It would be difficult to say, however, whether Booker Washington showed greater interest in the most brilliant or the most backward students. Certain it is that the most backward students won his special attention and encouragement.
In the early days of the school there was a student by the name of Jailous Perdue whom Mr. Washington constantly encouraged and in whom he never lost faith in spite of his almost total failure to master his classroom work. Monroe N. Work, the statistician of the Institute and the editor of "The Negro Year Book," under the title "The Man Who Failed," has thus told Perdue's story:
"Back in the days when the cooking for students at Tuskegee was done out of doors in pots and the principal entrance requirement was a 'desire to make something of himself' a young man, Jailous Perdue, came to Tuskegee to get an education. He was financially poor and intellectually dull. Examinations he could not pass. After struggling along for several years and accumulating a lot of examination failures, he decided to quit school, go out to work and help educate his sisters. Although he had failed in his literary subjects, he had nevertheless got an education in how to use his hands. He had learned to be a carpenter. Out in the world he went and began to work at his trade. As soon as he had earned a little money he placed three of his sisters in school at Tuskegee, and with the help of his brother Augustus, who had graduated some time before, supported two of them there for three years and one for four years.
"In the meantime he had succeeded at his trade and gone into business for himself at Montgomery, Ala., as a contractor and builder. Here also he was successful and did thousands of dollars' worth of work. No job was too small nor too large for him to make a bid on. If he did not have a contract of his own he was not above working for some other contractor, and as a result he was always busy. He has superintended the construction of some of the largest buildings in Montgomery. Among the buildings the erection of which he has superintended are the Exchange Hotel, at a cost of $150,000; the First Baptist Church, at a cost of $175,000; the First National Bank Building, at a cost of $350,000; and the Bell Building, at a cost of $450,000. Perdue also assisted as foreman or assistant foreman in erecting many of the important buildings at Tuskegee Institute, such as the Principal's house, the chapel, the library, Rockefeller Hall, the Academic Building, and the Millbank Agricultural Building.
"It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Perdue has accumulated property or that he owns a good home in Montgomery, for in these progressive days every black man in the South with any foresight is investing some part of his earnings in property. The most interesting and somewhat remarkable thing about the career of Perdue and the greatest measure of his success is that twenty-three years after he had left Tuskegee a literary failure he was asked to come back and become a member of the faculty as an instructor in carpentry. Thus it was that the man who failed succeeded and returned to the scene of his failure a success. Perdue was constantly encouraged by Mr. Washington. He came under the type of those who were not brilliant, but who were always in his opinion worthy of help and encouragement."
Washington A. Tate was even duller in books than Perdue. During his early years at Tuskegee he seemed unable to grasp the most rudimentary information. His native dullness was made unpleasant and aggressive by a combative disposition. He was constantly trying to prove to his exasperated teachers that he knew what he did not know. He was almost twenty-five years of age when he reached the Institute and entered the lowest primary grade. He had the greatest difficulty in passing any examinations and never succeeded in passing all that were required. Motions were constantly made and passed in faculty meetings to drop Tate, and were as constantly vetoed by Mr. Washington on the plea of giving him one more chance. Finally when Tate's time to graduate came the teachers in a body protested against giving him a diploma. Mr. Washington argued that a man who had made all the sacrifices Tate had made at his age to stay in school, a man who had worked early and late in fair weather and foul for the school, a man who had stuck to his task in the face of repeated failures and discouragements, had in him something better than the mere ability to pass examinations. Through Mr. Washington's intercession for him Tate got his diploma. The next day Mr. Washington had him employed to take charge of the school's piggery. Because of his hard, conscientious, and effective work in this capacity he was afterward recommended to the United States Department of Agriculture at Washington as the proper man to take charge of the United States demonstration work in Macon County, Ala. Tate proved to be one of the Government's most successful demonstration agents. He is now farming successfully on his own account in an adjoining county.
Booker Washington, as previously pointed out, saw very much more clearly than most educators that education's only purpose and sole justification lies in preparation for right living. A man who has passed all manner of examinations may not be prepared to live rightly and hence may not justly claim to be educated. A man who has failed to pass examinations may be prepared for right living and hence may justly be called an educated man. In other words, Booker Washington realized that education was primarily a matter of the development of character and only secondarily a matter of the acquisition of information.
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