Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to
my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as
well as they, if I could only get a chance to show what was in me.
After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: “The
adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it.”
It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive
an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner
had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.
I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and
dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench,
table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides,
every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in
the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large
measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher
in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the
head teacher. She was a “Yankee” woman who knew just where to look for
dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then
she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the
walls, and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one
bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the
furniture, she quietly remarked, “I guess you will do to enter this
institution.”
I was one of the happiest souls on Earth. The sweeping of that room was
my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for
entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction.
I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt
that this was the best one I ever passed.
I have spoken of my own experience in entering the Hampton Institute.
Perhaps few, if any, had anything like the same experience that I had,
but about the same period there were hundreds who found their way to
Hampton and other institutions after experiencing something of the same
difficulties that I went through. The young men and women were
determined to secure an education at any cost.
The sweeping of the recitation-room in the manner that I did it seems
to have paved the way for me to get through Hampton. Miss Mary F.
Mackie, the head teacher, offered me a position as janitor. This, of
course, I gladly accepted, because it was a place where I could work
out nearly all the cost of my board. The work was hard and taxing but I
stuck to it. I had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work
late into the night, while at the same time I had to rise by four
o’clock in the morning, in order to build the fires and have a little
time in which to prepare my lessons. In all my career at Hampton, and
ever since I have been out in the world, Miss Mary F. Mackie, the head
teacher to whom I have referred, proved one of my strongest and most
helpful friends. Her advice and encouragement were always helpful in
strengthening to me in the darkest hour.
I have spoken of the impression that was made upon me by the buildings
and general appearance of the Hampton Institute, but I have not spoken
of that which made the greatest and most lasting impression on me, and
that was a great man—the noblest, rarest human being that it has ever
been my privilege to meet. I refer to the late General Samuel C.
Armstrong.
It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great
characters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say
that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of
General Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave
plantation and the coal-mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be
permitted to come into direct contact with such a character as General
Armstrong. I shall always remember that the first time I went into his
presence he made the impression upon me of being a perfect man: I was
made to feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. It
was my privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered
Hampton till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in
my estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings,
class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women
there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General
Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. The
older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which
one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which
can be gotten from contact with great men and women. Instead of
studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges
might learn to study men and things!
General Armstrong spent two of the last six months of his life in my
home at Tuskegee. At that time he was paralyzed to the extent that he
had lost control of his body and voice in a very large degree.
Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and
day for the cause to which he had given his life. I never saw a man who
so completely lost sight of himself. I do not believe he ever had a
selfish thought. He was just as happy in trying to assist some other
institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton. Although
he fought the Southern white man in the Civil War, I never heard him
utter a bitter word against him afterward. On the other hand, he was
constantly seeking to find ways by which he could be of service to the
Southern whites.
It would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the
students at Hampton, or the faith they had in him. In fact, he was
worshipped by his students. It never occurred to me that General
Armstrong could fail in anything that he undertook. There is almost no
request that he could have made that would not have been complied with.
When he was a guest at my home in Alabama, and was so badly paralyzed
that he had to be wheeled about in an invalid’s chair, I recall that
one of the General’s former students had occasion to push his chair up
a long, steep hill that taxed his strength to the utmost. When the top
of the hill was reached, the former pupil, with a glow of happiness on
his face, exclaimed, “I am so glad that I have been permitted to do
something that was real hard for the General before he dies!” While I
was a student at Hampton, the dormitories became so crowded that it was
impossible to find room for all who wanted to be admitted. In order to
help remedy the difficulty, the General conceived the plan of putting
up tents to be used as rooms. As soon as it became known that General
Armstrong would be pleased if some of the older students would live in
the tents during the winter, nearly every student in school volunteered
to go.
I was one of the volunteers. The winter that we spent in those tents
was an intensely cold one, and we suffered severely—how much I am sure
General Armstrong never knew, because we made no complaints. It was
enough for us to know that we were pleasing General Armstrong, and that
we were making it possible for an additional number of students to
secure an education. More than once, during a cold night, when a stiff
gale would be blowing, our tent was lifted bodily, and we would find
ourselves in the open air. The General would usually pay a visit to the
tents early in the morning, and his earnest, cheerful, encouraging
voice would dispel any feeling of despondency.
I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was
but a type of that Christlike body of men and women who went into the
Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in
lifting up my race. The history of the world fails to show a higher,
purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found
their way into those Negro schools.
Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking
me into a new world. The matter of having meals at regular hours, of
eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of
the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all
new to me.
I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the
Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath. I learned there
for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body
healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my
travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always
in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been
the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been
easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have
always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should
be a part of every house.
For some time, while a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single
pair of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I
would wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I
might wear them again the next morning.
The charge for my board at Hampton was ten dollars per month. I was
expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder.
To meet this cash payment, as I have stated, I had just fifty cents
when I reached the institution. Aside from a very few dollars that my
brother John was able to send me once in a while, I had no money with
which to pay my board. I was determined from the first to make my work
as janitor so valuable that my services would be indispensable. This I
succeeded in doing to such an extent that I was soon informed that I
would be allowed the full cost of my board in return for my work. The
cost of tuition was seventy dollars a year. This, of course, was wholly
beyond my ability to provide. If I had been compelled to pay the
seventy dollars for tuition, in addition to providing for my board, I
would have been compelled to leave the Hampton school. General
Armstrong, however, very kindly got Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New
Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of my tuition during the whole time
that I was at Hampton. After I finished the course at Hampton and had
entered upon my lifework at Tuskegee, I had the pleasure of visiting
Mr. Morgan several times.
After having been for a while at Hampton, I found myself in difficulty
because I did not have books and clothing. Usually, however, I got
around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more
fortunate than myself. As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had
practically nothing. Everything that I possessed was in a small hand
satchel. My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact
that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in
ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished,
there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots. To wear
one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the schoolroom,
and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard problem for me to
solve. In some way I managed to get on till the teachers learned that I
was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then some of them were kind
enough to see that I was partly supplied with second-hand clothing that
had been sent in barrels from the North. These barrels proved a
blessing to hundreds of poor but deserving students. Without them I
question whether I should ever have gotten through Hampton.
When I first went to Hampton I do not recall that I had ever slept in a
bed that had two sheets on it. In those days there were not many
buildings there, and room was very precious. There were seven other
boys in the same room with me; most of them, however, students who had
been there for some time. The sheets were quite a puzzle to me. The