"Well, that man was at Booker T. Washington's funeral. He came there on foot, on horseback, in buggies, in wagons. He was there in working clothes, in slouched hat, with no collar.
"During the service I chanced to stand near the end of the platform. Pretty soon I felt a rough brushing against my elbow. As I turned I saw a small white child, poorly clad, being thrust upon the end of the flower-laden platform. Then followed an old white man, collarless, wearing a dingy blue shirt and a coat somewhat tattered. After him came two strapping fellows, apparently his sons. All grouped themselves there and listened eagerly, freely spitting their tobacco juice on the platform steps and on the floor.
"How thankful would Dr. Washington have been for their presence. What a triumph! Ten years ago those men would not stop at the school. They cursed it, cursed the whole system and the man at the head of it. But quietly, persistently, he had gone on with that everlasting doctrine that service can win even the meanest heart, that an institution had the right to survive in just so far as it dovetailed its life into the life of all the people. Beautiful to behold, to remember forever; there was no race and no class in the Tuskegee chapel on Wednesday morning, November 17th; heart went out to heart that a common friend had gone.
"Broken as everybody is over the loss, no one is afraid. No panic as to the future of the school disturbs the breasts of the 190 odd teachers here. In the first place, poor as most of us are, we are ready to suffer many a privation before we see the institution slip back the slightest fraction of an inch. All these years it has been on trial, on record. It has been a test, not of a mere school, but of a race. A tacit pledge—not a word has thus far been spoken—has gone out among us that it shall remain on record, that it shall stand here as a breathing evidence that Negroes can bring things to pass.
"Back of this is the unshaken faith in our Board of Trustees. I doubt if such another board exists. It is made up of white men and black men, of men of the North and men of the South. There is not a figurehead among them. Though intensely engaged they go into the details of the workings of the school, getting close to the inner workings and to the lives of the teachers and students.
"Finally, we are confident that the public will have a good deal to say before Tuskegee is let die. The beaten path has been made to her door. Her methods have not only been commended but adopted wholly or in part both in this country and in other lands. Her use is undisputed. She takes students almost literally out of the gutter, puts them on their feet, and sends them out honest, peaceful, useful citizens. This is the ideal for which Dr. Washington struggled, and over which his life-cord snapped too soon.
"For the same ideal the people at Tuskegee, though broken in spirit, are willing to spend themselves; for they are confident that their cause is just and that the world is with them."
THE END
