The Story of My Life and Work

by Booker T. Washington

“An intelligent and appreciative audience composed of prominent colored citizens, students and quite a large number of white people, crowded the beautiful and commodious Fisk memorial chapel last night to hear Prof. Booker T. Washington lecture on ‘Industrial Education.’ The lecture was the first given under the auspices of the Student’s Lecture Bureau of Fisk University, and was in every way a complete success. Mr. Washington is a powerful and convincing speaker. His simplicity and utter unselfishness, both in speech and action are impressive. He speaks to the point. He does not waste words in painting beautiful pictures, but deals mostly with plain facts. Nevertheless, he is witty and caused his audience last night to laugh and applaud repeatedly the jokes and striking points of his address.

“Booker T. Washington is doing a great work for his race and the South. He has the right views.

“Prof. Washington was introduced by Edgar Webber, President of the Lecture Bureau, and among other things he said:

“‘I am exceedingly anxious that every young man and woman should keep a hopeful and cheerfull spirit as to the future. Despite all of our disadvantages and hardships, ever since our forefathers set foot upon the American soil as slaves, our pathway has been marked by progress. Think of it: We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.

“‘I believe that we are to reach our highest development largely along the lines of scientific and industrial education. For the last fifty years education has tended in one direction, the cementing of mind to matter.’

“The speaker then said most people had the idea that industrial education was opposed to literary training, opposed to the highest development. He wanted to correct this error. He would choose the college graduate as the subject to receive industrial education. The more mind the subject had, the more satisfactory would be the results in industrial education. It requires as strong a mind to build a Corliss engine as it did to write a Greek grammar. Without industrial education, the speaker feared they would be in danger of getting too many ‘smart men’ scattered through the South. A young colored man in a certain town had been pointed out to him as being exceedingly smart and he had heard of him as being very accomplished before. Upon inquiry, however, he learned the young man applied his knowledge and training to no earthly good. He was just a smart man, that was all.’

“Continuing, the speaker said: ‘As a race there are two things we must learn to do—one is to put brains into the common occupations of life, and the other is to dignify common labor. If we do not we cannot hold our own as a race. Ninety per cent. of any race on the globe earns its living at the common occupations of life, and the Negro can be no exception to this rule.’

“Prof. Washington then illustrated the importance of this by citing the fact that while twenty years ago every large and paying barber shop over the country was in the hands of black men, today in all the large cities you cannot find a single large or first class barber shop operated by colored men. The black men had had a monopoly of that industry, but had gone on from day to day in the same old monotonous way without improving anything about the industry. As a result the white man has taken it up, put brains into it, watched all the fine points, improved and progressed until his shop today was not known as a barber shop, but as a tonsorial parlor, and he was no longer called a barber but a tonsorial artist. Just so the old Negro man with his bucket of whitewash and his long pole and brush had given way to the white man, who had applied his knowledge of chemistry to mixing materials, his knowledge of physics to the blending of colors, and his knowledge of geometry to figuring and decorating the ceiling. But the white man was not called a whitewasher; he was called a house decorater. He had put brains into his work, had given dignity to it, and the old colored man with the long pole and bucket was a thing of the past. The old Negro woman and her wash tub were fast being supplanted by the white man with his steam laundry, washing over a hundred shirts an hour. The many colored men who had formerly earned a living by cutting the grass in the front yards and keeping the flower beds in trim were no competitors for the white man, who, bringing his knowledge of surveying and terracing and plotting land, and his knowledge of botany and blending colors into active play, had dignified and promoted the work. He was not called a grass cutter or a yard cleaner, but a florist or a landscape gardener. The old black ‘mammy’ could never again enter the sick-room, where she was once known as a peerless nurse. She had given place to the tidy little white woman, with her neat white cap and apron, her knowledge of physiology, bandaging, principles of diseases and the administration of medicine, who had dignified, beautified and glorified the art of nursing and had turned it into a profession. Just so, too, the black cook was going out of date under the influence of the superior knowledge and art of cookery possessed by white ‘chefs,’ who were educated men and commanded large salaries.

“‘Now,’ said the speaker, ‘what are we going to do? Are we going to put brains into these common occupations? Are we going to apply the knowledge we gain at school? Are we going to keep up with the world, or are we going to let these occupations, which mean our very life blood, slip from us? Education in itself is worthless; it is only as it is used that it is of value. A man might as well fill his head with so much cheap soup as with learning unless he is going to use his knowledge.’

“Prof. Washington said that he had been told that the young colored man is cramped, and that after he gets his education there were few chances to use it. He had little patience with such argument. The idea had been too prevalent that the educated colored man must either teach, preach, be a clerk or follow some profession. The educated colored man must, more and more, go to the farms, into the trades, start brickyards, saw-mills, factories, open coal mines; in short, apply their education to conquering the forces of nature.