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
I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the
Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath. I learned there
for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body
healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my
travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always
in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been
the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been
easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have
always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should
be a part of every house.
For some time, while a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single
pair of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I
would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I
might wear them again the next morning.
The charge for my board at Hampton was ten dollars per month. I was
expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder.
To meet this cash payment, as I have stated, I had just fifty cents
when I reached the institution. Aside from a very few dollars that my
brother John was able to send me once in a while, I had no money with
which to pay my board. I was determined from the first to make my work
as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable. This I
succeeded in doing to such an extent that I was soon informed that I
would be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work. The
cost of tuition was seventy dollars a year. This, of course, was wholly
beyond my ability to provide. If I had been compelled to pay the
seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, I
would have been compelled to leave the Hampton school. General
Armstrong, however, very kindly got Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New
Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time
that I was at Hampton. After I finished the course at Hampton and had
entered upon my lifework at Tuskegee, I had the pleasure of visiting
Mr. Morgan several times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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