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
It has been interesting to note the effect that the use of the
tooth-brush has had in bringing about a higher degree of civilization
among the students. With few exceptions, I have noticed that, if we can
get a student to the point where, when the first or second tooth-brush
disappears, he of his own motion buys another, I have not been
disappointed in the future of that individual. Absolute cleanliness of
the body has been insisted upon from the first. The students have been
taught to bathe as regularly as to take their meals. This lesson we
began teaching before we had anything in the shape of a bath-house.
Most of the students came from plantation districts, and often we had
to teach them how to sleep at night; that is, whether between the two
sheets—after we got to the point where we could provide them two
sheets—or under both of them. Naturally I found it difficult to teach
them to sleep between two sheets when we were able to supply but one.
The importance of the use of the night-gown received the same
attention.
For a long time one of the most difficult tasks was to teach the
students that all the buttons were to be kept on their clothes, and
that there must be no torn places or grease-spots. This lesson, I am
pleased to be able to say, has been so thoroughly learned and so
faithfully handed down from year to year by one set of students to
another that often at the present time, when the students march out of
the chapel in the evening and their dress is inspected, as it is every
night, not one button is found to be missing.
Chapter XII.
Raising Money
When we opened our boarding department, we provided rooms in the attic
of Porter Hall, our first building, for a number of girls. But the
number of students, of both sexes, continued to increase. We could find
rooms outside the school grounds for many of the young men, but the
girls we did not care to expose in this way. Very soon the problem of
providing more rooms for the girls, as well as a larger boarding
department for all the students, grew serious. As a result, we finally
decided to undertake the construction of a still larger building—a
building that would contain rooms for the girls and boarding
accommodations for all.
After having had a preliminary sketch of the needed building made, we
found that it would cost about ten thousand dollars. We had no money
whatever with which to begin; still we decided to give the needed
building a name. We knew we could name it, even though we were in doubt
about our ability to secure the means for its construction. We decided
to call the proposed building Alabama Hall, in honour of the state in
which we were labouring. Again Miss Davidson began making efforts to
enlist the interest and help of the coloured and white people in and
near Tuskegee. They responded willingly, in proportion to their means.
The students, as in the case of our first building, Porter Hall, began
digging out the dirt in order to allow the laying of the foundations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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