By Mary L. Dotson
I graduated with the Class of 1900, Tuskegee Institute. It was the culmination of an event to which my mother and I had long looked forward.
I was born in 1879, in a small country village in the southwestern part of Alabama. My mother was the exceptional colored woman of our community. She was a dressmaker and tailoress and had all the work she could do. She owned her own home, a quite comfortable one, and earned continuously from her work a tidy sum of money.
I have always counted myself fortunate to have had such a home and such a mother. Very few of the colored people about us owned their own homes; the village school was a poor makeshift, and it was in session only two to four months in a year—that is, when some one could be secured to teach it for the very small salary paid. Both my father and mother had great respect for educationally equipped people, and desired that their children should have the opportunity to secure educational advantages. They tried in every possible way to interest the people in their own welfare, at least to the extent of supplementing the meager public-school fund, so as to provide decent educational facilities for the children. This effort failed. My mother had a room added to her home, and in it conducted, with my sister's help, a school for the children of the community. Two of my sisters had been sent away to school, one to Selma and the other to Talladega. In addition to the school conducted at our home, my mother was able to get the cooperation of some of the people in other parts of the county, and two other schools were started. These schools were afterward taken up, and have since become helpful factors in the life of the people.
My first lessons were given in the home, and my mother always claimed that I learned quite rapidly. As soon as I was old enough she also made me take lessons in sewing. Sewing made no appeal to me, however, but cooking did, and whenever possible I would steal away to my grandmother's to cook with her. Most of the time I was only permitted to wash dishes, but after a while I was permitted to help with her cooking. Soon I was able to make cakes for my father's store. He was always very proud that his "little" daughter was able to replenish his stock when it was exhausted.
At eight years of age I was sent to Meridian, Miss., to stay with an older sister and attend school. The advantages there were far superior to those provided for me at my home. After remaining two years at Meridian I went to Memphis, again in search of better school facilities. I have said that even at my age I had a fondness for cooking. At Memphis I had my first cooking lesson, this lesson being given along with the eighth grade work of the public school. I was delighted, but my aunt refused to allow me to practise in the home, however, and so all the practise I got was at school.
While in Memphis, a Tuskegee Institute graduate came there to teach in the colored public schools. Though we had lived in Alabama, we had not, until that time, heard of the Tuskegee Institute. The loyalty of that graduate to the school, the stories of the opportunities provided, and all, delighted my mother, my aunt, and myself, and it was decided that I should be sent there.
I entered the Tuskegee Institute in December, 1894, and was assigned, after examination, to the Junior class, the first class of the normal department. I remained at Tuskegee during the following summer and worked in the students' dining-room as a waitress. The next year I was compelled to enter the night-school so as to help lighten my mother's burden. I knew nothing of the science of foods; nothing at all, at that time, of anything that indicated that cooking is a real science. None but girls of the Senior class were then permitted to take cooking lessons, but I was often able to provide some excuse for visiting the very small and incompletely furnished room used for that purpose. I picked up much useful information in that way.
When I reached the A Middle class, next to the Senior class, the young women of that class were permitted to take cooking lessons.
Now I was to learn cooking. I had long desired the opportunity, and the chance had come at last. The study of foods was among the first lessons brought to my attention. While anxious to know all that was to be taught, I could never see the reasons for knowing. I wanted to cook food, and that, with me, was the end.