The Future of the American NegroWashington, Booker T.
History
The Future of the American Negro
Washington, Booker T.
African Americans
My work began at Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881, in a small shanty church,
with one teacher and thirty students, without a dollar's worth of
property. The spirit of work and of industrial thrift, with aid from
the State and generosity from the North, have enabled us to develop an
institution which now has about one thousand students, gathered from
twenty-three States, and eighty-eight instructors. Counting students,
instructors, and their families, we have a resident population upon
the school grounds of about twelve hundred persons.
The institution owns two thousand three hundred acres of land, seven
hundred of which are cultivated by student labor. There are six
hundred head of live-stock, including horses, mules, cows, hogs, and
sheep. There are over forty vehicles that have been made, and are now
used, by the school. Training is given in twenty-six industries. There
is work in wood, in iron, in leather, in tin; and all forms of
domestic economy are engaged in. Students are taught mechanical and
architectural drawing, receive training as agriculturists, dairymen,
masons, carpenters, contractors, builders, as machinists,
electricians, printers, dressmakers, and milliners, and in other
directions.
The value of the property is $300,000. There are forty-two buildings,
counting large and small, all of which, with the exception of four,
have been erected by the labour of the students.
Since this work started, there has been collected and spent for its
founding and support $800,000. The annual expense is now not far from
$75,000. In a humble, simple manner the effort has been to place a
great object-lesson in the heart of the South for the elevation of the
coloured people, where there should be, in a high sense, that union of
head, heart, and hand which has been the foundation of the greatness
of all races since the world began.
What is the object of all this outlay? It must be first borne in mind
that we have in the South a peculiar and unprecedented state of
things. The cardinal needs among the eight million coloured people in
the South, most of whom are to be found on the plantations, may be
stated as food, clothing, shelter, education, proper habits, and a
settlement of race relations. These millions of coloured people of the
South cannot be reached directly by any missionary agent; but they can
be reached by sending out among them strong, selected young men and
women, with the proper training of head, hand, and heart, who will
live among them and show them how to lift themselves up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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