as a race is, in a large measure, different from the condition of
the white race by which we are surrounded; that our capacity is very
largely different from that of the people of the white race. I know we
like to say the opposite. It sounds well in compositions, does well
in rhetoric, and makes a splendid essay, for us to make the opposite
assertion. It does very well in a newspaper article, but when we come
down to hard facts we must acknowledge that our condition and capacity
are not equal to those of the majority of the white people with whom we
come in daily contact.
Of course that does not sound very well; but to say that we are equal
to the whites is to say that slavery was no disadvantage to us. That
is the logic of it. To illustrate. Suppose a person has been confined
in a sick room, deprived of the use of his faculties, the use of his
body and senses, and that he comes out and is placed by the side of a
man who has been healthy in body and mind. Are these two persons in
the same condition? Are they equal in capacity? Is the young animal
of a week old, although he has all the characteristics that his
mother has, as strong as she? With proper development he will be, in
time, as strong as she, but it is unreasonable to say that he is as
strong at present. And so, I think, this is all that we can say of
ourselves--with proper development our condition and capacity will be
the same as those of the people of any other race.
Now, the fact that our capacity as a people is different, and that the
conditions which we must meet are different, makes it reasonable for us
to believe that, when the question of education is considered, we shall
find that different educational methods are desirable for us from those
which would be appropriate to the needs of a people whose capacity and
conditions are different from ours. What we most need, in my opinion,
for the next few generations, is such an education as will help us most
effectually to conquer the forces of nature;--I mean in the general
sense of supplying food, clothing, homes, and a substantial provision
for the future.
Do not think that I mean by this that I do not believe in every
individual getting all the education, he or she can get,--for I do.
But since for some years to come, at least, it must of necessity
be impossible for all of our young people to get all the education
possible, or even all they may want to get, I believe they should apply
their energies to getting such a training as will be best fitted to
supply their immediate needs.
In Scotland, for instance, where higher education has been within reach
of the people for many years, and where the people have reached a high
degree of civilization, it is not out of place for the young people
to give their time and attention to the study of metaphysics and of
law and the other professions. Of course I do not mean to say that we
shall not have lawyers and metaphysicians and other professional men
after a while, but I do mean to say that I think the efforts of a large
majority of us should be devoted to securing the material necessities
of life.
When you speak to the average person about labor--industrial work,
especially--he seems to get the idea at once that you are opposed
to his head being educated--that you simply wish to put him to work.
Anybody that knows anything about industrial education knows that it
teaches a person just the opposite--how not to work. It teaches him to
make water work for him,--air, steam, all the forces of nature. That is
what is meant by industrial education.
Let us make an illustration. Yesterday I was over in the creamery and
became greatly interested in the process of separating the cream. The
only energy spent was that required to turn a crank. The apparatus had
been so constructed as to utilize natural forces. Now compare the old
process of butter-making with the new. Before, you had to go through a
long process of drudgery before the cream could be separated from the
milk, and then another long process before the cream could be turned
into butter, and then, even after churning three or four hours at a
time, you got only a small portion of butter. Now what we mean by
giving you an industrial education is to teach you so to put brains
into your work that if your work is butter-making, you can make butter
simply by standing at a machine and turning a crank.
If you are studying chemistry, be sure you get all you can out of the
course here, and then go to a higher school somewhere else. Become as
proficient in the science as you can. When you have done this, do not
sit down and wait for the world to honour you because you know a great
deal about chemistry--you will be disappointed if you do--but if you
wish to make the best use of your knowledge of chemistry, come back
here to the South and use it in making this poor soil rich, and in
making good butter where the farmers have made poor butter before. Used
in this way you will find that your knowledge of chemistry will cause
others to honour you.
During the last thirty years we, as a race, have let some golden
opportunities slip from us, and partly, I fear, because we have not had
enough plain talk in the direction I am following with you to-night.
If you ever have an opportunity to go into any of the large cities
of the North you will be able to see for yourselves what I mean. I
remember that the first time I went North--and it was not so very many
years ago--it was not an uncommon thing to see the barber shops in the
hands of coloured men. I know coloured men who in that way could have
become comfortably rich. You cannot find to-day in the city of New
York or Boston a first-class barber shop in the hands of coloured men.
That opportunity is gone, and something is wrong that it is so. Coming
nearer home; go to Montgomery, Memphis, New Orleans, and you will find
that the barber shops are gradually slipping away from the hands of the
coloured men, and they are going back into dark streets and opening
little holes. These opportunities have slipped from us largely because
we have not learned to dignify labour. The coloured man puts a dirty
little chair and a pair of razors into a dirtier looking hole, while
the white man opens his shop on one of the principal streets, or in
connection with some fashionable hotel, fits it up luxuriously with
carpets, handsome mirrors and other attractive furniture, and calls
the place a "tonsorial parlour." The proprietor sits at his desk and
takes the cash. He has transformed what we call drudgery into a paying
business.
