A Boys' Life of Booker T. Washington/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
SUCCESS AS EDUCATIONAL LEADER
Booker Washington spent his life in the education of the negro. Negroes of ability in his day usually became preachers or they entered politics. The negro preacher had rendered a greater service to his people, perhaps, than any one else. Before 1865, the ministry was practically the only place where negro leadership could find expression. It was much the same way for many years after the Civil War. However, after emancipation, there was an opportunity for leadership in politics, and a great many negroes of ability entered this field, many of them holding offices.
Washington was urged by some of his friends to enter the ministry. Others urged him to study law and enter politics. Undoubtedly he could have made a great success in either of these fields of work. But from the very beginning of his education, he had a strong conviction that his life must be spent in helping to educate his people.
He felt that education was the greatest need of his race. Before the war, it had been against the law for a slave to be taught from books. At the close of the war, then, there were no schools, no teachers, and no books. The whole race could neither read nor write. The whole race had had no training of any kind except in agriculture. It is true a few, but a very few, had had a little training in certain trades such as bricklaying, blacksmithing, and carpentry. The race, therefore, through no fault of its own, was very ignorant. It had never had an opportunity.
But now that the opportunity had come with emancipation, the entire race was eager to learn. Old men and old women, as well as boys and girls, began with great zeal to learn to read and write. The race started to school. It was determined to get an education, and it was to help in this great work that Washington early determined to devote his life.
Just after the war there was much confusion and doubt about the best plan to follow in educating the negro. The Freedmen's Bureau brought a large number of teachers from the North to assist in the task, and much valuable work was done in the negro schools by these teachers. The different Southern states also began to make provision for the negro's education, by organizing schools, building schoolhouses, and making provision for training teachers.
There was much difference of opinion as to just what should be taught the negro. As a rule, the plan followed was to teach him just what had been taught in the white schools. This meant that he would study reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar, and later, Latin, Greek, mathematics and literature.
So much of this kind of teaching was done, and it was so poorly done, and it was so poorly adapted to the needs of the negro at the time, that a great many people began to doubt the wisdom of trying to educate the negro at all. But Washington insisted that the mistake was made in the kind of education they were trying to give him. In answer to the question, "Does it pay to educate the negro?" Washington often told the story of what had taken place in Macon County, Alabama, the county in which Tuskegee is located. In that county, he and Mr. H. H. Rogers decided to build, with the coöperation of the people themselves, a system of excellent schools, and try out as thoroughly as possible the question of the effect of education upon the negro, under favorable conditions. They put up good schoolhouses, secured good teachers, taught practical subjects, and ran the schools for eight or nine months in the year.
What was the result? In a short time people began to come from all parts of the state and outside the state to buy land or to work within reach of these excellent schools. Land advanced in price. Desirable citizens flocked in. Homes were improved. Good roads were built. Better farms appeared. Crime diminished. The sheriff said that he practically had no further use for the jail. Cordial relations existed between the white and negro people. In every way Macon County came to be a better place to live in. The race problem was solved in that county. People were happy and prosperous. They were living clean, wholesome, contented lives. The whole problem of living was, in a large measure, solved. And it was all due to education of the people, and education of the right kind. What was good for Macon County, Alabama, would be good for every county in the country.
Washington's ideas of education were very simple. He had studied carefully the needs of his people. What he wanted was a system of education that would help people directly and immediately; that would enable them to make better crops; build better homes; wear better clothes; eat better food; live cleaner and purer and happier lives. He wanted his people to learn to live; and he believed the school was the place to learn that lesson.
He wanted the children to study practical things; the things they needed. He thought, therefore, that the school ought to be very closely related to life. His idea was that that school was best which turned out students who could earn their own living at once; who had the ability to take care of themselves in whatever environment they happened to be; and who had genuine character. "My experience has taught me," he says, "that the surest way to success in education, and in any other line for that matter, is to stick close to the common and familiar things—things that concern the greater part of the people the greater part of the time."[1]
It was this belief in the close relation between school and life that caused him to have his students, at the beginning of the building of Tuskegee, cut down the trees, plant the crops, make the bricks, build the buildings, cook the food, care for the dormitories, look after the live stock, and do everything that was to be done about the place. He wanted his students to learn to do well all these tasks that they would face in later life. And he also wanted them to learn that it was a perfectly honorable and dignified and sensible thing to labor, to work, to do anything that was honest and useful.
