Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

During the time that I had charge of the Indians and the night-school at Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under the direction of the instructors there.  One of these instructors was the Rev. Dr. H.B.  Frissell, the present Principal of the Hampton Institute, General Armstrong’s successor.

In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the night-school, in a way that I had not dared expect, the opportunity opened for me to begin my life-work.  One night in the chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong referred to the fact that he had received a letter from some gentlemen in Alabama asking him to recommend some one to take charge of what was to be a normal school for the coloured people in the little town of Tuskegee in that state.  These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted that no coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and they were expecting the General to recommend a white man for the place.  The next day General Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and, much to my surprise, asked me if I thought I could fill the position in Alabama.  I told him that I would be willing to try.  Accordingly, he wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing to take a coloured man, he had one whom he could recommend.  In this letter he gave them my name.

Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter.  Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a messenger came in and handed the general a telegram.  At the end of the exercises he read the telegram to the school.  In substance, these were its words:  “Booker T. Washington will suit us.  Send him at once.”

There was a great deal of joy expressed among the students and teachers, and I received very hearty congratulations.  I began to get ready at once to go to Tuskegee.  I went by way of my old home in West Virginia, where I remained for several days, after which I proceeded to Tuskegee.  I found Tuskegee to be a town of about two thousand inhabitants, nearly one-half of whom were coloured.  It was in what was known as the Black Belt of the South.  In the county in which Tuskegee is situated the coloured people outnumbered the whites by about three to one.  In some of the adjoining and near-by counties the proportion was not far from six coloured persons to one white.

I have often been asked to define the term “Black Belt.”  So far as I can learn, the term was first used to designated a part of the country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil.  The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers.  Later, and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense—­that is, to designate the counties where the black people outnumber the white.

Before going to Tuskegee I had expected to find there a building and all the necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching.  To my disappointment, I found nothing of the kind.  I did find, though, that which no costly building and apparatus can supply,—­hundreds of hungry, earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge.

Tuskegee seemed an ideal place for the school.  It was in the midst of the great bulk of the Negro population, and was rather secluded, being five miles from the main line of railroad, with which it was connected by a short line.  During the days of slavery, and since, the town had been a centre for the education of the white people.  This was an added advantage, for the reason that I found the white people possessing a degree of culture and education that is not surpassed by many localities.  While the coloured people were ignorant, they had not, as a rule, degraded and weakened their bodies by vices such as are common to the lower class of people in the large cities.  In general, I found the relations between the two races pleasant.  For example, the largest, and I think at that time the only hardware store in the town was owned and operated jointly by a coloured man and a white man.  This copartnership continued until the death of the white partner.

I found that about a year previous to my going to Tuskegee some of the coloured people who had heard something of the work of education being done at Hampton had applied to the state Legislature, through their representatives, for a small appropriation to be used in starting a normal school in Tuskegee.  This request the Legislature had complied with to the extent of granting an annual appropriation of two thousand dollars.  I soon learned, however, that this money could be used only for the payment of the salaries of the instructors, and that there was no provision for securing land, buildings, or apparatus.  The task before me did not seem a very encouraging one.  It seemed much like making bricks without straw.  The coloured people were overjoyed, and were constantly offering their services in any way in which they could be of assistance in getting the school started.

My first task was to find a place in which to open the school.  After looking the town over with some care, the most suitable place that could be secured seemed to be a rather dilapidated shanty near the coloured Methodist church, together with the church itself as a sort of assembly-room.  Both the church and the shanty were in about as bad condition as was possible.  I recall that during the first months of school that I taught in this building it was in such poor repair that, whenever it rained, one of the older students would very kindly leave his lessons and hold an umbrella over me while I heard the recitations of the others.  I remember, also, that on more than one occasion my landlady held an umbrella over me while I ate breakfast.

At the time I went to Alabama the coloured people were taking considerable interest in politics, and they were very anxious that I should become one of them politically, in every respect.  They seemed to have a little distrust of strangers in this regard.  I recall that one man, who seemed to have been designated by the others to look after my political destiny, came to me on several occasions and said, with a good deal of earnestness:  “We wants you to be sure to vote jes’ like we votes.  We can’t read de newspapers very much, but we knows how to vote, an’ we wants you to vote jes’ like we votes.”  He added:  “We watches de white man, and we keeps watching de white man till we finds out which way de white man’s gwine to vote; an’ when we finds out which way de white man’s gwine to vote, den we votes ’xactly de other way.  Den we knows we’s right.”

I am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition to vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely disappearing, and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what the voter considers to be for the best interests of both races.

I reached Tuskegee, as I have said, early in June, 1881.  The first month I spent in finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling through Alabama, examining into the actual life of the people, especially in the court districts, and in getting the school advertised among the glass of people that I wanted to have attend it.  The most of my travelling was done over the country roads, with a mule and a cart or a mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance.  I ate and slept with the people, in their little cabins.  I saw their farms, their schools, their churches.  Since, in the case of the most of these visits, there had been no notice given in advance that a stranger was expected, I had the advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people.

