I was not very much inclined to take the responsibility, but at Tuskegee polite notification of selection to do a thing is a command. I accepted the work and did my very best. There were about twenty young men in the shop when I took charge, some older, some younger than I, but most of whom had been there longer than I had. I had no serious complaints as to the quality of work turned out by me during the instructor's absence.
I now had to my credit more than enough money to carry me through the remaining two years. The next year I entered the day-school. I had become in most respects a new person. I had gone to Tuskegee country-bred, raw, ignorant. The school's transforming influence I was able to note in my carriage, and, of course, in my conversation, in my care for neatness and order, and in the ideals I was forming and trying to live up to. During the summer I returned home for the first time. I worked at my trade during the vacation and earned enough money to buy clothing and other necessaries. I did not return to school until December 28, 1897, as I needed the money I was earning at my trade. I had never earned in money more than the small amounts referred to in the first part of this paper, and so was delighted with my earning capacity.
I then sought work in the blacksmithing-shop, the shop I had first desired to enter, so that I might become a first-class blacksmith in addition to having a working knowledge of wheelwrighting. After completing the school term I went to Montgomery, Ala., and worked as a wheelwright and blacksmith. This outside experience was most helpful to me. My last school year was that of 1899-1900. I was very happy to receive, along with my academic diploma, a certificate also from the blacksmithing division. I was now fitted to begin my life in the great outside world.
My first work was as instructor in blacksmithing and wheelwrighting in the Hungerford Industrial School at Eatonville, Fla. I then secured work at my trades in Birmingham until August, 1901, when three of us who had been classmates at Tuskegee decided to form a partnership and conduct on a large scale a general blacksmithing and wheelwrighting business. I was deputed to select the place where we should locate. After interviewing a number of persons, Anniston, Ala., was suggested, and I decided to go there to personally investigate conditions. After getting there and going about the town, I agreed that at Anniston we should find a place that would properly support our business. There was no place vacant that we could rent, so after some further consideration we decided to purchase a place. This we were fortunate enough to do, and came into possession of a building for our shop, 50 by 60 feet. We met all obligations after opening the shop and secured the most flattering support. Our work met the most exacting requirements, and I was very much disinclined to accept an offer which reached me from Mr. Nathan B. Young, who had had charge of the academic work at Tuskegee during a part of my stay there. Mr. Young, however, represented that I could render much more effective racial service by reaching a large number of persons, young men, daily. After much hesitation I went to the Florida State Normal and Industrial School, to which Mr. Young had been called as President, as instructor in blacksmithing and wheelwrighting, where I have since been employed. I have done well, and am proud that I can say so.
Of my stay at Tuskegee, what shall I say? It was all in all to me. The lessons in shop and class-room, the lessons not at all catalogued that go into character-forming—all of these I found most helpful and invaluable, in making me a man who "thinks and feels." I should be tempted to eulogy should I try to tell how much I owe to Dr. Washington, to his teachers, and to all of the influences that assist the student at Tuskegee.
XIV
A DRUGGIST'S STORY
By David L. Johnston
Shortly after the smoke had cleared away from the battle-fields of the Civil War, I was ushered into the world in a one-room log cabin in Alabama, county of Macon, and near the little town of Tuskegee, afterward made famous by virtue of the fact that there was established near it, by Booker T. Washington, July 4, 1881, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. That I have the honor of being an alumnus of that school is one of the best things of which I can boast.