Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
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.
We were successful in getting money enough so that on Thanksgiving Day
of that year we held our first service in the chapel of Porter Hall,
although the building was not completed.
In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon, I
found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know.
This was the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from Wisconsin, who
was then pastor of a little coloured Congregational church in
Montgomery, Ala. Before going to Montgomery to look for some one to
preach this sermon I had never heard of Mr. Bedford. He had never heard
of me. He gladly consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the
Thanksgiving service. It was the first service of the kind that the
coloured people there had ever observed, and what a deep interest they
manifested in it! The sight of the new building made it a day of
Thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten.
Mr. Bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the school, and
in that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been connected with it
for eighteen years. During this time he has borne the school upon his
heart night and day, and is never so happy as when he is performing
some service, no matter how humble, for it. He completely obliterates
himself in everything, and looks only for permission to serve where
service is most disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted.
In all my relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly
to the spirit of the Master as almost any man I ever met.
A little later there came into the service of the school another man,
quite young at the time, and fresh from Hampton, without whose service
the school never could have become what it is. This was Mr. Warren
Logan, who now for seventeen years has been the treasurer of the
Institute, and the acting principal during my absence. He has always
shown a degree of unselfishness and an amount of business tact, coupled
with a clear judgment, that has kept the school in good condition no
matter how long I have been absent from it. During all the financial
stress through which the school has passed, his patience and faith in
our ultimate success have not left him.
As soon as our first building was near enough to completion so that we
could occupy a portion of it—which was near the middle of the second
year of the school—we opened a boarding department. Students had begun
coming from quite a distance, and in such increasing numbers that we
felt more and more that we were merely skimming over the surface, in
that we were not getting hold of the students in their home life.
We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin
a boarding department. No provision had been made in the new building
for a kitchen and dining room; but we discovered that by digging out a
large amount of earth from under the building we could make a partially
lighted basement room that could be used for a kitchen and dining room.
Again I called on the students to volunteer for work, this time to
assist in digging out the basement. This they did, and in a few weeks
we had a place to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and
uncomfortable. Any one seeing the place now would never believe that it
was once used for a dining room.
The most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding department
started off in running order, with nothing to do with in the way of
furniture, and with no money with which to buy anything. The merchants
in the town would let us have what food we wanted on credit. In fact,
in those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people
seemed to have more faith in me than I had in myself. It was pretty
hard to cook, however, without stoves, and awkward to eat without
dishes. At first the cooking was done out-of-doors, in the
old-fashioned, primitive style, in pots and skillets placed over a
fire. Some of the carpenters’ benches that had been used in the
construction of the building were utilized for tables. As for dishes,
there were too few to make it worth while to spend time in describing
them.
No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any idea
that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and this
was a source of great worry. Everything was so out of joint and so
inconvenient that I feel safe in saying that for the first two weeks
something was wrong at every meal. Either the meat was not done or had
been burnt, or the salt had been left out of the bread, or the tea had
been forgotten.
Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door listening to
the complaints of the students. The complaints that morning were
especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole breakfast had been
a failure. One of the girls who had failed to get any breakfast came
out and went to the well to draw some water to drink and take the place
of the breakfast which she had not been able to get. When she reached
the well, she found that the rope was broken and that she could get no
water. She turned from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone,
not knowing that I was where I could hear her, “We can’t even get water
to drink at this school.” I think no one remark ever came so near
discouraging me as that one.
At another time, when Mr. Bedford—whom I have already spoken of as one
of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the institution—was visiting
the school, he was given a bedroom immediately over the dining room.
Early in the morning he was awakened by a rather animated discussion
between two boys in the dining room below. The discussion was over the
question as to whose turn it was to use the coffee-cup that morning.
One boy won the case by proving that for three mornings he had not had
an opportunity to use the cup at all.
But gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out of
chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with
patience and wisdom and earnest effort.
As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad to see
that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and
inconveniences. I am glad that our students had to dig out the place
for their kitchen and dining room. I am glad that our first
boarding-place was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement. Had
we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have
“lost our heads” and become “stuck up.” It means a great deal, I think,
to start off on a foundation which one has made for one’s self.
When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go
into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted dining
room, and see tempting, well-cooked food—largely grown by the students
themselves—and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of
flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each
meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with
almost no complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining
room, they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as
we did, and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and natural
process of growth.
Chapter XI.
Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them
A little later in the history of the school we had a visit from General
J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, who had had
faith enough to lend us the first two hundred and fifty dollars with
which to make a payment down on the farm. He remained with us a week,
and made a careful inspection of everything. He seemed well pleased
with our progress, and wrote back interesting and encouraging reports
to Hampton. A little later Miss Mary F. Mackie, the teacher who had
given me the “sweeping” examination when I entered Hampton, came to see
us, and still later General Armstrong himself came.
At the time of the visits of these Hampton friends the number of
teachers at Tuskegee had increased considerably, and the most of the
new teachers were graduates of the Hampton Institute. We gave our
Hampton friends, especially General Armstrong, a cordial welcome. They
were all surprised and pleased at the rapid progress that the school
had made within so short a time. The coloured people from miles around
came to the school to get a look at General Armstrong, about whom they
had heard so much. The General was not only welcomed by the members of
my own race, but by the Southern white people as well.
This first visit which General Armstrong made to Tuskegee gave me an
opportunity to get an insight into his character such as I had not
before had. I refer to his interest in the Southern white people.
Before this I had had the thought that General Armstrong, having fought
the Southern white man, rather cherished a feeling of bitterness toward
the white South, and was interested in helping only the coloured man
there. But this visit convinced me that I did not know the greatness
and the generosity of the man. I soon learned, by his visits to the
Southern white people, and from his conversations with them, that he
was as anxious about the prosperity and the happiness of the white race
as the black. He cherished no bitterness against the South, and was
happy when an opportunity offered for manifesting his sympathy. In all
my acquaintance with General Armstrong I never heard him speak, in
public or in private, a single bitter word against the white man in the
South. From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great
men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of
hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who
gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.
It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong,
and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour
might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. With
God’s help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill
feeling toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may have
inflicted upon my race. I am made to feel just as happy now when I am
rendering service to Southern white men as when the service is rendered
to a member of my own race. I pity from the bottom of my heart any
individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding
race prejudice.