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Chapter X. A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw
From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have
the students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but
to have them erect their own buildings. My plan was to have them,
while performing this service, taught the latest and best methods
of labour, so that the school would not only get the benefit of
their efforts, but the students themselves would be taught to see
not only utility in labour, but beauty and dignity; would be
taught, in fact, how to lift labour up from mere drudgery and
toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake. My plan was
not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to
make the forces of nature--air, water, steam, electricity,
horse-power--assist them in their labour.
At first many advised against the experiment of having the
buildings erected by the labour of the students, but I was
determined to stick to it. I told those who doubted the wisdom of
the plan that I knew that our first buildings would not be so
comfortable or so complete in their finish as buildings erected
by the experienced hands of outside workmen, but that in the
teaching of civilization, self-help, and self-reliance, the
erection of buildings by the students themselves would more than
compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish.
I further told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan, that
the majority of our students came to us in poverty, from the
cabins of the cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the South,
and that while I knew it would please the students very much to
place them at once in finely constructed buildings, I felt that
it would be following out a more natural process of development
to teach them how to construct their own buildings. Mistakes I
knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach us valuable
lessons for the future.
During the now nineteen years' existence of the Tuskegee school,
the plan of having the buildings erected by student labour has
been adhered to. In this time forty buildings, counting small and
large, have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the
product of student labour. As an additional result, hundreds of
men are now scattered throughout the South who received their
knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these
buildings. Skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set
of students to another in this way, until at the present time a
building of any description or size can be constructed wholly by
our instructors and students, from the drawing of the plans to
the putting in of the electric fixtures, without going off the
grounds for a single workman.
Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the
temptation of marring the looks of some building by leadpencil
marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student
remind him: "Don't do that. That is our building. I helped put it
up."
In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience
was in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work
reasonably well started, we directed our next efforts toward the
industry of making bricks. We needed these for use in connection
with the erection of our own buildings; but there was also
another reason for establishing this industry. There was no
brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was
a demand for bricks in the general market.
I had always sympathized with the "Children of Israel," in their
task of "making bricks without straw," but ours was the task of
making bricks with no money and no experience.
In the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was
difficult to get the students to help. When it came to
brickmaking, their distaste for manual labour in connection with
book education became especially manifest. It was not a pleasant
task for one to stand in the mud-pit for hours, with the mud up
to his knees. More than one man became disgusted and left the
school.
We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that
furnished brick clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was
very simple, but I soon found out by bitter experience that it
required special skill and knowledge, particularly in the burning
of the bricks. After a good deal of effort we moulded about
twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a kiln to be
burned. This kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was not
properly constructed or properly burned. We began at once,
however, on a second kiln. This, for some reason, also proved a
failure. The failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to
get the students to take part in the work. Several of the
teachers, however, who had been trained in the industries at
Hampton, volunteered their services, and in some way we succeeded
in getting a third kiln ready for burning. The burning of a kiln
required about a week. Toward the latter part of the week, when
it seemed as if we were going to have a good many thousand bricks
in a few hours, in the middle of the night the kiln fell. For the
third time we had failed.
The failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar
with which to make another experiment. Most of the teachers
advised the abandoning of the effort to make bricks. In the midst
of my troubles I thought of a watch which had come into my
possession years before. I took the watch to the city of
Montgomery, which was not far distant, and placed it in a
pawn-shop. I secured cash upon it to the amount of fifteen
dollars, with which to renew the brickmaking experiment. I
returned to Tuskegee, and, with the help of the fifteen dollars,
rallied our rather demoralized and discouraged forces and began a
fourth attempt to make bricks. This time, I am glad to say, we
were successful. Before I got hold of any money, the time-limit
on my watch had expired, and I have never seen it since; but I
have never regretted the loss of it.
Brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the
school that last season our students manufactured twelve hundred
thousand of first-class bricks, of a quality stable to be sold in
any market. Aside from this, scores of young men have mastered
the brickmaking trade--both the making of bricks by hand and by
machinery--and are now engaged in this industry in many parts of
the South.
The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in
regard to the relations of the two races in the South. Many white
people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no
sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out
that ours were good bricks. They discovered that we were
supplying a real want in the community. The making of these
bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to
begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him
worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding
something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the
people of the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got
acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them. