PROF. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, A. M.
Prof. B. T. Washington, the founder and principal of the Tuskegee, Alabama, Normal Industrial Institute, was born at Hale's Ford Postoffice, Franklin County, Virginia, about 1856 or 1857. At the age of nine he went with his mother and the rest of the family to Malden, Kanawha County, West Virginia. Here he attended the common schools until 1872. In the Fall of that year he left Malden and proceeded to Hampton Institute, at Hampton, Virginia. His means were scanty, but he thought he had money enough to reach that place. Upon his arrival at Richmond, he found himself minus enough to pay for a night's lodging. He took the next best, shelter under a sidewalk. Next morning he got employment in helping to unload a vessel, thus earning a sufficient sum with which to continue his journey to Hampton. At this institution the first year he paid his expenses by working, with a brother helping him some. The two remaining years he worked out his entire expenses as janitor. Graduating in 1875, he taught school several years at Malden, the place of his birth. In 1878 he entered Wayland Seminary and took a course of studies there. After leaving there he was given a position in Hampton Institute, which position he held two years, the last year having charge of the Indian boys. Meanwhile the Legislature of Alabama passed an act establishing a Normal School at Tuskegee, Alabama. The State Commissioners applied to Gen. S. C. Armstrong, principal of Hampton Institute, to recommend some one for principal. He recommended Mr. Washington, who went at once to Alabama, and organized the school July 4th, 1881. The buildings then occupied were a church and a small dwelling house, with thirty pupils and one teacher. Since that time it has made such wonderful progress that, to-day, the site of the institution is a city within itself. Mr. Carnegie recently donated to the institution $20,000, with which to build and equip a library. It is aided by friends both North and South. Mr. Washington is a splendid example of "grit and determination," and the history of his life is worthy the study of every colored youth in our land.
Professor Washington, in speaking of his experiences at Hampton, says: "While at Hampton, I resolved, if God permitted me to finish the course of study, I would enter the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give my life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance for self-help for the youth of my race that I found ready for me when I went to Hampton, and so, in 1881, I left Hampton and went to Tuskegee and started the Normal and Industrial Institute."
Professor Washington is in great demand as a speaker in all educational gatherings. For several consecutive years he has addressed the National Educational Association, where from ten to fifteen thousand of the cream of the educational workers of the nation listen to his addresses with rapt attention. Without question he is the great leader of his race, and one of the great men of this age.
"Will Education Solve the Race Problem?" is the title of an interesting article in the June number of The North American Review, by Professor John Roach Straton, of Macon, Georgia. My own belief is that education will finally solve the race problem. In giving some reasons for this faith, I wish to express my appreciation of the sincere and kindly spirit in which Professor Straton's article is written. I grant that much that he emphasizes as to present conditions is true. When we recall the past, these conditions could not be expected to be otherwise; but I see no reason for discouragement or loss of faith. When I speak of education as a solution for the race problem, I do not mean education in the narrow sense, but education which begins in the home and includes training in industry and in habits of thrift, as well as mental, moral and religious discipline, and the broader education which comes from contact with the public sentiment of the community in which one lives. Nor do I confine myself to the education of the Negro. Many persons in discussing the effect that education will have in working out the Negro question, overlook the helpful influence that will ultimately come through the broader and more generous education of all the race elements of the South. As all classes of whites in the South become more generally educated in the broader sense, race prejudice will be tempered and they will assist in lifting up the black man.
In our desire to see a better condition of affairs, we are too often inclined to grow impatient because a whole race is not elevated in a short time, very much as a house is built. In all the history of mankind there have been few such radical, social and economic changes in the policy of a nation as have been effected within thirty-five years in this country, with respect to the change of four million and a half of slaves into four million and a half of freemen (now nearly ten million). When all the conditions of the past are considered, and compared with the present, I think the White South, the North and the Negro are to be congratulated on the fact that conditions are no worse, but are as encouraging as they are. The sudden change from slavery to freedom, from restraint to liberty, was a tremendous one; and the wonder is, not that the Negro has not done better, but that he has done as well as he has. Every thoughtful student of the subject expected that the first two or three generations of freedom would lead to excesses and mistakes on the part of the Negro, which would in many cases cause moral and physical degeneration, such as would seem to the superficial observer to indicate conditions that could not be overcome. It was to be anticipated that, in the first generation at least, the tendency would be, among a large number, to seek the shadow instead of the substance; to grasp after the mere signs of the highest civilization instead of the reality; to be led into the temptation of believing that they could secure, in a few years, that which it has taken other races thousands of years to obtain. Any one who has the daily opportunity of studying the Negro at first hand cannot but gain the impression that there are indisputable evidences that the Negro throughout the country is settling down to a hard, common sense view of life; that he is fast learning that a race, like an individual, must pay for everything it gets—the price of beginning at the bottom of the social scale and gradually working up by natural processes to the highest civilization. The exaggerated impressions that the first years of freedom naturally brought are giving way to an earnest, practical view of life and its responsibilities.
