The cosmopolitan character of the Tuskegee student body is shown by the fact that during the past year students have come from the foreign countries or colonies of foreign countries indicated by the various flags shown in this picture.
To the delight of the students he would occasionally call a mass-meeting where he would call upon them one by one to get up and tell him of anything that was wrong, of anything that was keeping them from being as happy as he wanted them to be. It was understood that everything that a student said in such a meeting would be regarded as a confidence and that nothing that he said would be used against him. The teachers sometimes protested against the unbridled criticism which Mr. Washington permitted in these meetings. He, however, continued them without modification, and while many of the students' complaints were grossly exaggerated their statements nevertheless led to reforms in some important particulars. The meetings undoubtedly added greatly to the contentment and happiness of the student body.
He was always trying to protect the poorer students against the danger of being embarrassed or humiliated by the more fortunate ones. In this connection he was constantly resisting the importunities of students and teachers who wanted to charge admission fees to this or that game or entertainment. When the occasion really demanded and justified an admission fee he would make secret arrangements with the management to have the poorer students admitted at his personal expense.
His willingness to hear the students' grievances was a characteristic not always appreciated by the officers and teachers. He was a firm believer in the right of petition either for a group or an individual. No matter how pressed and driven he was with business no student or group of students, and no teacher or group of teachers, was too humble or obscure in the school's life to win a personal hearing. He would without hesitation reopen and painstakingly review a case, already decided by the Executive Council, if he thought there was the slightest chance that an injustice had been done. He insisted upon giving the accused not only "a square deal," but the benefit of every doubt. On the other hand, when there was no reasonable doubt of guilt no one could be more stern and unrelenting than he in meting out justice.
Mr. Washington always encouraged and helped every ambitious student who came to Tuskegee to develop his capacities to the utmost no matter whether they were large or small. Years ago a student, William Sidney Pittman, showed a particular aptitude for carpentry and draftsmanship. After working his way through Tuskegee he was very anxious to take a course in architecture. Mr. Washington arranged to have the Institute advance him the money for a three years' course at the Drexel Institute of Philadelphia, on the understanding that he would return to Tuskegee as a teacher after his graduation and from his earnings pay back to the school all that had been advanced for his training at Drexel. Pittman's record at Drexel was wholly satisfactory. He returned to Tuskegee and repaid his loan in accordance with the agreement. He has since won the competitive award for the design of the Negro Building at the Jamestown Exposition, has built a large number of public and semi-public buildings throughout the South, including the Carnegie Library at Houston, Texas; a Pythian Temple at Dallas, Texas, where he lives, for the Negro members of the Knights of Pythias; the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building at Tuskegee, and a number of Young Men's Christian Association buildings for colored men. In 1907 he married Mr. Washington's only daughter, Portia Marshall Washington, after her graduation from Bradford Academy, Massachusetts. He is now generally regarded as the foremost architect of his race.
Somewhat later Mr. Washington succeeded in securing some scholarships which enabled promising Tuskegee graduates to take two years of post-graduate work in teaching methods at the Teachers' College of Columbia University. These scholarships were given by John Crosby Brown, V. Everett Macy, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. In each case these students were required to return to Tuskegee as teachers for two years—the same time as their course at Columbia. Dean Russell of the Teachers' College has testified to the earnestness and high character of these Tuskegee graduates.
As measured by the Tuskegee standard of success, which is service to others, perhaps the most successful of all Tuskegee's graduates is William H. Holtzclaw, the Principal of the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute of Mississippi. There is no school that has better emulated the best there is in Tuskegee Institute, and there is no graduate of Tuskegee that has followed more faithfully and effectively in Booker Washington's footsteps. Holtzclaw has told his own story in an admirably written and most interesting book entitled, "The Black Man's Burden." Starting in 1903 with a capital of seventy-five cents, no land and no buildings in a little one-room, ramshackle log cabin, which he did not own and in which he and his wife lived as well as taught, Holtzclaw now has an annual enrollment of nearly five hundred students and a faculty of thirty teachers. The school through its varied forms of extension work influences yearly about thirty thousand people. It owns seventeen hundred acres of land and conducts twenty different industries aside from its academic work. The buildings and property are valued at one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. It has also its own electric light plant and water-works and an endowment of over thirty-two thousand dollars. In concluding his book Mr. Holtzclaw says: "I see more clearly than ever before the great task that is before me, and I propose to continue the struggle. It is an appalling task: a State with more than a million Negroes to be educated, with half a million children of school age, 35 per cent. of whom at the present time attend no school at all (only 36 per cent. in average attendance), a State whose dual school system makes it impossible to furnish more than a mere pittance for the education of each child—yet these children must be educated, must be unfettered, set free. That freedom for which Christian men and women, North and South, have worked and prayed so long must be realized in the lives of these young people. This, then, is my task, the war that I must wage; and I propose to stay on the firing-line and fight the good fight of faith."
Another Tuskegee graduate in whom Mr. Washington was especially interested is Isaac Fisher. Fisher has been awarded the following prizes for his writings:
"What We've Learned About the Rum Question," $500; "German and American Methods of Regulating Trusts," $400 (in order to write this paper Mr. Fisher had to acquire a reading knowledge of German which he did alone and unaided in a few months' time); "Ten of the Best Reasons Why People Should Live in Missouri," $100; "A Plan to Give the South a System of Highways Suited to Its Needs," $100; "The Most Practicable Method of Beginning a Tariff Reduction," honorable mention. (Upon the request of the chief examiner of the United States Tariff Board this essay was sent to that body for its use.) Besides these, Mr. Fisher has taken several minor prizes for compositions on various subjects.