudice. As I studied
and understood them, I found that I began to like men better; even those
who treated me badly did not cause me to lose my temper or patience, as
soon as I found that I could learn something from them.
For example, some years ago, I had an experience which taught me a
lesson in politeness and liberality which I shall long remember. I was
in a large city making calls on wealthy people in order to interest them
in our work at Tuskegee Institute. I called at the office of a man, and
he spoke to me in the most abrupt and insulting manner. He not only
refused to give any money but spoke of my race in a manner that no
gentleman of culture ought ever to permit himself to speak of another
race. A few minutes later I called on another gentleman in the same
city, who received me politely, thanked me for calling upon him, but
explained that he was so situated that he could not help me. My
interview with the first man occupied about twice as much of his time
and my time as was true of the second gentleman. I learned from this
experience that it takes no more time to be polite to every one than it
does to be rude.
During the later years of my experience I have had the good fortune to
study not only white men and learn from them, but coloured men as well.
In my earlier experiences I used to have sympathy with the coloured
people who were narrow and bitter toward white people. As I grew older I
began to study that class of coloured people, and I found that they did
not get anywhere, that their bitterness and narrowness toward the white
man did not hurt the white man or change his feeling toward the coloured
race, but that, in almost every case, the cherishing of such feeling
toward the white man reacted upon the coloured man and made him narrow
and bitter.
In the chapters which follow, I have given some account of the way in
which my work has brought me in contact, not so much with plants and
animals and with physical objects, but rather with human institutions,
with politics, with newspapers, with educational and social problems of
various kinds and descriptions, and I have tried to indicate in every
case the way in which I have been educated through them.
One of the purposes in writing these later chapters from my experience
is to complete the story of my education which I began in the book, “Up
From Slavery”; to answer the questions I have frequently been asked as
to how I have worked out for myself the educational methods which we are
now using at Tuskegee; and, finally, to illustrate, for the benefit of
the members of my own race, some of the ways in which a people who are
struggling upward may turn disadvantages into opportunities; how they
may gain within themselves something that will compensate them for what
they have been deprived of from without.
If I have learned much from things, I have learned more from men. The
work that I started to do brought me early in contact with some of the
most generous, high-minded and public-spirited persons in the country.
In the chapters that follow I have tried to indicate what I have learned
from contact with those men. Perhaps I can best indicate the way in
which I have been educated by my contact with these men if I tell
something of my relations with one man from whom, after General
Armstrong, my first teacher, I learned, perhaps, more than from any
other. I refer to the late William H. Baldwin, Jr.
I well remember my first meeting with Mr. Baldwin, although the exact
date has now slipped from my memory. He was at that time manager and
vice-president of the Southern Railway, with headquarters in Washington,
D. C. I had been given a letter to him by his father, in Boston. I found
him one morning in his office and presented this letter, which he read
over carefully, as was his custom in such matters. Then we began talking
about the school at Tuskegee and its work. I had been in the room but a
few minutes when the conviction forced itself upon me that I had met a
man who could thoroughly understand me and whom I understood. Indeed, I
had the feeling that I was in the presence of one in whose mind there
was neither faltering nor concealment, and one from whom it would be
impossible to hide a single thought or purpose. I never had occasion,
during all the years that I knew Mr. Baldwin, to change the opinion
formed of him at my first visit, or to feel that the understanding
established between us then was ever clouded or diminished.
Mr. Baldwin did not at first manifest any definite interest in the work
at Tuskegee. He said he would come down and “look us over” and if he
found we were doing “the real thing,” as he expressed it, he would do
anything he could to help us.
Within a few weeks after this first meeting, Mr. Baldwin fulfilled his
promise to “look us over” and see if we were doing “the real thing.” He
spent a busy day on the grounds of the institution, going through every
department with the thoroughness of an experienced executive. He found,
as a matter of course, a great many deficiencies in the details of the
management and organization of the school, but he saw what the
institution was striving to do and at once determined to help. In fact,
from that time he never lost an opportunity to serve the institution in
every possible way. He was just as deeply and as practically interested
in everything that concerned the progress and reputation of the school
and its work as any one connected with it. I think I never met any one
who was more genuinely interested than Mr. Baldwin in the success of the
Negro people. During his last visit to Tuskegee I remember that Mrs.
Washington said to me one day that she would be glad when he went away.
She meant that he sympathized too deeply, felt too profoundly the
bigness of the task and the limitations under which the school was
labouring. He was touched by everything he saw. The struggles of
individual students and teachers whom he came to know weighed heavily on
him and he needed to get out of the atmosphere of the school and its
work, and rest. None of us realized at that time that the disease that
finally took him away was already doing its fatal work.
William H. Baldwin, Jr., understood, as few men have, the Negro people,
and, understanding them as he did, he was in full sympathy with their
ambition to rise to a position of usefulness as large and as honourable
as that of any other race. Persons who knew him only slightly, after
hearing him express himself on the race question, gained the impression
that he was not in full sympathy with the deepest aspirations of the
Negro people. But this impression was mistaken. He was, before all,
anxious that the Negro people, in their struggle to go forward and
succeed, should not mistake the appearance for the real thing. In his
effort to have them avoid this danger he sometimes seemed to go too far.
But I would do injustice to the memory of Mr. Baldwin if, by anything I
have written or said, I should leave the impression that, because he was
interested in the welfare of the Negro, he was any the less interested
in the progress of the white race in the South. He saw with perfect
clearness that both races were, to a certain extent, hampered in their
struggles upward by conditions which they had inherited and for which
neither was wholly responsible. He saw, also, that in the long run the
welfare of each was bound up with that of the other. Much as he did for
Negro education, he never overlooked an opportunity to get money and
secure support for the education of the unfortunate white people of the
South.
Mr. Baldwin’s greatest service to Tuskegee Institute was in the
reorganization of the finances of the institution. When he first became
one of the trustees, the business organization of the school, its
finances, and the system of keeping the accounts were in a very
uncertain and unsatisfactory condition. He began at once to look into
our investments and to study the items of our annual budget. The school
was growing rapidly. The number of productive industries carried on by
the school, the large amount of building we were engaged in, and the
large amount of business carried on between the different departments
made the accounts of the school particularly complicated and the problem
of a proper business organization a most important one.
As I look back over the years in which he and I worked together, it
seems to me that the most pleasant and profitable hours I have ever
known were spent with Mr. Baldwin in his library in Brooklyn, while we
studied out together the problems and discussed the questions which this
work involved. When I came to New York he would often invite me to his
home and, as soon as dinner was over, we would spend three or four hours
in his library, sometimes not breaking up our conference until after
midnight.
Among other things I learned from Mr. Baldwin was that it is the
smaller, the petty, things in life that divide people. It is the great
tasks that bring men together. Any man who will take up his life in a
broad spirit, not of class nor sect nor locality, but in the freer
spirit which seeks to perform a work simply because it is good, that man
can have the support and the friendship of the best and highest people
in the world.
As I have said before, I do not regret that I was born a slave. I am not
sorry that I found myself part of a problem; on the contrary, that
problem has given direction and meaning to my life and has brought me
friendships and comforts that I could have gotten in no other way.