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
5 a.m., rising bell; 5.50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6 a.m.,
breakfast bell; 6.20 a.m., breakfast over; 6.20 to 6.50 a.m., rooms are
cleaned; 6.50, work bell; 7.30, morning study hours; 8.20, morning
school bell; 8.25, inspection of young men’s toilet in ranks; 8.40,
devotional exercises in chapel; 8.55, “five minutes with the daily
news;” 9 a.m., class work begins; 12, class work closes; 12.15 p.m.,
dinner; 1 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 p.m., supper;
7.10 p.m., evening prayers; 7.30 p.m., evening study hours; 8.45 p.m.,
evening study hour closes; 9.20 p.m., warning retiring bell; 9.30 p.m.,
retiring bell.
We try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school
is to be judged by its graduates. Counting those who have finished the
full course, together with those who have taken enough training to
enable them to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least
six thousand men and women from Tuskegee are now at work in different
parts of the South; men and women who, by their own example or by
direct efforts, are showing the masses of our race now to improve their
material, educational, and moral and religious life. What is equally
important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and
self-control which is causing better relations to exist between the
races, and is causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the
value of educating the men and women of my race. Aside from this, there
is the influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers’
meeting and the plantation work conducted by Mrs. Washington.
Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in
the buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in
high moral characters are remarkable. Whole communities are fast being
revolutionized through the instrumentality of these men and women.
Ten years ago I organized at Tuskegee the first Negro Conference. This
is an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight or nine
hundred representative men and women of the race, who come to spend a
day in finding out what the actual industrial, mental, and moral
conditions of the people are, and in forming plans for improvement. Out
from this central Negro Conference at Tuskegee have grown numerous
state and local conferences which are doing the same kind of work. As a
result of the influence of these gatherings, one delegate reported at
the last annual meeting that ten families in his community had bought
and paid for homes. On the day following the annual Negro Conference,
there is the “Workers’ Conference.” This is composed of officers and
teachers who are engaged in educational work in the larger institutions
in the South. The Negro Conference furnishes a rare opportunity for
these workers to study the real condition of the rank and file of the
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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