A few years later, there came a call for some one to introduce theoretical and practical agriculture into the State Normal College for coloured people at Tallahassee, Florida. Mr. Menafee was recommended. The students had no wish to learn agriculture. They were opposed to it in any form. By tact and patience, Mr. Menafee gradually won the students and made them see the importance of intelligent cultivation of the soil. Mr. Menafee has now been in charge of the agricultural department of the Florida school for three years, and has made the study of theoretical and practical farming so effective that it is now one of the most popular branches in the school. Not only do the young men cultivate a large acreage each year, but a number of girls also receive instruction in gardening, dairying, and poultry raising. In a word, the whole attitude of the school toward agriculture has been revolutionised, and the department has been placed upon an effective and practical foundation.
There are hundreds of cases similar to those of Mr. Menafee and the Mobile brick-mason. These represent a class of students who have absorbed the spirit of the school as well as its methods, and who are doing far-reaching service, although they are not enrolled on our list of graduates. We have tried to give special attention to all forms of agricultural training at Tuskegee, because we believe that the Negro, like any other race in a similar stage of development, is better off when owning and cultivating the soil.
As I have explained elsewhere, the results of our agricultural work in the past have not been as manifest as they will be in the future, for the Institute has been compelled to give foremost place to the building trades in order to get under shelter. The task of erecting nearly seventy buildings, in which to house about seventeen hundred people, has not been easy. And yet what are some of the results of our lessons in farming? Not long ago I drove through a section of Macon County, Alabama. My drive extended a distance of perhaps eight miles, and during this time I passed through or near the farms of A. H. Adams, Thomas Courrier, Frank McCay, Nathaniel Harris, Thomas Anderson, John Smith, and Dennis Upshaw. These seven men had attended the Tuskegee Institute for longer or shorter periods, and each had already paid for his farm or was buying it. All of these men had studied in the Phelps Hall Bible Training School in the morning, and had taken the agricultural course in the afternoon. When I visited their farms, I saw them actually at work, and it was most encouraging and interesting to note the air of cleanliness and system about their farms and homes. In every case they were not confining themselves to the raising of cotton, but had learned to diversify their crops. All were active in church and Sunday-school work, and were using their influence to get others to buy homes. The most prosperous farmer among them was Mr. Upshaw. He began farming with practically nothing. At present he owns one hundred and fifteen acres of land, which is cultivated by himself and family. On this land is a neat, attractive house, a barn and outbuildings, and a small sugar house for boiling syrup from the cane which he raises for his own use. His home and farm are models for other farmers. He raises not only cotton, but corn and oats, vegetables, fruit, live stock, and fowls. He has an unusually fine peach orchard. Mr. and Mrs. Upshaw are leaders in the County Farmers' Institute. Mrs. Upshaw is also a member of the Mothers' Meeting, which assembles regularly in the town of Tuskegee. While Mr. Upshaw's present house is better than the average farmhouse in that section, when I last visited this farm, I found lumber on the ground to be used in erecting a new and larger house. Hundreds of such examples could be cited.
I have given these seven examples because people who know absolutely nothing about the subject often make the statement that when a Negro gets any degree of education he will not work—especially as a farmer. As a rule, people who make these sweeping assertions against the Negro are blinded by prejudice. The judgment of any man, black or white, who is controlled by race prejudice is not to be trusted. With one exception, I did not know of the farming operations of these men before the drive referred to; but I was not at all surprised at what I saw, because my years of experience have brought me into unbroken contact with Tuskegee men and women all over the South, and wherever I have met them I have found that they had in some degree raised the level of life about them.
Another branch of Agriculture, to which we have for a number of years given special attention, is dairying. The demand from Southern white people for trained dairymen is much greater than we have been able to supply.
In 1898, L. A. Smith finished the course of training in dairying and in the academic branches. He had been able to complete his course only by working during the day and attending school at night during the greater part of his time here. Soon after Smith graduated, we had a call for a well-trained dairyman from the Forest City Creamery Company, Rockford, Illinois. Smith was recommended. He has been holding an important position in the creamery for five years, and has several times been promoted with an increase of salary. Smith has paid for a neat and comfortable home, and he has the confidence and respect of the entire community. He looked so young and inexperienced in taking up his work that his ability was doubted, but it did not take him long to prove that he was fully equal to the occasion. The proprietor unhesitatingly said that he was one of the most proficient and valuable men in his employ, and that he had placed him in a very important and trying position—that of making butter cultures. This is a secret department in which no one except the employees operating it and the proprietor is permitted to enter. Mr. Smith also did some important chemical work in connection with a lawsuit supposed to involve the manufacture of spurious butter.
In Montgomery County, Alabama, Mr. N. N. Scott, a Southern white man, has operated for a number of years the largest and most successful dairy farm in his section. Mr. Scott has in his employ three Tuskegee men, with Scott Thomas in charge. Mr. Scott tells us that those men trained at our school are the most efficient helpers he can secure. He keeps a standing order with Mr. George W. Carver, our instructor in dairying, to the effect that he will employ any one that Mr. Carver recommends. Not far from Mr. Scott's dairy is a smaller one owned by Mr. E. J. Hughes, another white man. Some time ago Mr. Hughes secured Luther M. Jones, who had taken only a partial course in dairying at Tuskegee, to make butter and cheese for him. Such examples can be found in nearly every one of the Southern States.
From the beginning, the work of this institution has been closely related to the public school system of the South, for it must be clear to all that in the last analysis we must depend upon public schools for the general education of the masses, and it is important that the larger institutions for the education of the Negro keep in close and sympathetic touch with the school officials of the Southern States.
One way in which we assist the public school system of the South is by sending out men and women who become the teachers of teachers. One of the best examples of this is the case of Isaac Fisher, a young man who came to Tuskegee a number of years ago, and earned his board by working during the day and going to school at night. Two years ago Mr. Fisher, upon my recommendation, was elected by the State officials of the State of Arkansas to the important position of Principal of the Branch Normal College of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the main institution for training coloured teachers for the public schools of that commonwealth. Mr. Fisher has associated with him a large force of teachers, two of whom also are Tuskegee graduates. In the school are students many of whom will become not only public-school teachers in the usual sense, but having been trained by Mr. Fisher in the industries, they will be able to introduce them gradually into their teaching. There is hardly a single Southern State where our men and women are not found in some of the larger schools for training teachers.
Our students at Tuskegee are instructed constantly in methods of building schoolhouses and prolonging the school term. It is safe to say that outside the larger Southern cities and towns in the rural district, one will find nine-tenths of the school buildings wholly unfit for use, and rarely is the public school session longer than five months—in most cases not more than four. These conditions exist largely because of the poverty of the States. One of the problems of our teachers is to show the people how through private effort they can build schoolhouses and extend the school term.