It was during this summer that Mr. Booker T. Washington showed me that I had come favorably under his notice. At one of the weekly prayer-meetings, conducted by the chaplain, Mr. Penney, and at which Mr. Washington was present, I made some remarks relative to the agnosticism of the late Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. The following day Mr. Washington sent for me, inquired my age and class in the school, and then said some very kind things about the talk which I had made in the prayer-meeting, and made me a conditional promise of his friendship, which, despite my oft-proven unworthiness, he has ever since given me in unstinted measure. After that second year my hardships as a "work-student" were practically over.
In my third year I entered the day-school, working one day in every week and every other Saturday, and going to school the remainder of the time. While the school made compulsory the earning of some money on the part of all students, it set no maximum limit on the amounts to be earned. I elected to earn as much as I could under the circumstances, earning, by reason of the many odd jobs which I did, often as much as $20 per month, going to school every day in the meantime. The average amount usually earned is $5 and $6 per month. At one time I worked eight days per month on the farm, sent notes of the school to 127 Negro newspapers, cleaned one laboratory every day, played in both the brass band and the orchestra, blew the bugle for the battalion, and taught two classes in the night-school, for each of which duties I received pay; and even though I broke down under the accumulated strain soon after my graduation, I carried my point and completed the course of study as I had planned.
THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY BUILDING.
In my fourth year I won the Trinity Church (Boston) Prize of $25 for oratory; and in my senior year won the Loughridge Book Prize for scholarship, and also the valedictory of my class, graduating in 1898.
I was immediately sent to the Schofield School, a Quaker institution for Negroes in Aiken, S. C., to organize farmers' conferences on the order of those conducted by the Tuskegee Institute, and to serve as a teacher in the school. After one year's service in that position Mr. Washington asked me to accept the position of Assistant Northern Financial Agent for Tuskegee. I accepted, and remained two years in New England, helping to interest friends in my alma mater. At my own request I was transferred from the Northern work to the South, being assigned this time to the Negro Conference work in Alabama. Before beginning this work I was married to a Tuskegee girl, Miss Sallie McCann.
Within a few months a principal was needed for the Swayne Public School of Montgomery, Ala., and this in the middle of the school year. Mr. Washington recommended me for the work, and I was elected to the position. At the close of the term I went to New York to study the public-school system of that city as far as possible. While there I was reelected principal of the Swayne School, and a notice of the election reached me one morning. Three hours later I received a letter from the secretary of the University of Arkansas (white) informing me that my name had been presented to the board of trustees of that institution, and I had been elected to the presidency of the State Branch Normal College at Pine Bluff, Ark. I was not a candidate for the position, but seeing in it an opportunity for greater usefulness, I accepted the position in my twenty-fifth year, and have just been reelected to serve a third term as president of the school. The Branch Normal College was established in 1875 as one of the Land Grant colleges, and has a property valuation of $100,000.
Over my desk hangs a picture of the Principal of Tuskegee; and in my desk are views of the institution which he has built. But these may be removed. In the book of my memory and in the secret chambers of my heart I have enshrined the two names which, with God and the parents now on the other side of the Great Divide, have shaped and given direction to my whole life—Tuskegee and Booker T. Washington.