From Slave to College President Part 4

"I am now at this place, and am Princ.i.p.al of a school which opened December 9 last year. We have bought and paid for fifteen acres of land, on which a two-storey building now stands. A part of the gla.s.s windows needed we have been able to put in. We are now preparing to build a dormitory on our grounds for our students next term. We shall be glad to have you send anything you can in the way of reading matter. We are trying to establish a library for the people of this community."

In some instances, as, for example, in Nashville, to which reference has been made, negroes are becoming prosperous men of business. In his monthly newspaper for February 1902, Booker Washington gave the picture of a large house of business owned by a coloured trader, and remarked:--

"While there are not many coloured people perhaps, as yet, who own such valuable pieces of property in the South, still there are many who are very fast approaching the point Mr ---- has reached. Mr ---- is not only a successful business man, having the respect and confidence of both races in Nashville, but he and his wife are leaders in religious and charitable work in the city of Nashville, and their home is a constant resort for those who represent all that is best and purest in the life of the negro race."

The following extract from a letter to Booker Washington from a white gentleman in the South (December 16, 1901), shows in what light even ex-planters themselves and their a.s.sociates regard the work in progress:--

"Being more and more impressed with the importance of the favourable opportunity offered in this community for the educational uplift of your people, I am again prompted to write you and more fully explain the situation and the need of help to accomplish this important work. This community is densely populated with negroes--more than ten to one white person. The white people are moving to the towns. Thirty white persons in less than two years--none coming in--and negroes occupying the premises vacated. The few white people here are anxious to see the negro educated up to a higher standard of citizenship in morality, thrift and economy, as well as intellectual advancement. The negro school building is under way, but they have not the means to finish it, and nothing with which to furnish it, nor sufficient means to pay the teachers necessary for the school. I know of no community where the needed funds would be more appreciated or could possibly do more good for advancing the negroes' interest along educational lines."

Thus, no one can foresee whereunto the ever-developing work at Tuskegee may extend. The graduates, who are constantly going forth, become teachers and leaders among their own people; but, large as it is, the number trained is still too few.

CHAPTER X

VISIT TO EUROPE--RETURN TO TUSKEGEE

In the summer of the year 1899 Mr and Mrs Booker Washington had a sum of money given them by a number of friends, which was to be spent in making a tour in Europe. The travellers, after a prosperous voyage, landed at Antwerp and, after seeing something of Holland and France, came to England, where they were entertained by a number of friends.

On Monday, July 3, Dr and Mrs Brooke Herford gave a reception to meet Mr and Mrs Booker Washington, which took place at Ess.e.x Hall, Ess.e.x Street, Strand, and after this reception a meeting, at which a number of well-known and distinguished persons were present, also took place, and at which Mr J. H. Choate, the United States Amba.s.sador, presided. The many who attended, and the quality of a large number, gave significance to this meeting, and testified in no equivocal manner to the esteem in which Booker Washington and his work were held in Great Britain. The following summary of the American Amba.s.sador's speech on this occasion was given in _The Times_:--

"The Chairman expressed the pleasure which he felt at having been asked to preside and to introduce to the meeting his friend, Mr Booker T.

Washington. There were 10,000,000 coloured persons in the United States living side by side with some 60,000,000 of whites. The freedom of which the negroes had been deprived for more than 200 years had been restored to them, but the question was how best they could be enabled to take advantage of it. The blacks were an interesting race. Fidelity was their great characteristic. During the Civil War, when the South was stripped of every man and almost every boy to sustain their cause in arms, the women and children were left in the sole care, he might say, of these slaves, and no instance of violence or outrage that he had been able to learn was ever reported. He thought it would be admitted, therefore, that on that occasion they amply manifested their loyalty and fidelity to their masters. The black people had done much for themselves. About one-tenth of the men had acquired some portion of land, and they had made a certain advance. Mr Washington was a pupil of the late General Armstrong, who devoted many years of his life to the establishment and maintenance of the leading school at Hampton, Virginia. Mr Washington had qualified himself to follow in Armstrong's path. He also had founded a school, or training college, at Tuskegee, Alabama, where the pupils were not only given a primary education, but were afforded the means of earning a livelihood. There were now 1100 pupils in the school. About half the number of those who pa.s.sed through it went out as teachers to spread the light and the knowledge they had acquired there among their own race, and the other half were put into a position to support themselves by manual trades. The Government of the United States thought well of the work. It gave the school a grant of 25,000 acres of land in Alabama only last year. The State of Alabama, in which it was placed, gave it an annual donation. In addition it derived something from the funds left by the great philanthropist, George Peabody, and from another fund founded by an American philanthropist. The remainder of the sum needed for carrying on the work--some 15,000 a year--was derived from voluntary contributions, which were stimulated by the appeals made by Mr Washington, whom he regarded as the leader of his race in America."

There were no long speeches at this reception and after meeting. Booker Washington himself was brief in his speech while describing the condition and outlook of the coloured race in the United States. He said:--

"Immediately after receiving their freedom the negroes, for the most part, got into debt, and they had not been able to free themselves to the present day. In many places it was found that as many as three-fourths of the coloured people were in debt, living on mortgaged land, and in many cases under agreements to pay interest on their indebtedness ranging between fifteen and forty per cent. The work of improving their condition was far from hopeless, and he was far from being discouraged. If his people got no other good out of slavery they got the habit of work. But they did not know how to utilise the results of their labour; the greatest injury which slavery wrought upon them was to deprive them of executive power, of the sense of independence. They required education and training, and this was gradually being provided.

