Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
She had so often expressed the wish that she might be permitted to live
to see her children educated and started out in the world.
In a very short time after the death of my mother our little home was
in confusion. My sister Amanda, although she tried to do the best she
could, was too young to know anything about keeping house, and my
stepfather was not able to hire a housekeeper. Sometimes we had food
cooked for us, and sometimes we did not. I remember that more than once
a can of tomatoes and some crackers constituted a meal. Our clothing
went uncared for, and everything about our home was soon in a
tumble-down condition. It seems to me that this was the most dismal
period of my life.
My good friend, Mrs. Ruffner, to whom I have already referred, always
made me welcome at her home, and assisted me in many ways during this
trying period. Before the end of the vacation she gave me some work,
and this, together with work in a coal-mine at some distance from my
home, enabled me to earn a little money.
At one time it looked as if I would have to give up the idea of
returning to Hampton, but my heart was so set on returning that I
determined not to give up going back without a struggle. I was very
anxious to secure some clothes for the winter, but in this I was
disappointed, except for a few garments which my brother John secured
for me. Notwithstanding my need of money and clothing, I was very happy
in the fact that I had secured enough money to pay my travelling
expenses back to Hampton. Once there, I knew that I could make myself
so useful as a janitor that I could in some way get through the school
year.
Three weeks before the time for the opening of the term at Hampton, I
was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from my good friend Miss
Mary F. Mackie, the lady principal, asking me to return to Hampton two
weeks before the opening of the school, in order that I might assist
her in cleaning the buildings and getting things in order for the new
school year. This was just the opportunity I wanted. It gave me a
chance to secure a credit in the treasurer’s office. I started for
Hampton at once.
During these two weeks I was taught a lesson which I shall never
forget. Miss Mackie was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured
families of the North, and yet for two weeks she worked by my side
cleaning windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order, and what not.
She felt that things would not be in condition for the opening of
school unless every window-pane was perfectly clean, and she took the
greatest satisfaction in helping to clean them herself. The work which
I have described she did every year that I was at Hampton.
It was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her
education and social standing could take such delight in performing
such service, in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate
race. Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my
race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of
labour.
During my last year at Hampton every minute of my time that was not
occupied with my duties as janitor was devoted to hard study. I was
determined, if possible, to make such a record in my class as would
cause me to be placed on the “honour roll” of Commencement speakers.
This I was successful in doing. It was June of 1875 when I finished the
regular course of study at Hampton. The greatest benefits that I got
out of my my life at the Hampton Institute, perhaps, may be classified
under two heads:—
First was contact with a great man, General S.C. Armstrong, who, I
repeat, was, in my opinion, the rarest, strongest, and most beautiful
character that it has ever been my privilege to meet.
Second, at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was
expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal
of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an
education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for
manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace
to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial
value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and
self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants
done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant
to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that
the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others
useful and happy.
I was completely out of money when I graduated. In company with other
Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel
in Connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get
there. I had not been in this hotel long before I found out that I knew
practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table. The head waiter,
however, supposed that I was an accomplished waiter. He soon gave me
charge of the table at which there sat four or five wealthy and rather
aristocratic people. My ignorance of how to wait upon them was so
apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became
frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without
food. As a result of this I was reduced from the position of waiter to
that of a dish-carrier.
But I determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within a
few weeks and was restored to my former position. I have had the
satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a
waiter there.
At the close of the hotel season I returned to my former home in
Malden, and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place.
This was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life. I now
felt that I had the opportunity to help the people of my home town to a
higher life. I felt from the first that mere book education was not all
that the young people of that town needed. I began my work at eight
o’clock in the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten
o’clock at night. In addition to the usual routine of teaching, I
taught the pupils to comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces
clean, as well as their clothing. I gave special attention to teaching
them the proper use of the tooth-brush and the bath. In all my teaching
I have watched carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am
convinced that there are few single agencies of civilization that are
more far-reaching.
There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
men and women, who had to work in the daytime and still were craving an
opportunity for an education, that I soon opened a night-school. From
the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as the
school that I taught in the day. The efforts of some of the men and
women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn, were
in some cases very pathetic.
My day and night school work was not all that I undertook. I
established a small reading-room and a debating society. On Sundays I
taught two Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon,
and the other in the morning at a place three miles distant from
Malden. In addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young
men whom I was fitting to send to the Hampton Institute. Without regard
to pay and with little thought of it, I taught any one who wanted to
learn anything that I could teach him. I was supremely happy in the
opportunity of being able to assist somebody else. I did receive,
however, a small salary from the public fund, for my work as a
public-school teacher.
During the time that I was a student at Hampton my older brother, John,
not only assisted me all that he could, but worked all of the time in
the coal-mines in order to support the family. He willingly neglected
his own education that he might help me. It was my earnest wish to help
him to prepare to enter Hampton, and to save money to assist him in his
expenses there. Both of these objects I was successful in
accomplishing. In three years my brother finished the course at
Hampton, and he is now holding the important position of Superintendent
of Industries at Tuskegee. When he returned from Hampton, we both
combined our efforts and savings to send our adopted brother, James,
through the Hampton Institute. This we succeeded in doing, and he is
now the postmaster at the Tuskegee Institute. The year 1877, which was
my second year of teaching in Malden, I spent very much as I did the
first.
It was while my home was at Malden that what was known as the “Ku Klux
Klan” was in the height of its activity. The “Ku Klux” were bands of
men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating
the conduct of the coloured people, especially with the object of
preventing the members of the race from exercising any influence in
politics. They corresponded somewhat to the “patrollers” of whom I used
to hear a great deal during the days of slavery, when I was a small
boy. The “patrollers” were bands of white men—usually young men—who
were organized largely for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the
slaves at night in such matters as preventing the slaves from going
from one plantation to another without passes, and for preventing them
from holding any kind of meetings without permission and without the
presence at these meetings of at least one white man.
Like the “patrollers” the “Ku Klux” operated almost wholly at night.
They were, however, more cruel than the “patrollers.” Their objects, in
the main, were to crush out the political aspirations of the Negroes,
but they did not confine themselves to this, because schoolhouses as
well as churches were burned by them, and many innocent persons were
made to suffer. During this period not a few coloured people lost their
lives.
As a young man, the acts of these lawless bands made a great impression
upon me. I saw one open battle take place at Malden between some of the
coloured and white people. There must have been not far from a hundred
persons engaged on each side; many on both sides were seriously
injured, among them General Lewis Ruffner, the husband of my friend
Mrs. Viola Ruffner. General Ruffner tried to defend the coloured
people, and for this he was knocked down and so seriously wounded that
he never completely recovered. It seemed to me as I watched this
struggle between members of the two races, that there was no hope for
our people in this country. The “Ku Klux” period was, I think, the
darkest part of the Reconstruction days.
I have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the South
simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that
has taken place since the days of the “Ku Klux.” To-day there are no
such organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is
almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now
where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.
Chapter V.
The Reconstruction Period
The years from 1867 to 1878 I think may be called the period of
Reconstruction. This included the time that I spent as a student at
Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia. During the whole of the
Reconstruction period two ideas were constantly agitating in the minds
of the coloured people, or, at least, in the minds of a large part of
the race. One of these was the craze for Greek and Latin learning, and
the other was a desire to hold office.
It could not have been expected that a people who had spent generations
in slavery, and before that generations in the darkest heathenism,
could at first form any proper conception of what an education meant.
In every part of the South, during the Reconstruction period, schools,
both day and night, were filled to overflowing with people of all ages