Still another instance. You can remember that only a few years ago
one of the best paying positions that a large number of coloured
men filled was that of doing whitewashing. A few years ago it would
not have been hard to see coloured men in Boston, Philadelphia or
Washington carrying a whitewash tub and a long pole into somebody's
house to do a job of whitewashing. You go into the North to-day, and
you will find very few coloured men at that work. White men learned
that they could dignify that branch of labour, and they began to study
it in schools. They gained a knowledge of chemistry which would enable
them to understand the mixing of the necessary ingredients; they
learned decorating and frescoing; and now they call themselves "house
decorators." Now that job is gone, perhaps to come no more; for now
that these men have elevated this work, and introduced more intelligent
skill into it, do you suppose any one is going to allow some old man
with a pole and a bucket to come into the house?
Then there is the field occupied by the cooks. You know that all over
the South we have held--and still hold to a large extent--the matter
of cooking in our hands. Wherever there was any cooking to be done,
a coloured man or a coloured woman did it. But while we still have
something of a monopoly of this work, it is a fact that even this is
slipping away from us. People do not wish always to eat fried meat, and
bread that is made almost wholly of water and salt. They get tired
of such food, and they desire a person to cook for them who will put
brains into the work. To met this demand white people have transformed
what was once the menial occupation of cooking into a profession; they
have gone to school and studied how to elevate this work, and if we
can judge by the almost total absence of coloured cooks in the North,
we are led to believe that they have learned how. Even here in the
South coloured cooks are gradually disappearing, and unless they exert
themselves they will go entirely. They have disappeared in the North
because they have not kept pace with the demand for the most improved
methods of cooking, and because they have not realized that the world
is moving forward rapidly in the march of civilization. A few days
ago, when in Chicago, I noticed in one of the fashionable restaurants
a fine-looking man, well dressed, who seemed to be the proprietor.
I asked who he was, and was told that he was the "chef," as he is
called--the head cook. Of course I was surprised to see a man dressed
so stylishly and presenting such an air of culture, filling the place
of chief cook in a restaurant, but I remembered then, more forcibly
than ever, that cooking had been transformed into a profession--into
dignified labour.
Still another opportunity is going, and we laugh when we mention it,
although it is really no laughing matter. When we think of what we
might have done to elevate it in the same way that white persons have
elevated it, we realize that it was an opportunity after all. I refer
to the opportunity which was in boot-blacking. Of course, here in the
South, we have that yet, to a large extent, because the competition
here is not quite so sharp as in the North. In too many Southern towns
and cities, if you wish your shoes blacked, you wait until you meet a
boy with a box slung over his shoulder. When he begins to polish your
shoes you will very likely see that he uses a much-worn shoe brush,
or, worse still, a scrubbing brush, and unless you watch him closely
there is a chance that he will polish your shoes with stove polish. But
if you go into a Northern city you will find that such a boy as this
does not stand a chance of making a living. White boys and even men
have opened shops which they have fitted up with carpets, pictures,
mirrors, and comfortable chairs, and sometimes their brushes are even
run by electricity. They have the latest newspapers always within
reach for their patrons to read while their work is being done, and
they grow rich. The man who owns and runs such a place as that is not
called a "boot-black"; he is called the proprietor of such and such a
"Shoe-blacking Emporium." And that chance is gone to come no more. Now
there are many coloured men who understand about electricity, but where
is the coloured man who would apply his knowledge of that science to
running brushes in a boot-black stand?
In the South it was a common thing when anybody was taken ill to notify
the old mammy nurse. We had a monopoly of the nursing business for
many years, and up to a short time ago it was the common opinion that
nobody could nurse but one of those old black mammies. But this idea
is being dissipated. In the North, when a person gets ill, he does not
think of sending for any one but a professional nurse, one who has
received a diploma from some nurse-training school, or a certificate of
proficiency from some reputable institution.
I hope you have understood me in what I have been trying to say of
these little things. They all tend to show that if we are to keep pace
with the progress of civilization, we must pay attention to the small
things as well as the larger and more important things in life. They go
to prove that we must put brains into what we do. If education means
anything at all, it means putting brains into the common affairs of
life and making something of them. That is just what we are seeking to
tell to the world through the work of this institution.
