Milton Calloway left Tuskegee three years ago. In addition to taking the normal course, he learned the trade of tinsmithing. When he returned to his home at Union Spring, Bullock County, Alabama, he secured a school some distance in the country. The term was so short that Calloway found he could not live all the year by teaching during the three or four months of the session. Calloway's trade came to his rescue. Soon after he began teaching, he made an arrangement with a white man in the town by which he was to work in his shop on Saturdays and during his vacation months. By following this plan, the school is gradually being built up, the people are being taught to save their money, improve the schoolhouse, prolong the school term, and buy homes.
Moses P. Simmons, another one of our graduates in an adjoining county, has lengthened the term of the public school by teaching the children how to grow vegetables, which have been disposed of for school purposes.
During the latest session of our Negro Conference in February, one delegate from Conecuh County, Alabama, told how his people had nearly doubled the length of the school term by each family's agreeing to plant an extra half-acre which was designated as the "school half-acre." A number of Tuskegee men and women have put on foot some such scheme as this.
I asked one of the officials of the Tuskegee Institute to canvass our nearest large city, Montgomery, Alabama, in order to obtain the name of every student there who had received a diploma or certificate from Tuskegee, or who had remained long enough to be in any degree influenced by its teaching, and to report to me exactly what he found after making a personal inspection. Here are a few of his reports:
"Perry, J. W., class of 1889, lives near the city. Is farming. He controls 150 acres, owns five head of cattle, and teaches school six months in the year.
"Davis, Joseph, who has been away from Tuskegee three years, I found at work on a four-story building in process of erection on Commerce Street. He was getting $2.50 a day. At work on the same job were William Fuller at $3.60 a day, and H. T. Wheat at $2.50. Last summer Fuller received $4 a day for four months, at Troy, Alabama.
"Moten, Pierce, is at work as drug clerk in the drug store of D. A. C. Dungee, at the corner of Court and Washington Streets. He graduated from Tuskegee in 1902. While at the school he worked in the hospital, and much of that time had charge of the drug room. He is studying medicine, and has already spent a session at Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee.
"Campbell, Mrs. Berry N. (Miss Bowen), graduated in the class of 1887, and her home has been in Montgomery most of the time since then, although her work at times takes her away from the city. She is a trained nurse of excellent reputation and wide experience, and has frequently been employed at Hale's Infirmary. When I inquired for her she was taking care of a private case. She owns two good houses on Union Street and on High Street, both of which I saw. She also owns a vacant lot."
There were only three whose records were found to be uncertain or unsatisfactory. The same kind of investigation will reveal almost similar conditions existing in a greater or less degree in other Southern cities.