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 individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in
the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a
community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek
sentences. The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel
the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and
houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then, it
will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the
demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it.
About the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of bricks we
began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the students to
being taught to work. By this time it had gotten to be pretty well
advertised throughout the state that every student who came to
Tuskegee, no matter what his financial ability might be, must learn
some industry. Quite a number of letters came from parents protesting
against their children engaging in labour while they were in the
school. Other parents came to the school to protest in person. Most of
the new students brought a written or a verbal request from their
parents to the effect that they wanted their children taught nothing
but books. The more books, the larger they were, and the longer the
titles printed upon them, the better pleased the students and their
parents seemed to be.
I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no opportunity
to go into as many parts of the state as I could, for the purpose of
speaking to the parents, and showing them the value of industrial
education. Besides, I talked to the students constantly on the subject.
Notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school
continued to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle
of the second year there was an attendance of about one hundred and
fifty, representing almost all parts of the state of Alabama, and
including a few from other states.
In the summer of 1882 Miss Davidson and I both went North and engaged
in the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building. On
my way North I stopped in New York to try to get a letter of
recommendation from an officer of a missionary organization who had
become somewhat acquainted with me a few years previous. This man not
only refused to give me the letter, but advised me most earnestly to go
back home at once, and not make any attempt to get money, for he was
quite sure that I would never get more than enough to pay my travelling
expenses. I thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.
The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass., where I
spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family with whom I
could board, never dreaming that any hotel would admit me. I was
greatly surprised when I found that I would have no trouble in being
accommodated at a hotel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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