A boys' life of Booker T. Washington

by Walter Clinton Jackson

This was surely a great surprise, but Booker Washington was always ready. He said: “I think I can fill the place, and I am willing to try.”

General Armstrong wrote at once about Washington. The next Sunday night, during the chapel exercises, a telegram was handed to General Armstrong. It was from the committee in Alabama. He opened it, and read it to the audience. It said: “Booker Washington will suit us. Send him at once.”[^[10]]

Washington prepared to go at once to his new field. After finishing his work at Hampton, he paid a visit to his old home at Malden, and a couple of weeks later, early in June, he arrived at Tuskegee, Alabama, to begin his new task.

Tuskegee at this time was a quiet little town of about two thousand inhabitants. It is on a small branch railroad, five miles from the main line, which runs from Atlanta, Georgia, to Montgomery, Alabama. The town is about fifty miles from Montgomery. It is right in the heart of what is known as the “Black Belt” in the South. A large and typical population lived round about. The town was the county seat of Macon County, in which lived a large number of negro farmers, all living very much as the negro family lived in the South at that time. The white people and the negroes were about equal in population in the town and lived in cordial and friendly relations.

Booker Washington had a great surprise awaiting him when he reached Tuskegee. He thought that this school that he was to be the head of was already in existence and naturally looked about to find the schoolhouse, of course expecting to see a nice building. Imagine his surprise when he found that there was as yet no school at all and absolutely no building, no sign of a school whatsoever. He was to start this school himself from the very beginning. The legislature had simply set aside two thousand dollars a year to be used only for paying salaries, and no provision had been made for building and grounds.

Was Booker Washington discouraged? Not for a single minute did he sit down and whine and complain and say that he might as well give up. He went right out into the town, looked up some of the leading men of both races, and told them that he was going to start something; that he was going to open a school. And the men, a little amazed at first, caught his enthusiasm and said: “Good for you. We are with you. You can count on us. We will help.”

His first effort was to find a house to use as a school building, and he finally secured a little shanty that stood near the A. M. E. Church. It was agreed that he could use this building for meetings of any kind, and that he could teach in the shanty. After consulting again with his friends, he announced that on July 4, 1881, the Tuskegee Institute would open.

Now that he had a place in which to begin work, his next job was to get students for his school. He began to visit around in the country, making talks in the churches at the regular service or at Sunday school and at preaching services in schoolhouses and other places. He visited in the homes of the people, and everywhere he told them of his school plans.

In this way he came to know the people just as they lived, and they learned how sympathetic Washington was, and how he was trying to help them. Most of those he visited he found living in one- or two-room houses, with fat pork and corn bread as their principal food. But they always treated him kindly and entertained him the best they could. One thing that distressed him was the discovery that many of these people had been persuaded to buy such things as costly sewing machines and organs, when they didn’t have enough to eat and to wear. At one place where he took dinner there were four in the family, and when they sat down at the table, he found that there was but one fork for all five of them.

Their lives were filled with much drudgery and hard work and almost no opportunities for improvement. It was nearly impossible for them to make a living, much less save any money. Their schools, if they had any at all, had very short terms and were taught by teachers who knew very little more than the children. It was a discouraging situation to any one except a man like Booker Washington. “These are my people,” he said. “They need help. They need education and the kind of education that will give them cleaner and happier homes, healthier bodies, better schools, and better life in every way. I am going to help them.”