Booker T. Washington Part 20

4. Community work.

(a) Extension activities carried on by the school, (b) The efficiency of these activities.

5. Attendance.

(a) Number of students enrolled on date of visit.

(b) Number in attendance on date of visit.

(c) What efforts are being made to get the students to enter at the beginning of the term and remain throughout the year?

SUGGESTIONS

1. Before concluding its visit the committee should make, to proper persons in the school, suggestions concerning the improving of the teaching and of other things as may be necessary.

2. If committee makes a second visit, see to what extent the suggestions of the previous visit have been carried out.

REPORT

After each visit a written report by the committee covering all of the above shall be sent to Princ.i.p.al Washington.

To all the graduates of the Inst.i.tute Mr. Washington sent a circular letter on the first of each year in which frequently he told them of the progress that had been made by the school during the year in improvements, number of students enrolled, etc., and asked them in turn to answer a list of questions about their life and work, or sometimes in such letters he merely wished them success and gave them some practical advice. The 1913 letter which follows is an example of the latter:

_Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, Alabama,_ _January 1, 1913._

_Dear Mr. (or Miss) Blank:_

I take this opportunity to send you greetings, to inquire how you are getting along, and to express the hope that in every way you are prospering. If, however, you are having discouragements, I trust that you are meeting them bravely.

If you have difficulties, or are laboring under disadvantages, use them as stepping-stones to success.

I again call your attention to the importance of keeping in touch with the Inst.i.tute. Keeping your address on file with us and sending a report of your work will a.s.sist in doing this. I enclose herewith a blank for that purpose. Visits to the school should also be made from time to time. You should begin to prepare now to be here during the coming commencement exercises in May in order that you may see what is being done at the inst.i.tution and to meet your former cla.s.smates. Already the officers of the General Alumni a.s.sociation have begun preparations for your welcome.

I urge upon you the importance of keeping up the habit of study and of reading good books and papers. The accompanying circular on "How to Buy Books" gives valuable suggestions about how to secure the best books cheaply. I take this occasion to inform you that already we are making preparations for our 1913 Summer School. It is hoped that every graduate who is teaching will attend this or some other good summer school.

I trust that wherever you are located you will do all that you can for community uplift. Be active in church and Sunday-school work, help to improve the public schools, a.s.sist in bettering health conditions, help the people to secure property, to buy homes and to improve them. In doing all these things, you will be carrying out the Tuskegee idea.

Very truly yours,

[Signed] BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Princ.i.p.al.

The questions were slightly varied from year to year. The following were those sent out with the 1915 letter--the last to bear the signature of the Inst.i.tute's founder.

Please favor me by answering these questions and returning the blank as soon as you receive it.

1. Your full name when at Tuskegee?

2. What year were you graduated from Tuskegee?

3. Your present home address?

4. If you are not at home, your temporary address for the winter of 1915-1916?

5. If you have married, your wife's name before marriage?

Was she ever a student at Tuskegee?

Is she living?

6. Your present occupation? If in educational work, give your position in the school.

7. How long have you followed it?

8. What are your average wages or earnings per day, week, or month?

9. What other occupation have you?

10. Average wages per day, week, or month at this occupation?

11. Kind and amount of property owned?

12. Tell us something of the work you are doing this year.

(We will also be pleased to receive testimonials from white and colored persons concerning your work).

13. We especially wish to get in touch this year with as many of our former students as possible. Please give present addresses and occupations of all of these that you can.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Princ.i.p.al.

_Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, Alabama._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Washington had this picture especially posed to show off to the best advantage a part of the Tuskegee dairy herd.]

As previously mentioned the relationship between Mr. Washington and his Trustees was at all times particularly friendly and harmonious.

While they were always directors who directed instead of mere figureheads, they nevertheless were broad enough and wise enough to give the Princ.i.p.al a very free rein. Preeminent among the able and devoted Trustees of Tuskegee was the late William H. Baldwin, Jr. In order to commemorate his life and work the William H. Baldwin, Jr., Memorial Fund of $150,000 was raised by a committee of distinguished men, with Oswald Garrison Villard of the New York _Evening Post_ as chairman, among whom were Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, and Charles W. Eliot, and placed at the disposal of the Tuskegee Trustees.

A bronze memorial tablet in memory of Mr. Baldwin was at the same time placed on the Inst.i.tute grounds. At the ceremony at which this tablet was unveiled and this fund presented to the Trustees, Mr. Washington said in part, in speaking of his relations with Mr. Baldwin and Mr.

