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
At Hampton I received a warm welcome from teachers and students. I
found that during my absence from Hampton the institute each year had
been getting closer to the real needs and conditions of our people;
that the industrial teaching, as well as that of the academic
department, had greatly improved. The plan of the school was not
modelled after that of any other institution then in existence, but
every improvement was made under the magnificent leadership of General
Armstrong solely with the view of meeting and helping the needs of our
people as they presented themselves at the time. Too often, it seems to
me, in missionary and educational work among underdeveloped races,
people yield to the temptation of doing that which was done a hundred
years before, or is being done in other communities a thousand miles
away. The temptation often is to run each individual through a certain
educational mould, regardless of the condition of the subject or the
end to be accomplished. This was not so at Hampton Institute.
The address which I delivered on Commencement Day seems to have pleased
every one, and many kind and encouraging words were spoken to me
regarding it. Soon after my return to my home in West Virginia, where I
had planned to continue teaching, I was again surprised to receive a
letter from General Armstrong, asking me to return to Hampton partly as
a teacher and partly to pursue some supplementary studies. This was in
the summer of 1879. Soon after I began my first teaching in West
Virginia I had picked out four of the brightest and most promising of
my pupils, in addition to my two brothers, to whom I have already
referred, and had given them special attention, with the view of having
them go to Hampton. They had gone there, and in each case the teachers
had found them so well prepared that they entered advanced classes.
This fact, it seems, led to my being called back to Hampton as a
teacher. One of the young men that I sent to Hampton in this way is now
Dr. Samuel E. Courtney, a successful physician in Boston, and a member
of the School Board of that city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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