GIRLS GARDENING.
The Board of Managers did not oppose the boarding department, yet they did not sanction it to the extent of supporting it.
I had confidence in my plans and was willing to start alone. This step was far more perplexing than I had at first imagined. As the time drew near for the opening of school, I was aware that for the boarding department I had to find a suitable house and procure necessary furniture. In the basement of the school building was some lumber which had been used for a platform. With the assistance of one of the teachers this stage-lumber was converted into five bedsteads and three small tables. I succeeded in getting one of the merchants to credit us for several lamps. With this furniture, several stools, an equal number of dry-goods boxes, and a few kitchen utensils, the boarding department of the institution was started. Notwithstanding the scanty arrangement, I am glad to say that for the most part there was but little or no complaint.
Sufficient money was appropriated by the Board of Managers to provide for the purchase of necessary working tools for the added industrial classes.
I kept our friends in the North reminded of our need of additional land. The industrial-school idea with a department of agriculture was not succeeding well on a half-acre of ground. After two years of patient toil this question of land was recognized as a necessity, and accordingly two friends undertook to solicit subscriptions to the amount of $5,000 with which to purchase a farm of 100 acres, two horses, a set of harness, a wagon, and a plow. By this time spring was well on and we were planning to make a crop. In a runaway one of the school horses was badly injured. The purchase of the farm, etc., had about exhausted our Northern resources and the school was in debt. To my credit in the Bank of Christiansburg was a small sum of money, with which I purchased a horse. The crop that year was fairly successful.
Before taking possession of the farm, it was understood that instead of the proceeds of the farm going toward maintaining or paying teachers' salaries, the money should go toward building up the soil, which was well run down, and that we should devote all possible effort in the direction of restoring the soil to its once high state of fertilization. Owning this farm, we had the "Big House" where the master once lived, and several of the slave cabins, which still remain, where the slaves resided. Hundreds of slaves, I have been told, tilled this soil in the days long ago, when its productive power was greater than that of any estate in this whole section.
It is a remarkable and significant fact that where the master once lived is a recitation building for colored boys and girls, and where the slaves once huddled around the flickering light of a pine-knot young Negro students are quartered daily, preparing for the duties of the morrow.
In building up the school to its present position, five persons, almost from the very beginning, have figured most prominently, viz.: E. A. Long and his wife, Miss Willie Mae Griffin, the writer and his wife—all Tuskegee graduates. It is needless that I remark here that the burdens borne by the men have been in no sense heavier than those borne by these faithful women. The road along which we have traveled has not been, by any means, a smooth one. We all had been toilers at Tuskegee and knew well how to face the duties of life. This was decidedly in our favor. I was the oldest of the company and perhaps had seen more of hardship than the others; it therefore fell to my lot to give courage to the others when hope was all but gone.
Some time previous to our taking possession of the farm, some of the occupants had sown about half an acre in a kind of radish commonly known hereabout as "pig radish." It must be remembered that each year, after the eight months' academic work was over, we received no money from any source whatever. Paying the salaries of teachers who were to leave for the summer and meeting other demands of the institution always exhausted the school's treasury before the summer season began. With a "cropping" season of four months ahead, no money, no source from which any could be expected, the nice tender "pig radish," year after year, became our food-supply for the early part of the summer at least. Thus, while pushing the operations of the farm, rebuilding the soil by means of turning under green crops, fertilizers, etc., "pig-radish" greens, western side meat, and corn-meal constituted our chief diet. Beef came to us as a luxury twice a week. The work was divided so that E. A. Long, our treasurer, was gardener, I was farmer, our wives and Miss Griffin were matrons and cooks. The 4th of July, 1900, found the work of the farm in such a prosperous condition that it was decided to celebrate the event with a cake and some ice-cream, for by this time we owned a cow.