Alabama Hall. One of the first buildings erected by the students.
I heard Mr. Washington tell to an audience of fifteen hundred negroes, in Charleston, South Carolina, a characteristic story of the beginning of this brickyard. "After I had been teaching a while at Tuskegee," he said, "I began to feel that I was partly throwing away my time teaching the students only books, without getting hold of them in their home life and without teaching them how to care for their bodies and how to work. I looked about for some land, and found a farm near Tuskegee which could be bought. I had no money, but a good friend had confidence enough in our prospects to loan me five hundred dollars to pay down toward the land so as to secure it. After that it was not long before I had the school moved. Then I would teach the boys for a part of the day, and then for the rest of the time take them out of doors with me to help clear up the land. In that way we did all the work we possibly could. When it came to making bricks for a building, though, we were stuck. We could make the bricks, and did, but none of us knew how to burn them. For that it was necessary to have a skilled man, who must be paid. I was out of money by that time, but I owned a gold watch. This I took to a pawnshop and raised all I could on it. The money I got was enough to pay a man to burn the bricks and teach us so that we could do the next ones ourselves. That watch is in pawn yet, but we have got thirty-eight buildings."
Students at Work on New Trades-School Building.
Another class of young men are learning bricklaying. They take the bricks as they come from the yard and put up the walls of the buildings, while the carpenters do the woodwork. The classes in woodworking are among the most important at the school. The institute now owns a large tract of valuable timber land, while among the industrial buildings on the grounds is a good sawmill, equipped with the necessary machinery. Whatever lumber is needed in the erection of the buildings is cut on the timber lot, drawn to the mill, and sawed. In this way one class learns to saw and handle lumber. Besides the regular carpentry classes, joiner work and carriage-making are carried on. A large part of the furniture in the buildings, including the beds, tables, and chairs in the dormitories and dining rooms, was built in this way. All the carts, wagons, and carriages which are used about the place were built in the carriage shop, and the hickory lumber wagons turned out there have so good a reputation that all not needed on the place are sold readily to be used on the near-by farms. The carriages are painted, ironed, and trimmed by the young men, and no better proof of the workmanship can be asked than some of the rides I have had in them about Tuskegee.
One End of the Dining Hall at Tuskegee.
The management at Tuskegee tries to have a building always in course of construction for the benefit of the building classes. This year they are erecting a trades-school building. Last year they built a handsome brick church, which will seat two thousand persons. The building of this church shows well what the school's building classes can do. The designs were drawn by Mr. R. R. Taylor, the young colored man who is the instructor in mechanical and architectural drawing. One of his pupils designed the cornices with which the building is finished, and another designed the pews which furnish it. These pews were built in the school's joiner shop. The bricks were all made in the school's brickyard, and laid by the students. Men learning slating and tinsmithing covered the roof, and the steam-heating and electrical apparatus were also put in by the students, although this is one of the first of the buildings where the students have been sufficiently advanced in those trades to do the last-named work.
As it was determined to employ only negroes as instructors at Tuskegee, it was at first difficult to find enough men and women of that race skilled in the arts and trades which it was wished to have taught there, and teachers were brought to the institute from all over the country. Now, however, as each year sees the industrial classes better under way, the tide is setting out, and Tuskegee yearly turns out teachers of trades, both men and women, who are eagerly sought by other institutions which are coming to see the value of industrial training. In many cases these teachers go to such positions at lower wages than they might hope to earn if they went to work at their trades, but they do this because they feel they have a duty to the institute and to the friends who have sustained it, to help extend its influence as widely as lies within their power. The question is often asked if a negro having learned a trade can find work at it. I do not think that the Tuskegee students who have thoroughly fitted themselves feel any anxiety about this. I remember speaking on this subject to the teacher in the harness-making and saddlery department, a good workman and a superb physical specimen of a man. He told me that during the long summer vacations he had left Tuskegee, and had never had any trouble in getting work and keeping it in shops in Montgomery and other towns of the State.
