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 making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to
the relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had
had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came
to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks.
They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community.
The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the
neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not
making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding
something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of
the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with
them; they traded with us and we with them. Our business interests
became intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had
something which we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the
foundation for the pleasant relations that have continued to exist
between us and the white people in that section, and which now extend
throughout the South.
Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he
has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into
which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in
a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent,
dependent upon him. In this way pleasant relations between the races
have been stimulated.
My experience is that there is something in human nature which always
makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what
colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that it is the
visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices.
The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten
times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought
to build, or perhaps could build.
The same principle of industrial education has been carried out in the
building of our own wagons, carts, and buggies, from the first. We now
own and use on our farm and about the school dozens of these vehicles,
and every one of them has been built by the hands of the students.
Aside from this, we help supply the local market with these vehicles.
The supplying of them to the people in the community has had the same
effect as the supplying of bricks, and the man who learns at Tuskegee
to build and repair wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by
both races in the community where he goes. The people with whom he
lives and works are going to think twice before they part with such a
man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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