Perhaps there is no better way of understanding Washington's ideas of education and just what he was striving to do at Tuskegee than to describe the commencement exercises at this school.
"On the platform before the audience is a miniature engine to which steam has been piped, a miniature frame house in course of construction, and a piece of brick wall in process of erection. A young man in jumpers comes on the platform, starts the engine and blows the whistle. Whereupon young men and women come hurrying from all directions, and each turns to his or her appointed task. A young carpenter completes the little house, a young mason finishes the laying of the brick wall, a young farmer leads forth a cow and milks her in full view of the audience, a sturdy blacksmith shoes a horse, and, after this patient, educative animal has been shod, he is turned over to a representative of the veterinary division to have his teeth filed. At the same time, on the opposite side of the platform one of the girl students is having a dress fitted by one of her classmates, who is a dressmaker. She at length walks proudly from the platform in her completed new gown, while the young dressmaker looks anxiously after to make sure that it 'hangs right behind.' Other girls are doing washing and ironing with the drudgery removed in accordance with advanced Tuskegee methods. Still others are hard at work on hats, mats, and dresses, while boys from the tailoring department sit cross-legged working on suits and uniforms. In the background are arranged the finest specimens which scientific agriculture has produced on the farm and mechanical skill has turned out in the shop. The pumpkin, potatoes, corn, cotton, and other agricultural products predominate, because agriculture is the chief industry at Tuskegee, just as it is among the negro people of the South.
"This form of commencement exercise is one of Booker Washington's contributions to education which has been widely copied by schools for whites as well as blacks. That it appeals to his own people is eloquently attested by the people themselves, who come in ever-greater numbers as the commencement days recur. At three o'clock in the
morning of this great day, vehicles of every description, each loaded to capacity with men, women, and children, begin to roll in, in an unbroken line which sometimes extends along the road for three miles. Some of the teachers at times objected to turning a large area of the Institute grounds into a hitching-post station for the horses and mules of this great multitude, but to all such objections Mr. Washington replied, 'This place belongs to the people and not to us.' Less than a third of these eight or nine thousand people are able to crowd into the chapel to see the actual graduation exercises; but all can see the graduation procession as it marches through the grounds to the chapel, and all are shown through the shops and over the farm and through the special agricultural exhibits, and even through the offices, including that of the principal. It is significant of the respect in which people hold the Institute, and in which they held Booker Washington, that in all these years there has never been on these occasions a single instance of drunkenness or disorderly conduct."[2]
"One of our students in his commencement oration last May gave a description of how he planted and raised an acre of cabbages. Piled high upon the platform by his side were some of the largest and finest cabbages I have ever seen. He told how and where he had obtained the seed; he described his method of preparing and enriching the soil, of working the land, and harvesting the crop; and he summed up by giving the cost of the whole operation. In the course of his account of this comparatively simple operation, this student had made use of much that he had learned in composition, grammar, mathematics, chemistry, and agriculture. He had not merely woven into his narrative all these various elements that I have referred to, but he had given the audience (which was made up largely of colored farmers from the surrounding country) some useful and practical information in regard to a subject which they understood and were interested in. I wish that any one who does not believe it possible to make a subject like cabbages interesting in a commencement oration could have heard the hearty cheers which greeted the speaker when, at the close of his speech, he held up one of the largest cabbages on the platform for the audience to look at and admire. As a matter of fact there is just as much that is interesting, strange, mysterious and wonderful; just as much to be learned that is edifying, broadening, and refining in a cabbage as there is in a page of Latin. There is, however, this distinction; it will make very little difference to the world whether one negro boy, more or less, learns to construe a page of Latin. On the other hand, as soon as one negro boy has been taught to apply thought and study and ideas to the growing of cabbages, he has started a process which, if it goes on and continues, will eventually transform the whole face of things as they exist in the South to-day."[3]
It can be readily seen from these two accounts just what kind of education Washington believed in and tried to give his students at Tuskegee. It was quite different from most of the training that had been given the negro after the war. In those early days of freedom, many of the negroes seemed to have the idea that the bigger the book and the harder the words in it, the better the education was that they secured. Some of them thought, too, that they were not educated unless they studied Latin and Greek and higher mathematics, and other similar subjects. Booker Washington did not mean that history, literature, and foreign languages should not be studied and had no value. What he was emphasizing was the fact that boys and girls should first get a clear idea of things about them. Then they would be able better to understand and appreciate such subjects as history and literature.
