Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements

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neventful, save during the year 1882, when, by reason of the breaking of the Mississippi River levee near my home, I was compelled, together with my parents, to live six months i

h the Negro farmers and their families were living, and, in my heart, I cursed the farm and all its environs as being in verity an inferno on earth. A broader knowledge of the causes which operated to produce the cheerless life against which my child-nature rebelled, an

ool near my home; but for some reason, which I can not now remember, I attended the city school in Vicksburg but one year, after which I was employed as a cake-baker's assistant and bread-wagon driver. A short time before this I was a house-boy in the city. I was, at the

had some chance to study, and in addition, when it was found by these white men that I loved to read, all magazines, newspapers, and drug journals, not needed by the firm and the physicians whose offices were with them, were given to me. I never make any mention of my life in Vicksburg witho

t trousers, but I immediately set about preparing to deliver a "lecture" to help raise funds for my trip. With a knowledge of the subject, and an assurance which I have never since assumed, I spoke to a large audience in Vicksburg on the question, Will America Absorb the Negro? I settled the question then and there to my own satisfaction, even if I did not convince the nation that my affirmative conclusion was rational. The "lecture" n

, inquired our destination. Upon being told that we were going to Tuskegee, he remarked that he had heard that Tuskegee was a very hard place-a place where students were given too much work to do, and where the food was very simple and coarse. He was afraid we would not stay there three months. We assured him that we were not afraid of hard work, and meant

and I found further that in the severe, trying process through which Mr. John H. Washington, superintendent of industries, brother of Mr. Booker T. Washington, and familiarly thoug

isher, Dr., $12.50-value received." Every morning before breakfast it was my duty to go to the rooms of six hundred young men to see if any were ill, have those who were, carried to the hospital, report all such to four departments, take meals to those con

n apprentice. During that year I suffered actual want and privation in the matter of shoes and clothes; but later came under the notice of Mrs. Booker T. Washington, who made arrangements by which I could procure some of the second-hand clothes and shoes sent from the North to the school for just such cases. At the end of this ye

e remarks relative to the agnosticism of the late Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. The following day Mr. Washington sent for me, inquired my age and class in the school, and then said some very kind things about the talk which I had made in the

e circumstances, earning, by reason of the many odd jobs which I did, often as much as $20 per month, going to school every day in the meantime. The average amount usually earned is $5 and $6 per month. At one time I worked eight days per month on the farm, sent notes of the school to 127 Negro newspapers, cleaned one laboratory e

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oratory; and in my senior year won the Loughridge Book Prize for sc

. After one year's service in that position Mr. Washington asked me to accept the position of Assistant Northern Financial Agent for Tuskegee. I accepted, and remained two years in New England, helping to interest friends in my a

ncipal of the Swayne School, and a notice of the election reached me one morning. Three hours later I received a letter from the secretary of the University of Arkansas (white) informing me that my name had been presented to the board of trustees of that institution, and I had been elected to the presidency of the State Branch Normal College at Pine Bluff

ay be removed. In the book of my memory and in the secret chambers of my heart I have enshrined the two names which, with God and the