Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

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 their own buildings.  My plan was to have them, while performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour, so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in labour, but beauty and dignity; would be taught, in fact, how to lift labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake.  My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to make the forces of nature—­air, water, steam, electricity, horse-power—­assist them in their labour.

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 told those who doubted the wisdom of the plan that I knew that our first buildings would not be so comfortable or so complete in their finish as buildings erected by the experienced hands of outside workmen, but that in the teaching of civilization, self-help, and self-reliance, the erection of buildings by the students themselves would more than compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish.

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, sugar, and rice plantations of the South, and that while I knew it would please the students very much to place them at once in finely constructed buildings, I felt that it would be following out a more natural process of development to teach them how to construct their own buildings.  Mistakes I knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach us valuable lessons for the future.

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 this time forty buildings, counting small and large, have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the product of student labour.  As an additional result, hundreds of men are now scattered throughout the South who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these buildings.  Skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set of students to another in this way, until at the present time a building of any description or size can be constructed wholly by our instructors and students, from the drawing of the plans to the putting in of the electric fixtures, without going off the grounds for a single workman.

Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of marring the looks of some building by leadpencil marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student remind him:  “Don’t do that.  That is our building.  I helped put it up.”

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 started, we directed our next efforts toward the industry of making bricks.  We needed these for use in connection with the erection of our own buildings; but there was also another reason for establishing this industry.  There was no brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market.

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 no money and no experience.

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 manual labour in connection with book education became especially manifest.  It was not a pleasant task for one to stand in the mud-pit for hours, with the mud up to his knees.  More than one man became disgusted and left the school.

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 found out by bitter experience that it required special skill and knowledge, particularly in the burning of the bricks.  After a good deal of effort we moulded about twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a kiln to be burned.  This kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was not properly constructed or properly burned.  We began at once, however, on a second kiln.  This, for some reason, also proved a failure.  The failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to get the students to take part in the work.  Several of the teachers, however, who had been trained in the industries at Hampton, volunteered their services, and in some way we succeeded in getting a third kiln ready for burning.  The burning of a kiln required about a week.  Toward the latter part of the week, when it seemed as if we were going to have a good many thousand bricks in a few hours, in the middle of the night the kiln fell.  For the third time we had failed.

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 the effort to make bricks.  In the midst of my troubles I thought of a watch which had come into my possession years before.  I took the watch to the city of Montgomery, which was not far distant, and placed it in a pawn-shop.  I secured cash upon it to the amount of fifteen dollars, with which to renew the brickmaking experiment.  I returned to Tuskegee, and, with the help of the fifteen dollars, rallied our rather demoralized and discouraged forces and began a fourth attempt to make bricks.  This time, I am glad to say, we were successful.  Before I got hold of any money, the time-limit on my watch had expired, and I have never seen it since; but I have never regretted the loss of it.

Brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the school that last season our students manufactured twelve hundred thousand of first-class bricks, of a quality stable to be sold in any market.  Aside from this, scores of young men have mastered the brickmaking trade—­both the making of bricks by hand and by machinery—­and are now engaged in this industry in many parts of the South.

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 contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks.  They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community.  The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community.  As the people of the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them.  Our business interests became intermingled.  We had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted.  This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant relations that have continued to exist between us and the white people in that section, and which now extend throughout the South.

Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him.  In this way pleasant relations between the races have been simulated.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found.  I have found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices.  The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.

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 use on our farm and about the school dozens of these vehicles, and every one of them has been built by the hands of the students.  Aside from this, we help supply the local market with these vehicles.  The supplying of them to the people in the community has had the same effect as the supplying of bricks, and the man who learns at Tuskegee to build and repair wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in the community where he goes.  The people with whom he lives and works are going to think twice before they part with such a man.

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 prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek sentences.  The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons.  If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it.

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 taught to work.  By this time it had gotten to be pretty well advertised throughout the state that every student who came to Tuskegee, no matter what his financial ability might be, must learn some industry.  Quite a number of letters came from parents protesting against their children engaging in labour while they were in the school.  Other parents came to the school to protest in person.  Most of the new students brought a written or a verbal request from their parents to the effect that they wanted their children taught nothing but books.  The more books, the larger they were, and the longer the titles printed upon them, the better pleased the students and their parents seemed to be.

