Up from Slavery: An AutobiographyWashington, Booker T.
History
Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
Washington, Booker T.
African Americans -- Biography; Educators -- United States -- Biography; Tuskegee Institute; Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
The night-school was organized on a plan similar to the one which I had
helped to establish at Hampton. At first it was composed of about a
dozen students. They were admitted to the night-school only when they
had no money with which to pay any part of their board in the regular
day-school. It was further required that they must work for ten hours
during the day at some trade or industry, and study academic branches
for two hours during the evening. This was the requirement for the
first one or two years of their stay. They were to be paid something
above the cost of their board, with the understanding that all of their
earnings, except a very small part, were to be reserved in the school’s
treasury, to be used for paying their board in the regular day-school
after they had entered that department. The night-school, started in
this manner, has grown until there are at present four hundred and
fifty-seven students enrolled in it alone.
There could hardly be a more severe test of a student’s worth than this
branch of the Institute’s work. It is largely because it furnishes such
a good opportunity to test the backbone of a student that I place such
high value upon our night-school. Any one who is willing to work ten
hours a day at the brick-yard, or in the laundry, through one or two
years, in order that he or she may have the privilege of studying
academic branches for two hours in the evening, has enough bottom to
warrant being further educated.
After the student has left the night-school he enters the day-school,
where he takes academic branches four days in a week, and works at his
trade two days. Besides this he usually works at his trade during the
three summer months. As a rule, after a student has succeeded in going
through the night-school test, he finds a way to finish the regular
course in industrial and academic training. No student, no matter how
much money he may be able to command, is permitted to go through school
without doing manual labour. In fact, the industrial work is now as
popular as the academic branches. Some of the most successful men and
women who have graduated from the institution obtained their start in
the night-school.
While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the
work at Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the
religious and spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational,
but it is thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the
students is not neglected. Our preaching service, prayer-meetings,
Sunday-school, Christian Endeavour Society, Young Men’s Christian
Association, and various missionary organizations, testify to this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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