There are many opportunities all about us where we can use our
education. You very rarely see a man idle who knows all about
house-building, who knows how to draw plans, to test the strength of
materials that enter into the making of a first-class house. Did you
ever see such a man out of a job? Did you ever see such a man as that
writing letters to this place and that place applying for work? People
are wanted all over the world who can do work well. Men and women are
wanted who understand the preparation and supplying of food--I don't
mean in the small menial sense--but people who know all about it. Even
in this there is a great opportunity. A few days ago I met a woman who
had spent years in this country and in Europe studying the subject of
food economics in all its details. I learn that this person is in
constant demand by institutions of learning and other establishments
where the preparation and the serving of food are important features.
She spends a few months at each institution. She is wanted everywhere,
because she has applied her education to one of the most important
necessities of life.
And so you will find it all through life--those persons who are going
to be constantly sought after, constantly in demand, are those who make
the best use of their opportunities, who work unceasingly to become
proficient in whatever they attempt to do. Always be sure that you have
something out of which you can make a living, and then you will not
only be independent, but you will be in a much better position to help
your fellow-men.
I have spoken about these matters at this length because I believe
them to be the foundation of our future success. We often hear a man
spoken of as having moral character. A man cannot have moral character
unless he has something to wear, and something to eat three hundred
and sixty-five days in a year. He cannot have any religion either. You
will find at the bottom of much crime the fact that the criminals have
not had the common necessities of life supplied them. Men must have
some of the comforts and conveniences--certainly the necessities of
life--supplied them before they can be morally or religiously what they
ought to be.
KEEPING YOUR WORD
I do not want to speak to you continually upon subjects that tend to
show up the weaker traits of character which our race has, but there
are some characteristic points in our life so important that it seems
to me well that we emphasize those which are specially weak just now.
A few weeks ago I mentioned two or three examples which had come under
my own personal observation, of the unreliability of the race, and to
those I now add one or two more.
On three distinct occasions, while travelling, I have found it
necessary to make engagements with hackmen to call at a certain hour
in the morning to take me to an early train, and on no one of these
occasions has the hackman kept his word. In the first case the man
disappointed me entirely, so that I had to walk to the station, a
distance of a mile or more. In the second instance the hackman was to
come at six o'clock, and did not come until half-past six. By that time
I had started to walk, and had gone two or three squares, meeting him
on the way to the place where I had stopped. In the third case the man
was at least an hour late when we met him, after we had walked over
half the distance to the station.
I have spoken at another time of the fact that men who employ coloured
workmen have complained to me that after these men had drawn a week's
pay, they could not be depended upon to return to work the next Monday
morning. In the city of Savannah, Georgia, there are a great many
coloured men employed as stevedores--men who load and unload ships.
If you have read the newspapers carefully you will have noticed that
recently the persons who employ these men have made a new rule, by
which they refuse to pay the stevedores all of their wages at the end
of the week, but retain two days' pay out of each week, from every
individual who works for them, to be paid to them at the end of the
next week. Of course the men do not lose anything in the end by this
method; it simply means that so long as they work for one employer
there are at least two days' pay due them. Of course the labourers
whose wages were thus kept back have made a great noise about it, but
when their employers were asked for an explanation, they said: "We
find by experience that if we pay you all that we owe you on Saturday
night, we cannot depend upon your returning on Monday morning to
continue your work. You are apt to get drunk, or to debauch yourselves
on Sunday so that you are unfitted for your work the next day." This is
the decision these men have arrived at after having employed these men
for a number of years.
Now think of the things I have spoken to you about. You may say with
regard to the last, that to a great extent this action on the part of
the Savannah employers was due to prejudice, to a desire to use the
money withheld for their own selfish purposes, and because they had the
power to do so, but you can very easily understand that if a person
goes on being disappointed month after month in his business, he will
soon conclude that it is best for him to try a hackman of some other
colour and disposition, and that if these Savannah employers find
year after year that they cannot depend on coloured men to give them
thorough, regular, systematic labour, they are going to look out for
persons of another race who will do their work properly.
It is not necessary for me to continue in this strain, and to call
attention to other incidents of this kind, to show, as I have told
you before, that one of the weak points which we as a race must fight
against, is that of not being reliable. Of course I understand that
it is not always possible for a person to keep an engagement, but if
he cannot, it is very rarely the case that he cannot send word to the
person with whom he has made the engagement of his inability to keep
his part of it. In the case of the hackmen who disappointed me, if they
had sent word two or three hours ahead of the time, that they could
not come, or if they had sent another hackman to fill the engagement
for them, I should have thought nothing about it. In the case of those
Savannah labourers, when they found they could not go back to their
work promptly, if they had sent word to that effect, their absence,
perhaps, could have been excused. But it is this habit of disappointing
people in business matters without apparent care or concern that has
given the race the damaging reputation which it has for unreliability.
