Evening star., 1925-04-19
Washington Takes Part in Work
For Hampton and Tuskegee Fund

means of the soundest education of a
retarded race. Above all, he made
his school shrine. lie made it the
source of religious inspiration to the
race that gloWS today. 1t has made
better men and women of the white
people who have come to know
Hampton and felt the religious urge
in that atsmosphere. If the people
of the United States could be taken
in installment to Hampton or Tuske-
gee and spend two or three days in
those places TO breathe in the spirit
that animates the teachers and the
students of those great institutions,
it would make them all moral opti-
mistS, and give everybody. however
depressed, hope and confidence in
what human nature is capable Of"
The spirit of Armstrong is alive to-
day in Hampton and Tuskegee, the
Chief Justice asserted. pointing to the
fact that Booker T. Washington, the
greatest alumnus of Hampton, had
founded Tuskegee Institute, the sister
school of Hampton, and that at all
times, and during his greatest trials
and difficulties, he kept before him
the example of his great leader. The
strongest evidence of the persistence
of the spirit of Armstrong, he con-
tended as well as of the genius Of
Booker Washington, is to be found
in the transfer of the same atmos-
phere in which Hampton was born
to her daughter. Tuskegee.
'The product of the two institu-
tions," Chief Justice Taft continued,
rs chiefly in teachers, teachers of
practical agriculture, teachers of
dairying, teachers Of the country
trades, carpentry, hlackSmithlnG,
bricklaying. tailoring. teachers of
home Industries, teachers of cooking
and housekeeping, teachers of clean
illness, teachers in sanitation, teachers
in useful architecture, teachers in
municipal reforms in small commun-
tiles, teachers in real happiness. The
teaching profession is the noblest of
them all. 1t is natural. therefore,
that in the regeneration of a race, the
light must be spread through that
profession.
1--WE have ten millions Of negroes
in the United States. We wish them
to enjoy to the full the pursuit of hap
pinesS intended to be secured by the
guarantees of the Constitution. They
have their rights on paper, but those
rights are not always preserved. They
are formulated anddeclared, and grad
ually improvement is being made in
their maintenance. But it was Il
doctrine of Armstrong;, and greatly
enforced and preached by Booker
Washington, that the negro could best
help to maintain his own rights by
proving to the community his useful
ness as a citizen and his economic
power and force and his growth in
moral strength and restraint. 1t is
the instilling of these truths in the
negro race that is ultimately to Sc
cure the members of that race the
full enjoyment of their constitutional
rights.
Hampton was the first place in
which these lessons were taught. Now
that Tuskegee is working with Hamp-
ton, these two represent the greatest
single educational force throughout
this Union working toward a salts
factory solution of this race problem.
THAT is the reason why we as
Americans should rejoice in the noble
generosity of those who are now con
tributing by their energy and their
money to raise the great joint endo,y-
ment fund of $4,000, 900 for these +so
institutions"