In the plantation districts I found that, as a rule, the whole family slept in one room, and that in addition to the immediate family there sometimes were relatives, or others not related to the family, who slept in the same room.  On more than one occasion I went outside the house to get ready for bed, or to wait until the family had gone to bed.  They usually contrived some kind of a place for me to sleep, either on the floor or in a special part of another’s bed.  Rarely was there any place provided in the cabin where one could bathe even the face and hands, but usually some provision was made for this outside the house, in the yard.

The common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread.  At times I have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and “black-eye peas” cooked in plain water.  The people seemed to have no other idea than to live on this fat meat and corn bread,—­the meat, and the meal of which the bread was made, having been bought at a high price at a store in town, notwithstanding the face that the land all about the cabin homes could easily have been made to produce nearly every kind of garden vegetable that is raised anywhere in the country.  Their one object seemed to be to plant nothing but cotton; and in many cases cotton was planted up to the very door of the cabin.

In these cabin homes I often found sewing-machines which had been bought, or were being bought, on instalments, frequently at a cost of as much as sixty dollars, or showy clocks for which the occupants of the cabins had paid twelve or fourteen dollars.  I remember that on one occasion when I went into one of these cabins for dinner, when I sat down to the table for a meal with the four members of the family, I noticed that, while there were five of us at the table, there was but one fork for the five of us to use.  Naturally there was an awkward pause on my part.  In the opposite corner of that same cabin was an organ for which the people told me they were paying sixty dollars in monthly instalments.  One fork, and a sixty-dollar organ!

In most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were so worthless that they did not keep correct time—­and if they had, in nine cases out of ten there would have been no one in the family who could have told the time of day—­while the organ, of course, was rarely used for want of a person who could play upon it.

In the case to which I have referred, where the family sat down to the table for the meal at which I was their guest, I could see plainly that this was an awkward and unusual proceeding, and was done in my honour.  In most cases, when the family got up in the morning, for example, the wife would put a piece of meat in a frying-pan and put a lump of dough in a “skillet,” as they called it.  These utensils would be placed on the fire, and in ten or fifteen minutes breakfast would be ready.  Frequently the husband would take his bread and meat in his hand and start for the field, eating as he walked.  The mother would sit down in a corner and eat her breakfast, perhaps from a plate and perhaps directly from the “skillet” or frying-pan, while the children would eat their portion of the bread and meat while running about the yard.  At certain seasons of the year, when meat was scarce, it was rarely that the children who were not old enough or strong enough to work in the fields would have the luxury of meat.

The breakfast over, and with practically no attention given to the house, the whole family would, as a general thing, proceed to the cotton-field.  Every child that was large enough to carry a hoe was put to work, and the baby—­for usually there was at least one baby—­would be laid down at the end of the cotton row, so that its mother could give it a certain amount of attention when she had finished chopping her row.  The noon meal and the supper were taken in much the same way as the breakfast.

All the days of the family would be spent after much this same routine, except Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday the whole family would spent at least half a day, and often a whole day, in town.  The idea in going to town was, I suppose, to do shopping, but all the shopping that the whole family had money for could have been attended to in ten minutes by one person.  Still, the whole family remained in town for most of the day, spending the greater part of the time in standing on the streets, the women, too often, sitting about somewhere smoking or dipping snuff.  Sunday was usually spent in going to some big meeting.  With few exceptions, I found that the crops were mortgaged in the counties where I went, and that the most of the coloured farmers were in debt.  The state had not been able to build schoolhouses in the country districts, and, as a rule, the schools were taught in churches or in log cabins.  More than once, while on my journeys, I found that there was no provision made in the house used for school purposes for heating the building during the winter, and consequently a fire had to be built in the yard, and teacher and pupils passed in and out of the house as they got cold or warm.  With few exceptions, I found the teachers in these country schools to be miserably poor in preparation for their work, and poor in moral character.  The schools were in session from three to five months.  There was practically no apparatus in the schoolhouses, except that occasionally there was a rough blackboard.  I recall that one day I went into a schoolhouse—­or rather into an abandoned log cabin that was being used as a schoolhouse—­and found five pupils who were studying a lesson from one book.  Two of these, on the front seat, were using the book between them; behind these were two others peeping over the shoulders of the first two, and behind the four was a fifth little fellow who was peeping over the shoulders of all four.

What I have said concerning the character of the schoolhouses and teachers will also apply quite accurately as a description of the church buildings and the ministers.

I met some very interesting characters during my travels.  As illustrating the peculiar mental processes of the country people, I remember that I asked one coloured man, who was about sixty years old, to tell me something of his history.  He said that he had been born in Virginia, and sold into Alabama in 1845.  I asked him how many were sold at the same time.  He said, “There were five of us; myself and brother and three mules.”

In giving all these descriptions of what I saw during my mouth of travel in the country around Tuskegee, I wish my readers to keep in mind the fact that there were many encouraging exceptions to the conditions which I have described.  I have stated in such plain words what I saw, mainly for the reason that later I want to emphasize the encouraging changes that have taken place in the community, not wholly by the work of the Tuskegee school, but by that of other institutions as well.