Let us take a broad, generous survey of the Negro race as it came into the country, represented by twenty savages, in 1619, and trace its progress through slavery, through the Civil War period, and through freedom to the present moment. Who will be brave enough to say that the colored race, as a whole, has not increased in numbers and grown stronger mentally, morally, religiously, industrially, and in the accumulation of property? In a word, has not the Negro, at every stage, shown a tendency to grow into harmony with the best type of American civilization?
Professor Straton lays special stress upon the moral weakness of the race. Perhaps the worst feature of slavery was that it prevented the development of a family life, with all of its far-reaching significance. Except in rare cases the uncertainties of domicile made family life, during two hundred and fifty years of slavery, an impossibility. There is no institution so conducive to right and high habits of physical and moral life as the home. No race starting in absolute poverty could be expected, in the brief period of thirty-five years, to purchase homes and build up a family life and influence that would have a very marked impression upon the life of the masses. The Negro has not had time enough to collect the broken and scattered members of his family. For the sake of illustration, and to employ a personal reference, I do not know who my own father was; I have no idea who my grandmother was; I have or had uncles, aunts and cousins, but I have no knowledge as to where most of them now are. My case will illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part of our country. Perhaps those who direct attention to the Negro's moral weakness, and compare his moral progress with that of the whites, do not consider the influence of the memories which cling about the old family homestead upon the character and aspirations of individuals. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations. On the other hand, the fact that the individual has behind him and surrounding him proud family history and connections serves as a stimulus to make him overcome obstacles, when striving for success. All this should be taken into consideration, to say nothing of the physical, mental and moral training which individuals of the white race receive in their homes. We must not pass judgment on the Negro too soon. It requires centuries for the influence of home, school, church and public contact to permeate the mass of millions of people, so that the upward tendency may be apparent to the casual observer. It is too soon to decide what effect general education will have upon the rank and file of the Negro race, because the masses have not been educated.
Throughout the South, especially in the Gulf states, the great bulk of the black population lives in the country districts. In these districts the schools are rarely in session more than three months of the year. When this is considered, in connection with poor teachers, poor schoolhouses, and an almost entire lack of apparatus, it is obvious that we must wait longer before we can judge, even approximately, of the effect that general education will have upon the whole population. Most writers and speakers upon the subject of the Negro's non-progressiveness base their arguments upon alleged facts and statistics of the life of Negroes in the large cities. This is hardly fair. Before the Civil War the Negro was not, to any considerable extent, a denizen of the large cities. Most of them lived on the plantations. The Negro living in the cities has undergone two marked changes: (1) the change from slavery to freedom; (2) the change from country life to city life. At first the tendency of both these changes was, naturally, to unsettle, to intoxicate and to lead the Negro to wrong ideas of life. The change from country life to city life, in the case of the white man, is about as marked as in the case of the Negro. The average Negro in the city, with all of its excitements and temptations, has not lived there more than half a generation. It is, therefore, too soon to reach a definite conclusion as to what the permanent effect of this life upon him will be. This, I think, explains the difference between the moral condition of the Negro, to which Professor Straton refers, in the states where there has been little change in the old plantation life, as compared with that in the more northern of the Atlantic states, where the change from country to city life is more marked.
Judging from close observation, my belief is that, after the Negro has overcome the false idea which city life emphasizes, two or three generations will bring about an earnestness and steadiness of purpose which do not now generally obtain. As the Negro secures a home in the city, learns the lessons of industry and thrift and becomes a taxpayer, his moral life improves. The influence of home surroundings, of the school, the church and public sentiment will be more marked and have a more potent effect in causing him to withstand temptations. But, notwithstanding the shortness of the time which the Negro has had in which to get schooled to his new life, any one who has visited the large cities of Europe will readily testify that the visible signs of immorality in those cities are far greater than among the colored people of America. Prostitution for gain is far more prevalent in the cities of Europe than among the colored people of our cities.
Professor Straton says that the Negro has degenerated in morals since he became free; in other words, that his condition in this respect is not as hopeful as it was during the early period of slavery. I do not think it wise to place too much reliance upon such a view of the matter, because there are too few facts upon which to base a comparison. The bald statement that the Negro was not given to crime during slavery proves little. Slavery represented an unnatural condition of life, in which certain physical checks were kept constantly upon the individual. To say that the Negro was at his best, morally, during the period of slavery is about the same as to say that the two thousand prisoners in the State prison and the city penal institutions in the city of Boston are the most righteous two thousand people in Boston. I question whether one can find two thousand persons in Boston who will equal these two thousand imprisoned criminals in the mere negative virtues. During the days of slavery the Negro was rarely brought into the court to be tried for crime; hence, there was almost no public record of crimes committed by him. Each master, in most cases, punished his slave as he thought best, and as little as possible was said about it outside of his little plantation world. The improper relations between the sexes, with which the black race is now frequently charged in most sections of the South, were encouraged or winked at, under the slavery system, because of the financial value of the slaves. A custom that was fostered for three centuries cannot be blotted out in one generation.