The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1915-11-16
BOOKER |. WASHINGTON
WAS DORN1N SLAVERY
BUT WON GREAT FAME: !.
Organized And Made Successful
And Famous Tuskegee Normal
And Industrial Institute \
CONTINUED from Page .Two.)

which, since then he has been several
times a guest. Then he taught school
in his old home 81 gave" he says,
especial attention TO teaching the
proper use of tooth brushes and Of
bath. There are few agencies Of civil
lization more far;reaching than the
tooth brush. F" Working thus, he help
ed his brothers through Hampton.
This was during the Nu, Klux period
after the war, which he found exciting,
perilous, disheartening. !, s., ~.
He speaks now, very frankly but very
charitably of the errors of his race dur.
ing the trying, time of reconstruction.
Negroes were education mad, most of
their teachers being quite incompe-
tent. One, coming to his home town,
announced that he. would teach either
that the world was fiat or round, as
the parents Of his pupils wished. The
ministry, too, was filed with ignorant
and sometimes vicious coloTed men,
who made religion a mere farce.
Choosing a Career g
'"'The temptations to enter politics
worG even greater than to enter the
ministry he went on. al came near
to yielding to them at one time during
reconstruction. but managed TO; hold
steadfast to my plan Of helping the
black people to an education of hand,
head and heart. am CHAD rdid. Not
long ago, when passing through the
street of certain city In the South 1
heard brick masons calling, Governor,
| 20 hurry up and bring up some more
bricks, l made inquiries. The headear
rier who served them had been, in re-
construetion times, Lieutenant-G Governor
Of the State" II was a triumph
when . he got a place as teacher at
Hampton Institute, and he did we'll.
When the whites Of Tuskegee. Ala,
wrote to Hampton for q man to or.
ganize and take charge Of a similar
school there, he was quickly recon-
mended. He began work in 1881 with
a dilapidated shanty and an aban-
doned church as the school struct lures,
and with the necessity for spending
much time travelling through the coun-
TRY to arouse the interest of the col.
ored people.
Gone of the saddest things l saw
While | was going through the coun.
try before the opening of the Tuske-
gee school, he says, "was young
negro who had attended an ordinary
high school. He was sitting in a one
room cabin, with grease upon his cloth
ing, filth all around him, weeds in the
yard and garden, studying a French
grammar. While the young colored folk
who had been going to the schools pro-
vided could locate the desert of Sahara
on the map, the girls could not locate
the right places for the knives and
| boil Il
that he must do much more than
teach-that he must actually create the
school. Scared by the thought Of in.
curing such debt and with scarcely
any money in his pocket to use as a
beginning of fund with which to
pay it, he actually bought an old plan.
tatiOn, for $500. paying down $3.50
which, he borrowed Of his old teacher
ut the Hampton Institute, General J.
F. B. Marshall. He had never in his
life possessed so much as One-third
of that sum before, and the debt
seemed a tremendous thing for him to
undertake, but he Borrowed the money
and paid it on the land Three build
ings only had been left by RS do,
struction on the place, an old kitchen
a dilapidated stable and a ruined hen
house. The stable and the h"nhouse
he made into recitation rooms. He says
that when one morning he told an
ancient colored man to help him clean
the latter structure, the old ms" Cooked
at him in sheer amazement. "What 20
mean. bo.si" he inquired imrrcduOusIy
"Yo' sholy ain gwine clean hen
house out in daytimeI"
Founding Tuskegee
When he told his students that now
they had land, the first thing they
would do would be to prepare it for
a crop, they almost rnbelIed. He'll
came, however, almost wholly from the
whites.
in three months the debt of $3.50 was
paid off and in the next two months
$500 more had been secured and a deed
to the l0Oacre tract obtained Tuske-
gee Institute was really under way.
Soon afterward the school was pre-.
scented with its first aniIpal-an old
blind horse, given by white citizen
of Tuskcgee.
One thousand four hundred and nine,
ty-fOur students, besides 80 children
in the training school, were enrolled
in this great institution last year, most
| ly from the. South, although thirty.Rve
States in all were represented and nine
teen foreign countries. There are en-
plOyed about his school l67 officers, in
/ teliectual. His frame is powerful no
weak man could have endured the
hardships and privatiOns which his life
has known. His capacity for work is
not less than astounding; he has won
mastery over the body to a degree
which few have REACHED. He has that
unusual and, at times, most useful abl-
ity of going without sleep for amazing
periods If necessary arises, permitting
a continuity Of concentration almost
Napoleonic. He scared us all in Paris
once by sleeping, thirty.s six hours at n
stretch while resting after an unusual
strain and storing strength for his first
European, lecture tour. He is superbly
structors and helpers. Training WAS
given in ninety!eight industries or
trades in addition to the academic
work, Since 1882 there had been sent
out from the institution more than 5000
men and women who had taken full or
partial courses, all qualified to do good