In concluding this sketch, I repeat with emphasis what I said in the beginning: Whatever my accomplishments may be, the credit is due to Tuskegee. I do not wish in life to be regarded as a man of chance possibilities, but rather as one who has consistently persevered in all of his struggles. Tuskegee teaches nothing with greater force than that success lies in that direction. Principal Washington, among other things, has taught that it is necessary to get property and have a bank-account. I have complied with that teaching. I own a farm of 100 acres within one-eighth of a mile of the school. My first property, which I still own, consists of a one-acre lot and a seven-room house. It gives me pleasure to contribute annually $10 to Tuskegee, although this but inadequately expresses my gratitude to the institution to which I owe so much. [2] The West Point system is followed in training the young men. Except that there are no guns, a complete battalion organization exists. XVI A NEGRO COMMUNITY BUILDER BY RUSSELL C. CALHOUN I have been asked to here set forth incidents of my life as I remember them, especially as they relate to my life at Tuskegee and my work since leaving there. Though there have been quite a number of events in my life, it is somewhat difficult for me to give them in the way they are now desired, as it never occurred to me that they would be worth repeating. Concerning my ancestry, it is impossible for me to give anything beyond my maternal grandfather, who was about three-fourths Indian. My recollections of him go back to the time when I was about six or seven years of age. My mother, having more children than she could really care for, decided to allow one of my brothers, who was perhaps a year and a half younger than I, and myself, to live with him and his second wife. My grandfather was quite seventy-five years of age when we went to live with him, and was too feeble to work. He was supported from the poor-house, which gave him a peck of meal, 2-1/2 pounds of bacon, 1 pound of coffee, 1 pound of brown sugar, and once a month 25 cents' worth of flour. That, together with the little his wife could earn from place to place, constituted the "rations" of all of us for a week. Of my birth no record was kept, my mother having been a slave. All I have been able to learn of the date of my birth is what my mother remembers connected with the close of slavery. In trying to ascertain from her when I was born, she said, "You was born some time just after Christmas, in the month of January, the third year after the surrender." My mother had twelve children. I was the eighth child and the second one born after slavery. All except two of the children were born in the same one-room log cabin with a dirt floor, in the town of Paulding, Jasper County, Miss. My mother did the cooking for her master's family and the plantation help, did all of the milking, and was also washer-woman.