Booker T. Washington

Soon after her graduation from the Framingham institution, Miss Davidson came to Tuskegee, bringing into the school many valuable and fresh ideas…

Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school from the first. The students were making progress in learning books and in…

The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition among a…

About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time when we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into market for…

But how were we to get it? The price asked for it was very little—only five hundred dollars—but we had no money, and we were strangers in the town…

In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and wrote to my friend General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton…

I confess that the securing of this money in this way was a great surprise to me, as well as a source of gratification. Up to that time I never had…

Nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school purposes was done by the students after school was over in the afternoon. As soon as…

Since the work at Tuskegee started, it has been my privilege to receive many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, I think, that…

The coming of Christmas, that first year of our residence in Alabama, gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of the…

During the days of slavery it was a custom quite generally observed throughout all the Southern states to give the coloured people a week of…

While I was making this Christmas visit I met an old coloured man who was one of the numerous local preachers, who tried to convince me, from the…

In the school we made a special effort to teach our students the meaning of Christmas, and to give them lessons in its proper observance. In this…

At the present time one of the most satisfactory features of the Christmas and Thanksgiving season at Tuskegee is the unselfish and beautiful way…

For several months the work of securing the money with which to pay for the farm went on without ceasing. At the end of three months enough was…

Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time give the…

Many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay their board.…

The school was constantly growing in numbers, so much so that, after we had got the farm paid for, the cultivation of the land begun, and the old…

One incident which occurred about this time gave me a great deal of satisfaction as well as surprise. When it became known in the town that we were…

Miss Davidson again began the work of securing in various ways small contributions for the new building from the white and coloured people in and…

After we had secured all the help that we could in Tuskegee, Miss Davidson decided to go North for the purpose of securing additional funds. For…

While putting up our first building, which was named Porter Hall, after Mr. A.H. Porter, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who gave a generous sum toward its…

As soon as the plans were drawn for the new building, the students began digging out the earth where the foundations were to be laid, working after…

When it is considered that the laying of this corner-stone took place in the heart of the South, in the “Black Belt,” in the centre of that part of…

The principal address was delivered by the Hon. Waddy Thompson, the Superintendent of Education for the county. About the corner-stone were…

In all our difficulties and anxieties, however, I never went to a white or a black person in the town of Tuskegee for any assistance that was in…

At one time when we were in the greatest distress for money that we ever experienced, I placed the situation frankly before General Armstrong.…

During the summer of 1882, at the end of the first year’s work of the school, I was married to Miss Fannie N. Smith, of Malden, W. Va. We began…

From the first, my wife most earnestly devoted her thoughts and time to the work of the school, and was completely one with me in every interest…

From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have them erect…

At first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings erected by the labour of the students, but I was determined to stick to it. I…

I further told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan, that the majority of our students came to us in poverty, from the cabins of the cotton,…

During the now nineteen years’ existence of the Tuskegee school, the plan of having the buildings erected by student labour has been adhered to. In…

In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience was in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work reasonably well…

I had always sympathized with the “Children of Israel,” in their task of “making bricks without straw,” but ours was the task of making bricks with…

In the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was difficult to get the students to help. When it came to brickmaking, their distaste for…

We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that furnished brick clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was very simple, but I soon…

The failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar with which to make another experiment. Most of the teachers advised the abandoning of…

Brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the school that last season our students manufactured twelve hundred thousand of first-class…

The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had had no…

The same principle of industrial education has been carried out in the building of our own wagons, carts, and buggies, from the first. We now own and…

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a community…

About the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of bricks we began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the students to being…

I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no opportunity to go into as many parts of the state as I could, for the purpose of speaking…

In the summer of 1882 Miss Davidson and I both went North and engaged in the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building. On my…

We were successful in getting money enough so that on Thanksgiving Day of that year we held our first service in the chapel of Porter Hall,…

In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon, I found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know. This was…

Mr. Bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the school, and in that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been connected with it for…

A little later there came into the service of the school another man, quite young at the time, and fresh from Hampton, without whose service the…

As soon as our first building was near enough to completion so that we could occupy a portion of it—which was near the middle of the second year of…

We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin a boarding department. No provision had been made in the new building for a…

The most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding department started off in running order, with nothing to do with in the way of furniture,…

No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any idea that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and this was a…

Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door listening to the complaints of the students. The complaints that morning were especially…

At another time, when Mr. Bedford—whom I have already spoken of as one of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the institution—was visiting the…

But gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out of chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with patience and…

As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad to see that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and…

A little later in the history of the school we had a visit from General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, who had had faith…

It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong, and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to…

Another thing that is becoming more apparent each year in the development of education in the South is the influence of General Armstrong’s idea of…