The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-25
1T is UNIQUE AMONG ALL THE EDU.
CATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
How the Negro Improves Both Men.
tally and Physically by His
Training There.
ruskegee Letter in Philadelnhia Pres.


He has an eloquence which is an amazing
| mingling of humor and persuasion. He is
the only negro fully trusted at the South,
| both by white and black.
He is the president of Tuskegee Institute.
He is the institute and the institute is
Booker T. Washington. There never was
anything in education looking like the in
stitute before. We all know what big
schools usually look like-the walks, the
greensward, the trim buildings. the air of
seclusion, rest and repose.
Tuskegee is more shapeless than most
factories. Its fifty odd buildings dotted
over thrice this number of acres. 1t stands
on sandy ridge, scarped and scanned with
sharp slopes. A great field. in which are the
only pigs l ever saw in the South with flesh
on them. is conspicuous among the aca-
demic buildings. Great barns crown ridge.
Teams and wagons are on the steep, worn
roads. Beehives stand on benches in one
corner. A dazzling white hennery-white-
washed daily-blinds the eye. Across a gull
ly stands a church which seats $500 and
all of whose space is needed. There are al
ways two or three buildings going up.
There is lumber arriving. There are brick
kilns smoking. There is coal by the car and
about the institution. shut it off, and it
would be self-supporting. 1t would raise its
own corn and grind it. its own cotton and
/ clothe its students. 1t makes its own bricks
| and designs and builds it's own buildings.
| No factory is buster. more driving, dustier
| or fuller of OverallS and aprons, men and
women, boys and girls doing their share of
| the days work.
But for the academic names and titles on
the rigidly simple buildings and the signs
| of grace and proportion in recent edifices, L
| would defy any man at a birdseye view to
| decide the purpose of this vast seething
! plant-in mere size, the biggest south of
! Mason and DiXon's line. It's buildings and
| grounds are alone worth to-day some $780,,
600 with an endowment of $2S5,000, a most
| inadequate sum on which TO carry the in
stitutiOn all built up for others in twenty
| two years by one man and possessing eX
ecutive abilities which would make him
equal to the creation and management of
any corporation. This eXpanse of buildings
and dusty farm roads. with two farms, one
in truck and the other in grain, cotton,
etc. swarms with LOO students. boys and
girls from sixteen years of age to adults.
About three-quarterS are at work all DAY
and study only at night for two hours each
evening. About a quarter study two-thirds
of their time and work the rest The snap.
the go, the push of the whole thing pass
belief. The overgrown struggling mass
seethes with energy. Since Benedictine
monasteries like that in the forests of Bek
taught northern Europe the arts and indus
tries of the south and began our present
civilization, there has been nothing like it
in history. Here is the fulcrum on which
the lever of industry and discipline is TO
raise race out of the slough of barbarism.
The Northern secondary school-high
school, normal academy and the like
takes it's pupils from the upper grade of
the grammar school. It's pupils enter with
a knowledge of the three Rs" If they
stop with the grammar school grade of our
public schools and go into wage earning.
they enter an organized. pressing. pushing
industry, and are braced to effort, trained
in diligence and saved from the slack hand
by a working world which sends stragglers
to the rear to herd with trampS. No North
ern farm even, but finds itself feeling this
pressure of the strain of factory, mine,
store and railroad, the brace of regular
hours. the stimulus of higher wages near
and the necessity for keeping step with the
great army of industry.
ITS EFFECT ON THE SOUTH.
The border Southern States feel this in
a measure Their grammar schools are one
and two years behind Northern grammar
schools for their pupils and the work is not
only behind in grade but poor in quality.
Still the schools are there Industries exist
The training of an industrial civilization is
present, if less complete and less effective
than in the North But when you get to the
States which first formed the Confederacy
in Montgomery, which stretch from South
Carolina to Arkansas. for the negro, the
village school does not carry its pupils
much beyond our elementary grades. A vast
| number of students have never really
learned to read and write. They have
learned their letters. They have patiently
spelled awhile, but never grasped the rela-
ton between the letter symbol and the
spoken word Their arithmetic has never
reached use as implement. They hope
lessly mire in fractions, and decimals are
sort of numerical charm, not an instrument
of daily use. | spent a forenoon in getting
the life histories of some thirty negro boys
and girls here. Their homes dot the South
Qr,6 from
Ashevile to little hamlets, on the gulf.
Arithmetic is the one most serviceable
test of the early educational advance. But
one of these boys and girls had, at en-
trance got beyond decimals, and he was
from a good negro high school in one of the
larger cities Most were at various indie
terminate stages in fractions" One boy,
bright enough the son of a negro clergy
man in the Florida canebrake, had gone for
nine years-seven to sixteen-to the local
schools and reached-long division.
How could you," said 1, ''go to school
nine years and never get to fractions?"
Just trif1in'," said the boy.
All these boys and girls from country
schools when l came to pin them down to
their work had gone TO school, from two
to nine years, but attendance had been ir-
regular, there were no grades, the teaching
was by girls whose only schooling was of
the loosest character. The city schools in
the few towns and cities over 5000 or 10000
! are better A larger proportion at Tuskegee
| than nv raDid INQUEST would indicate have
doubtless come from schools which carry
pupils through arithmetic and one had had
a touch of algebra and had to relearn il.
As these boys and girls go out of school
or left it or stayed away, they were under
no industrial pressure No one about them
was really doing the days work. The cot
ton crop. with its two periods of drive
and hurry at picking and planting seems
devised OF nature TO breed irregular agri-
cultural habits. Both the Incidence of a
/ race recently savage and the idleness of
| civilization which shares the industrial
product but not the industrial drive of the
| day, envelopes these children of the rural
| negro districts of the gulf States like an
! atmosphere. They have no habits of work.
If they had them there is nothing TO do.
II there was there is no one to teach them.
SKETCHES OF STUDENT LIFE.
Our young friend who for nine years of
| school life, had been Just trifiin'," comes
to Tuskegee. He gets into plain uniform,
plain but still a uniform, the first clothes
he has ever worn not allowed to go ragged.
He sleeps. four boys to room-in the sadly
overcrowded condition of the school-in a
room much like the sheds run up for rail-
road gangs-but he has 10 have a tooth
brush and his tin basin and pitcher must
be clean and Ire must it. He has to
| work and he works hard fen hours a day