Baldwin's relations to Tuskegee:

"Only those who are close to the business structure of the inst.i.tution could really understand what the coming into our work of a man like William H. Baldwin meant to all of us. In the first place, it meant the bringing into our work a certain degree of order, a certain system, so far as the business side of the inst.i.tution was concerned, that had not hitherto existed. Then the coming of him into our inst.i.tution meant the bringing of new faith, meant the bringing of new friends. I shall never forget my first impression. I shall never forget my first experience in meeting Mr. Baldwin. At that time he was the General Manager and one of the Vice-Presidents of the Southern Railway, located then in its headquarters in the city of Washington. I remember that, a number of days previous, I had gone to the city of Boston and had asked his father if he would not give me a line of introduction to his son, about whom I had already heard in Washington.

Mr. Baldwin's father readily gave me a line of introduction and I went in a few days after that and sought out Mr. Baldwin in his Washington office and he looked through this letter of introduction, read it carefully, then he looked me over, up and down, and I asked him if he would not become a trustee of this inst.i.tution. After looking me over, looking me up and down for a few seconds or a few minutes longer, he said, 'No, I cannot become a trustee; I will not say I will become a trustee because when I give my word to become a trustee it must mean something.' He said, 'I will study the inst.i.tution at Tuskegee, I will go there and look it over and after I have found out what your methods are, what you are driving at--if your methods and objects commend themselves to me, then I will consent to become a trustee.'

And I remember how well--some of the older teachers and perhaps some of the older students will recall--that upon one day, when we were least expecting it, he stopped his private car off here at Chehaw and appeared here upon our grounds, and some of us will recall how he went into every department of the inst.i.tution, how he went into the cla.s.srooms, how he went through the shops, how he went through the farm, how he went through the dining-room; I remember how he went to each table, and took pieces of bread from the table and broke them and examined the bread to see how well it was cooked, and even tasted some of it as he went into the kitchen. He wanted to be sure how we were doing things here at Tuskegee. Then after he had made this visit of examination for himself, after he had studied our financial condition, then after a number of months had pa.s.sed by, he consented to permit us to use his name as one of our Trustees, and from the beginning to the end we never had such a trustee. He was one who devoted himself night and day, winter and summer, in season and out of season, to the interests of this inst.i.tution. Now, having spoken this word, you can understand the thoughts and the feelings of some of us on this occasion as we think of the services of this great and good man.

"It is one of the privileges of people who are not always cla.s.sed among the popular people of earth to have strong friends for the reason that n.o.body but a strong man will endure the public criticism that so often comes to one who is the friend of a weak or unpopular race. This, in the words of another, is one of the advantages enjoyed sometimes by a disadvantaged race."

Naturally no account of Booker Washington's administration of the great inst.i.tution which he built would be complete without some mention of Mrs. Washington's part in her husband's work. Aside from her duties as wife, mother, and home maker--duties which any ordinary woman would find quite exacting enough to absorb all her time, thought, and strength particularly in view of the fact that a wide hospitality is part of the role--Mrs. Washington, as director of women's industries, is one of the half-dozen leading executives of the inst.i.tution. In addition to her many and varied family and official duties at the Inst.i.tute Mrs. Washington has always been a leader in social service and club work among the women of her race throughout the country, and has besides all this come to be a kind of mother confessor, advisor, and guide to hundreds of young men and women. We will conclude this chapter by quoting in large part an article written by Mr. Scott and published some years ago in the _Ladies' Home Journal_, which describes how and when Mrs. Washington entered her husband's life and work and the part she played in his affairs:

"Even before the war closed there came to the South on the heels of the army of emanc.i.p.ation an army of school teachers. They came to perfect with the spelling-book and the reader the work that the soldiers had begun with the sword. It was during this period in the little straggling village of Macon, Miss., that a little girl, called then Margaret Murray, but who is known now as Mrs. Booker T.

Washington, was born. When she grew old enough to count she found herself one of a family of ten and, like nearly all children of Negro parentage, at that time, very poor.

"In the grand army of teachers who went South in 1864 and 1865 were many Quakers. Prevented by the tenets of their religion from entering the army as soldiers these people were the more eager to do the not less difficult and often dangerous work of teachers among the freedmen after the war was over.

"One of the first memories of her childhood is of her father's death.

It was when she was seven years old. The next day she went to the Quaker school teachers, a brother and sister, Sanders by name, and never went back home to live.

"Thus at seven she became the arbiter of her own fate. The incident is interesting in showing thus early a certain individuality and independence of character which she has exhibited all through her life. In the breaking or loosening of the family relations after the death of her father she determined to bestow herself upon her Quaker neighbors. The secret of it, of course, was that the child was possessed even then with a pa.s.sion for knowledge which has never since deserted her. Rarely does a day pa.s.s that Mrs. Washington amid the cares of her household, of the school, and of the many philanthropic and social enterprises in which she takes a leading part, does not devote half or three-quarters of an hour to downright study.

"And so it was that Margaret Murray became at seven a permanent part of the Quaker household, and became to all intents and purposes, so far as her habits of thought and religious att.i.tude are concerned, herself a Quaker.