I speak of these things repeatedly and so plainly because I am
constantly meeting persons who are employers or who would be employers
of our people, and they tell me every time when I speak to them about
work, that their only objection to employing coloured labour is this
very matter I have been speaking of, its unreliability. Many of them
say that they want to employ coloured people, would be glad to give
them places of responsibility, but that they cannot find men who will
stick to their work.
You may say that it is impossible for us to grow and develop, to get
positions of trust and responsibility that will pay good wages, simply
because we are coloured. I will give you an example on this very point.
A few days ago I was in New Orleans, visiting a large sugar refinery.
The firm which operates this refinery employs from two hundred to
three hundred men. I found the young man who has charge of all the
bookkeeping of the firm, through whose hands all the business and cash
of the firm pass--I found this man to be coloured, and that all the
other persons filling responsible positions under him were white.
I remember some two or three years ago having met one of the partners
of this firm in the White Mountains, and he told me at that time of
this young man. He told me that a great many persons came to him and
said: "You ought not to have this coloured man filling this position
when there are so many white persons who want the place." He told me
that he said to these persons: "This young man does my work better than
any one else I have yet found, and so long as he does this, so long
shall I employ him." This gentleman has since died, but the business is
in the hands of his widow, who has so much confidence in the ability of
this young coloured man to manage the affairs of a great business--Mr.
Lewis is his name; perhaps some of you know him--that he is retained,
practically at the head of this great establishment. This single
instance shows that notwithstanding his colour a man can rise for what
is in him; that he can advance when he shows that he can be depended
upon.
Remember that whether you are hackmen, or business men, it pays
whenever you cannot fill an engagement to explain beforehand why you
cannot, and that unless you make a practice of doing this, it will be
impossible for you to get ahead or to attain to places of trust and
responsibility, no matter how much education you may have.
As I have so often said before, if we cannot send out from Tuskegee
and similar schools young men and women who can be depended upon, our
reputation as a race, for the years that are to come, is not going to
be very bright. On the other hand, if we can succeed in sending out
young men and women with a high sense of responsibility, who can at all
times be relied upon to be prompt in business matters, we shall have
gone a long way in redeeming the character of the race and in lifting
it up. In this important matter all of you can help. Do not wait until
you go out from Tuskegee, but begin to-morrow morning, every boy and
girl, to be reliable and to keep at it until reliability becomes a part
of you.
SOME LESSONS OF THE HOUR
This evening I am going to remind you of a few things which you should
get out of the school year, but it will be of very little use for me to
do this unless you make up your minds to do two things.
In the first place you must resolve that you are going to remember
the things I am going to say, and in the second place you must put my
suggestions into practice. If you will make up your minds, then, that
you are going to hold on to these suggestions, so far as your memory is
concerned, and then so far as possible put them into practice, we shall
be able to discuss something that will be of profit to you during the
year.
I want you to get it firmly fixed in your minds that books, industries,
or tools of any character, no matter how thoroughly you master them, do
not within themselves constitute education. Committing to memory pages
of written matter, or becoming deft in the handling of tools, is not
the supreme thing at which education aims. Books, tools, and industries
are but the means to fit you for something that is higher and better.
All these are not ends within themselves; they are simply means. The
end of all education, whether of head or hand or heart, is to make an
individual good, to make him useful, to make him powerful; is to give
him goodness, usefulness and power in order that he may exert a helpful
influence upon his fellows.
One of the things I want you to get out of this year is the ability
to put a proper value upon time. If there is any one lesson that we
all of us need to have impressed upon us more thoroughly and more
constantly than any other, it is that each minute of our lives is of
supreme value, and that we are committing a sin when we allow a single
minute to go to waste. Remember that every five minutes of time you are
spending at this institution is worth so much money to you. How many
people there are who, after they have arrived at the ages of sixty,
seventy, or eighty years, look back with regret and say, "I wish I
could live the years over again." But they cannot. All they can do is
to regret that they have wasted precious minutes, precious hours.
Now your lives are yet before you, not, as in the case of these people,
behind you. Your lives are yet to be lived, and they will be made
successful lives just in proportion as you learn to place a value upon
the minutes. Spend every minute here in hard, earnest study, or in
helpful recreation. Be sure that none of your time is thrown away.
Among other things, you should get out of the year the habit of
reading. Any individual who has learned to love good books, to love
the best newspapers, the best magazines, and has learned to spend some
portion of the day in communication with them, is a happy individual.
You should get yourselves to the point where you will not be happy
unless you do spend a part of each day in this way.