Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements
History
Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements
Tuskegee Institute
In a section where those who work with their hands are marked off by the
inexorable line of caste from those who work with their brains or not at
all, this idea of making intelligent work more honorable than
intelligent idleness is of constructive value in race development. The
problem that the Tuskegee Institute is helping to solve is not only that
the colored people shall do their proportionate share of the work, but
that they shall do it in such a way that the benefits will remain with
those who do the work. Who can measure the transforming effect and
influence when it can be said that the "best mechanics" and the "best
agriculturists" in the South are Negroes? Certainly, if such a time ever
comes, there will be no such painful thing as a race problem, as Negroes
now see it and feel it.
[Illustration: THE COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL BUILDING.]
This is one of Tuskegee's largest ideals; not that Tuskegee alone can
bring about a "consummation so devoutly to be wished," but it is
ambitious to be a potent factor in all the tendencies that make for such
a condition of life in the heart of the South. So important is this aim
and idea of Tuskegee, that it allows no criticism to affect, interfere,
or obscure its vision. Tuskegee says to the world that it is determined
not only to be a school, but an agent of civilization, a missionary for
a better life, that shall stand for a kindlier relationship between the
races.
The school enthusiastically seeks to live up to the ideal of its
Principal, that education in the broadest and truest sense is designed
to influence individuals to help others; is designed, first, last, and
all the time, to transform and energize individuals into life-giving
agencies for the uplift of their fellows. Principal Washington's whole
educational creed, accepted by Tuskegee Institute teachers and students
alike, was recently declared in one of his familiar Sunday-evening
"talks" to the students of the institution. Said he:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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