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 to the parents, and showing them the value of industrial education.  Besides, I talked to the students constantly on the subject.  Notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school continued to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle of the second year there was an attendance of about one hundred and fifty, representing almost all parts of the state of Alabama, and including a few from other states.

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 way North I stopped in New York to try to get a letter of recommendation from an officer of a missionary organization who had become somewhat acquainted with me a few years previous.  This man not only refused to give me the letter, but advised me most earnestly to go back home at once, and not make any attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that I would never get more than enough to pay my travelling expenses.  I thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.

The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass., where I spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family with whom I could board, never dreaming that any hotel would admit me.  I was greatly surprised when I found that I would have no trouble in being accommodated at a hotel.

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, although the building was not completed.

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 the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from Wisconsin, who was then pastor of a little coloured Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala.  Before going to Montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon I had never heard of Mr. Bedford.  He had never heard of me.  He gladly consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the Thanksgiving service.  It was the first service of the kind that the coloured people there had ever observed, and what a deep interest they manifested in it!  The sight of the new building made it a day of Thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten.

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 eighteen years.  During this time he has borne the school upon his heart night and day, and is never so happy as when he is performing some service, no matter how humble, for it.  He completely obliterates himself in everything, and looks only for permission to serve where service is most disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted.  In all my relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly to the spirit of the Master as almost any man I ever met.

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 school never could have become what it is.  This was Mr. Warren Logan, who now for seventeen years has been the treasurer of the Institute, and the acting principal during my absence.  He has always shown a degree of unselfishness and an amount of business tact, coupled with a clear judgment, that has kept the school in good condition no matter how long I have been absent from it.  During all the financial stress through which the school has passed, his patience and faith in our ultimate success have not left him.

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 the school—­we opened a boarding department.  Students had begun coming from quite a distance, and in such increasing numbers that we felt more and more that we were merely skimming over the surface, in that we were not getting hold of the students in their home life.

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 kitchen and dining room; but we discovered that by digging out a large amount of earth from under the building we could make a partially lighted basement room that could be used for a kitchen and dining room.  Again I called on the students to volunteer for work, this time to assist in digging out the basement.  This they did, and in a few weeks we had a place to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and uncomfortable.  Any one seeing the place now would never believe that it was once used for a dining room.

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, and with no money with which to buy anything.  The merchants in the town would let us have what food we wanted on credit.  In fact, in those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed to have more faith in me than I had in myself.  It was pretty hard to cook, however, with stoves, and awkward to eat without dishes.  At first the cooking was done out-of-doors, in the old-fashioned, primitive style, in pots and skillets placed over a fire.  Some of the carpenters’ benches that had been used in the construction of the building were utilized for tables.  As for dishes, there were too few to make it worth while to spend time in describing them.

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 source of great worry.  Everything was so out of joint and so inconvenient that I feel safe in saying that for the first two weeks something was wrong at every meal.  Either the meat was not done or had been burnt, or the salt had been left out of the bread, or the tea had been forgotten.

Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door listening to the complaints of the students.  The complaints that morning were especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole breakfast had been a failure.  One of the girls who had failed to get any breakfast came out and went to the well to draw some water to drink and take the place of the breakfast which she had not been able to get.  When she reached the well, she found that the rope was broken and that she could get no water.  She turned from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone, not knowing that I was where I could hear her, “We can’t even get water to drink at this school.”  I think no one remark ever came so near discouraging me as that one.

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 school, he was given a bedroom immediately over the dining room.  Early in the morning he was awakened by a rather animated discussion between two boys in the dining room below.  The discussion was over the question as to whose turn it was to use the coffee-cup that morning.  One boy won the case by proving that for three mornings he had not had an opportunity to use the cup at all.

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 wisdom and earnest effort.

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 inconveniences.  I am glad that our students had to dig out the place for their kitchen and dining room.  I am glad that our first boarding-place was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement.  Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have “lost our heads” and become “stuck up.”  It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one’s self.

When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted dining room, and see tempting, well-cooked food—­largely grown by the students themselves—­and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room, they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as we did, and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and natural process of growth.