Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
equally important, each one of the students works half of each day at
some industry, in order to get skill and the love of work, so that when
he goes out from the institution he is prepared to set the people with
whom he goes to labour a proper example in the matter of industry.
The value of our property is now over $700,000. If we add to this our
endowment fund, which at present is $1,000,000, the value of the total
property is now $1,700,000. Aside from the need for more buildings and
for money for current expenses, the endowment fund should be increased
to at least $3,000,000. The annual current expenses are now about
$150,000. The greater part of this I collect each year by going from
door to door and from house to house. All of our property is free from
mortgage, and is deeded to an undenominational board of trustees who
have the control of the institution.
From thirty students the number has grown to fourteen hundred, coming
from twenty-seven states and territories, from Africa, Cuba, Porto
Rico, Jamaica, and other foreign countries. In our departments there
are one hundred and ten officers and instructors; and if we add the
families of our instructors, we have a constant population upon our
grounds of not far from seventeen hundred people.
I have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together,
and at the same time keep them out of mischief. There are two answers:
that the men and women who come to us for an education are in earnest;
and that everybody is kept busy. The following outline of our daily
work will testify to this:—
5 a.m., rising bell; 5.50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6 a.m.,
breakfast bell; 6.20 a.m., breakfast over; 6.20 to 6.50 a.m., rooms are
cleaned; 6.50, work bell; 7.30, morning study hours; 8.20, morning
school bell; 8.25, inspection of young men’s toilet in ranks; 8.40,
devotional exercises in chapel; 8.55, “five minutes with the daily
news;” 9 a.m., class work begins; 12, class work closes; 12.15 p.m.,
dinner; 1 p.m., work bell; 1.30 p.m., class work begins; 3.30 p.m.,
class work ends; 5.30 p.m., bell to “knock off” work; 6 p.m., supper;
7.10 p.m., evening prayers; 7.30 p.m., evening study hours; 8.45 p.m.,
evening study hour closes; 9.20 p.m., warning retiring bell; 9.30 p.m.,
retiring bell.
We try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school
is to be judged by its graduates. Counting those who have finished the
full course, together with those who have taken enough training to
enable them to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least
six thousand men and women from Tuskegee are now at work in different
parts of the South; men and women who, by their own example or by
direct efforts, are showing the masses of our race now to improve their
material, educational, and moral and religious life. What is equally
important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and
self-control which is causing better relations to exist between the
races, and is causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the
value of educating the men and women of my race. Aside from this, there
is the influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers’
meeting and the plantation work conducted by Mrs. Washington.
Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in
the buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in
high moral characters are remarkable. Whole communities are fast being
revolutionized through the instrumentality of these men and women.
Ten years ago I organized at Tuskegee the first Negro Conference. This
is an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight or nine
hundred representative men and women of the race, who come to spend a
day in finding out what the actual industrial, mental, and moral
conditions of the people are, and in forming plans for improvement. Out
from this central Negro Conference at Tuskegee have grown numerous
state and local conferences which are doing the same kind of work. As a
result of the influence of these gatherings, one delegate reported at
the last annual meeting that ten families in his community had bought
and paid for homes. On the day following the annual Negro Conference,
there is the “Workers’ Conference.” This is composed of officers and
teachers who are engaged in educational work in the larger institutions
in the South. The Negro Conference furnishes a rare opportunity for
these workers to study the real condition of the rank and file of the
people.
In the summer of 1900, with the assistance of such prominent coloured
men as Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, who has always upheld my hands in every
effort, I organized the National Negro Business League, which held its
first meeting in Boston, and brought together for the first time a
large number of the coloured men who are engaged in various lines of
trade or business in different parts of the United States. Thirty
states were represented at our first meeting. Out of this national
meeting grew state and local business leagues.
In addition to looking after the executive side of the work at
Tuskegee, and raising the greater part of the money for the support of
the school, I cannot seem to escape the duty of answering at least a
part of the calls which come to me unsought to address Southern white
audiences and audiences of my own race, as well as frequent gatherings
in the North. As to how much of my time is spent in this way, the
following clipping from a Buffalo (N.Y.) paper will tell. This has
reference to an occasion when I spoke before the National Educational
Association in that city.
Booker T. Washington, the foremost educator among the coloured people
of the world, was a very busy man from the time he arrived in the city
the other night from the West and registered at the Iroquois. He had
hardly removed the stains of travel when it was time to partake of
supper. Then he held a public levee in the parlours of the Iroquois
until eight o’clock. During that time he was greeted by over two
hundred eminent teachers and educators from all parts of the United
States. Shortly after eight o’clock he was driven in a carriage to
Music Hall, and in one hour and a half he made two ringing addresses,
to as many as five thousand people, on Negro education. Then Mr.
Washington was taken in charge by a delegation of coloured citizens,
headed by the Rev. Mr. Watkins, and hustled off to a small informal
reception, arranged in honour of the visitor by the people of his race.
Nor can I, in addition to making these addresses, escape the duty of
calling the attention of the South and of the country in general,
through the medium of the press, to matters that pertain to the
interests of both races. This, for example, I have done in regard to
the evil habit of lynching. When the Louisiana State Constitutional
Convention was in session, I wrote an open letter to that body pleading
for justice for the race. In all such efforts I have received warm and
hearty support from the Southern newspapers, as well as from those in
all other parts of the country.
Despite superficial and temporary signs which might lead one to
entertain a contrary opinion, there was never a time when I felt more
hopeful for the race than I do at the present. The great human law that
in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal.
The outside world does not know, neither can it appreciate, the
struggle that is constantly going on in the hearts of both the Southern
white people and their former slaves to free themselves from racial
prejudice; and while both races are thus struggling they should have
the sympathy, the support, and the forbearance of the rest of the
world.
As I write the closing words of this autobiography I find myself—not by
design—in the city of Richmond, Virginia: the city which only a few
decades ago was the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and where,
about twenty-five years ago, because of my poverty I slept night after
night under a sidewalk.
This time I am in Richmond as the guest of the coloured people of the
city; and came at their request to deliver an address last night to
both races in the Academy of Music, the largest and finest audience
room in the city. This was the first time that the coloured people had
ever been permitted to use this hall. The day before I came, the City
Council passed a vote to attend the meeting in a body to hear me speak.
The state Legislature, including the House of Delegates and the Senate,
also passed a unanimous vote to attend in a body. In the presence of
hundreds of coloured people, many distinguished white citizens, the
City Council, the state Legislature, and state officials, I delivered
my message, which was one of hope and cheer; and from the bottom of my
heart I thanked both races for this welcome back to the state that gave
me birth.