Starting in 1881 in the little town of Tuskegee with one teacher and thirty students, they had progressed until in the present day they had built up an inst.i.tution which had connected with it over a thousand men and women. They had some eighty-six instructors, and in all that they did they tried to make a careful and honest study of the condition of the negroes and to advance their material and moral welfare. Industrial education was a vital power in helping to lift his people out of their present state. Twenty-six different industries were taught, and every student had to learn some trade or other in addition to the studies of the cla.s.s-room. The coloured students came from upwards of twenty States and territories, and the labour which they performed had an economic value to the inst.i.tution itself. There were thirty-eight buildings upon the grounds of the college, including a chapel having seating capacity for 2500 persons, built by the students themselves. The value of the entire property was about $300,000. Seeing that one-third of the population of the South was of the negro race, he held that no enterprise seeking the material, civil or moral welfare of America could disregard this element of the population and reach the highest good."

Mr Bryce, M.P., also gave a brief speech, and showed that he was in agreement with what the founder of the inst.i.tution of Tuskegee had said in reference to the importance of basing the progress of the negroes on an industrial training:--

"Having made two or three visits to the South he had got an impression of the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem which Mr Washington was so n.o.bly striving to solve. It was no wonder that it should be difficult, seeing that the whites had such a long start of the coloured people in civilisation. He believed that the general sentiment of white people was one of friendliness and a desire to help the negroes. The exercise of political rights and the attainment to equal citizenship must depend upon the quality of the people who exercised those rights, and the best thing the coloured people could do, therefore, was to endeavour to attain material prosperity by making themselves capable of prosecuting these trades and occupations which they began to learn in the days of slavery, and which now, after waiting for twenty years, they had begun to see were necessary to their well-being."

At the present time the inst.i.tution at Tuskegee represents a value of 100,000, if we include the endowment fund; and the annual cost of training 1100 or more students is not less than 16,000. The work continues to expand, as must ever be the case with all healthy enterprises of the kind. Perhaps the most hopeful symptom of all is the sanguine enthusiasm of Booker Washington himself, who, happily for himself and for those whom he seeks to benefit, is, and must ever be, an optimist. He believes that his race has a future, and that it is capable of being so uplifted as to become a benefit to the world. We must all allow that the right means are being used to bring about this new reformation; but, at the same time, we need not close our eyes to the fact that there are observers and even well-wishers of the coloured people who are not so hopeful. By way of giving what may be regarded as the more pessimistic view, take the following pa.s.sage from an article in the _Daily Mail_ of October 23, 1901:--

"Frederick Dougla.s.s was an honoured guest in hundreds of Northern homes; his career as United States senator was marked with every token of respect and admiration, and many others like him were expected to appear. But in the forty years since the war the North has become more conservative in this respect, although it has been untiring in its efforts to foster the negro's education, to direct his energy wisely, and to make him capable of enjoying the liberties of the American Republic. In the South there may still be oppression to-day and the restriction of the negro's const.i.tutional rights, but such a charge has never been made against the North, even by the black man's most prejudiced apostles. If the North refuses to-day to grant social equality to the negro, the reasons are that it is considered not only impossible to accomplish, but dangerous even to attempt. It is considered impossible because the feeling has deepened instead of being dispelled since the war, that the negro is greatly inferior by nature and will never be otherwise. In his forty years of freedom he has advanced more in crime and lawlessness, according to statistics, than he has in education or development. Taking the blacks and mulattos together they form sixteen per cent. of the entire population, and furnish thirty per cent. of the penitentiary convicts. Crimes against the person especially const.i.tute a menace from the negro almost unknown before the war, and Frederick Dougla.s.s said, shortly before he died, 'It throws over every coloured man a mantle of odium, and sets upon him a mark for popular hatred more distressing than the mark set upon the first murderer. It has cooled our friends and fired our enemies.' The race has, as a matter of fact, shown almost no power to fight its own battles, and its problems hang like a weight of lead around the neck of the American people, a weight growing heavier and causing more hopelessness as the years go on."

If the above is not actually too dark a picture, the evil is certainly one which a great Republic need not regard as an evil incapable of correction. Booker Washington himself is not so sanguine as to ignore difficulties; he foresees clearly enough that the earlier half of this present century must needs be a time of much rough pioneering service on the part of those who are the most earnest friends of the negro race. As lookers-on from afar on the European side of the broad Atlantic, we are able to descry many rea.s.suring signs. Both in the North and the South, Booker Washington has met with abundance of sympathy, and a good deal of honest, practical help. When Harvard University bestowed on him the degree of Master of Arts, he was the first negro who had ever received that distinction. That good Christian man and enlightened politician, the late President M'Kinley, paid a visit to Tuskegee at the end of 1899, and on behalf of the nation he was thankful for what was being done. His successor, President Roosevelt, entertained Booker Washington at dinner at the White House, thus showing that he was of the same mind as his predecessor. Thus the great work goes on from the beginning to the end of each year, the aim of the continued and far-reaching effort being to bring two races together, one being able to help the other because both have interests in common.