One other feature of the kind of education that Tuskegee stands for ought to be mentioned, and that is the extension work. This work has become a very large part of the Institute. The extension work is not so much a matter of teaching, of education in the usual sense, as it is an effort to give direct and practical help to people outside the college walls. Most of this extension work has been done in Macon and adjoining counties. From the first month of his school, Washington began to go into the country round about and mingle with his people. He went to their homes, 
The Institute sends its workers throughout the surrounding country to show the farmers improved farm machinery, better methods of farming, better breeds of live stock of all kinds, better methods of dairying, and better ways of preparing food, keeping house, and caring for the children. They insist on improving the school buildings, the churches, and the homes. As a result of this work, there are now in Macon County a number of neat new schoolhouses, with a teacher's house alongside each school, several acres of land adjoining, and a good church close by. Thus clean, pleasant, and thoroughly happy communities are created. In such communities there is the smallest amount of crime, and there is the largest amount of prosperity and contentment and enjoyment.
All the graduates of Tuskegee are enthusiasts for education and community builders. Wherever they go, they stand for the best in life. They are devoted to Tuskegee and its spirit and its ideals. It is this devotion which makes them industrious and capable and law-abiding and helpful in every possible way in the communities in which they live. Hundreds of small schools have been established all over the South by these graduates,
patterned on Tuskegee. It is impossible to overestimate the good they have done.
Tuskegee has grown to be one of the greatest schools in the country, and the greatest of all schools for the negroes. It has grown from 100 acres and three little buildings to a plant of 2100 acres and 111 buildings. Instead of one teacher with 30 pupils there are now more than 200 teachers and 1500 students. The institution has a large endowment, and it owns 20,000 acres of land given it by the United States Government. It keeps a large dairy herd, runs a large farm, a poultry farm, and keeps a large number of pigs, horses and sheep. Every phase of education is taught, but the main work is industrial,—carpentry, brick masonry, basket making, metal working, draughting, auto-mechanics, blacksmithing, telegraphy, farming, dairying, lumbering, building, cooking, sewing, nursing, housekeeping—all these and a large number of other callings are taught. It is through such training as this that Washington believed that the negroes, in largest numbers, would first get their best start in life.
Life is strenuous in this school. Here is an outline of the daily work: "5 a.m., rising bell; 5:50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6:00 a.m., breakfast bell; 6:20 a.m., breakfast over; 6:20–6:50 a.m., rooms cleaned; 6:50 a.m., work bell; 7:30 a.m., morning study hour; 8:20 a.m., morning school bell; 8:25 a.m., inspection of young men's dress in ranks; 8:40 a.m., devotional exercises in chapel; 8:55 a.m., 'five minutes with the daily news'; 9:00 a.m., class work begins; 12:00 m., class work ends; 12:15 p.m., dinner; 1:00 p.m., work bell; 1:30 p.m., class work begins; 3:30 p.m., class work ends; 5:30 p.m., bell to 'knock off' work; 6:00 p.m., supper; 7:10, p.m., evening prayers; 7:30 p.m., evening study hour: 8:45 p.m., evening study hour closes; 9:20 p.m., warning bell; 9:30 p.m., retiring bell."[4]
Washington has done more for the education of the negro than any other one man, white or black. His work at Tuskegee, his great educational campaigns, and his speeches and writings have combined to make his accomplishments of supreme value. Not only has he done this for the negro, but his work has helped the cause of education for the white people very greatly. All education in the South was backward. Like his great teacher, General Armstrong, Washington realized that in their progress the two races were bound together in the South, and that they must grow or step backward together. It is impossible for the negro to make his best progress unless the white man does so at the same time. And of course this works both ways. Because he believed this, Washington was anxious for school conditions for white people to change just as well as the school conditions for negroes. Besides, he wanted all the people to have the advantages of education. He did not hate anybody, and consequently did not want anybody to be deprived of the best there was in life. He did not want anybody, white or black, to fail to have his best opportunity. So he worked for the advancement of the cause of the white schools as well as the black, and his services to the white schools were great.
The future of negro education is very bright. Schools and colleges are being built every year. Better teachers are being prepared. Children are going to school in larger numbers than ever before, and their work is more satisfactory.
Every year the states appropriate more and more money for negro education. The negro is now able to pay a large part of the cost of his own education, and he is very willingly doing so.
The negro is determined to get an education. When he gets it, he will be a better citizen. And the better the citizens of a country are, the better life is in every way, and the more completely are all our problems solved.