The practical usefulness of the Academic Department lies in the aid which the study of physics and chemistry and mathematics and drawing offers to the blacksmith, the carpenter, the nurse, and the housewife—an aid that does much to transform listlessness and drudgery into vivacity and gratifying efficiency.
CHAPTER VIII Lessons in Home-Making
While the men must work to get and keep the home, the wives and daughters must, in a great measure, supply and guard the health, strength, morals, and happiness of the family. Their responsibility is great in all that makes for the development of the individual and the community. The home is built on an ancient foundation among the white population of this country, especially in the rural communities. The Negro has had to learn the meaning of home since he learned the meaning of freedom. All work which has to do with his uplifting must begin with his home and its surroundings.
DOROTHY HALL
IN WHICH MOST OF THE INDUSTRIES FOR GIRLS ARE TAUGHT
Those familiar only with the rural life of the North and West, where, even in poverty, there are deep-grounded habits of thrift and comfort, do not know what home lacks among great masses of the cabin-dwellers of the South. Nowhere is there a nobler opportunity than that which confronts the young women who are learning at Hampton and Tuskegee, and other educational institutions, what home should be. The crowded one-room cabin affects the moral and physical life of the family, it slowly destroys the right inclinations given by nature to every child, and develops a manner of life which, coöperating with other causes, produces mental weakness, loss of ambition, and a shiftless disregard of responsibilities.
It goes without saying that many of the young women who come to Tuskegee need such training as will enable them to make homes that are worthy the name. It is the need first at hand, and the school tries to meet it in a practical way. The most liberal courses in literature and the sciences, if they exclude all practical training that will help a young woman to solve the problems which center around her own hearth, will not help her to get what she needs most.