Lexington weekly news. [volume] (Lexington, Ky.) 1912-19??, 1912-05-31

gee mas a wider range-it is working
10 change conditions among the mass
es OF whole race, and, at that, a race
handicapped by the years of slavery.
IuSkeSee IS the most astonishing
educational center on The continent
Despite the volumes written upon
Eooher Washington and his school.
the visitor Is never prepared for the
nlarYelS he finds. A school? -Tuske-
gee IS not school, in the ordinary
sense OF the word. It's a city in il.
self, community that dominates a
! whole county. It's Il great industrial
plant with forty trades and industries
that consumes all its own products.
that erects its own buildings Cfrst
making its own bricks), that grows its
own food, makes its own clothes.
writes and prints its town textbooks,
| all by way of education.
| 1t is mammoth laboratory in which
a race problem is being worked out.
| he object of Iuskegee is TO train its
students to serve society by doing
some useful thing with skill, to give
them three phased education of
/ the head, the heart, the hand" to-use
the all1terative phrase of the Tuske-
gee teachers, and then to send them
out to teach to others what they have
learned-eduCatiOn by the endless
chain system
Intelligent thrift, training in the ac-
tiyities open to the masses Of the
Negro race i'll the South industry,
selfrelianCe, self-respect, cleanliness,
system, courtesy, these are the things
Tuskegee is teaching. It's principles
are epitomized by Emmett j. Scott,
executive secretary of the institute, in
''Tuskegee and Its People: There
can be no liberty without intelligence;
no independence without industry, and
no power for man and no charm for
women, without character"
The first surprise the visitor gets as
he drives over from the sleepy city of
Tuskegee to the institute is the mag
nificent scale on which the school has
been built. Thirty-one years ago,
when the institute was first opened,
July 4, 1881, the school was housed in
a rented shanty church. The Legis-
lature had appropriated S2.00G for
teachers salaries, but had overlooked
the small item of school buildings.
Northern friends of the movement
bought 100 acres, the nucleus of the
present site, in the opening year, and
in 1884 the legislature increased its
of $4,000. out Of this
small beginning the genius of Booker
Washington has developed an cduca-
tional plant that now consists of 2,3t5
acres of land and 103 buildings, used
for dormitories, recitation halls, shops.
barns, hospitals, dining hall, chapel
and library.
The school as it now stands mas
been built within the last
ten years, the students doing the work,
from the brickmaking to the manufac-
ture of the great concrete pillars that
give the newer buildings a colonial
effect. After twenty-five years of ex-
periment;ng method of making
lawns stick to the sandy soil has been
by the landscape archl-
tect 1t was only a few years ago
that Tuskegee often woke up in The
to find that rainstOrm III
the night had washed its lawns into
the bottoms and had ripped gullies
across its roads. Today, after the eX-
penditure of great effort the school
has one of the most beautiful cam
puses in the country. Curving ave
nues have been built on the edge of
ravine, trees and shrubbeTy grow lux
y
sandy hillsides have been replaced by
a verdant landscape. The irregular
topography has been used to great-ad
by the landscape artist and
the buildings. instead of being placed
in the conventional rectangle, are 80
distributed that they fit naturally into
the landscape.
Considered alone from the architec-
tural and landscape point of view,
TuSkegee is a triumph. OF in the dis
tance are the shops and the barns;
fertile fields and meadows with graz
ing herds; as far as the eye can reach
the land belongs to Tuskegee. The
plant, including land
equipment, stock and per-
sonal property is 81 ,279, ,2iS.45, exclu
sive of 1870 acres Of land remaining
unsold from land grant of 25,503.
acrel: from Congress. valued at $780,
0OQ, and the endowment fund Of
81 ,401 ,926.70.
The population of the Tuskegee
is nearly 1000, Of which
/ .7O2 are students and $50 are teach
ers. The student body consists or
1.119 young men and 5SS young wom-
en-, coming from thirty-siX States and
twenty-five countries, Alabama, Geor-
gia, Mississippi, Texas, Florida and
South Carolina furnishing the great
majority. These 1,702 students, how
ever, constitute less than one-half. of
those who are given the benefit of
Tuskegee teaching, for in addition to
the regular enrolment there were last
year POT teachers in the summer
course, SEQ in the short course in
agriculture and enough in other
courses to bring the total number Of
those instructed during the year to
4,1S4. These fs6sEsS> ndicS5lnthe pro-
! !. ! !: !, ! !
portions of Tus eREAs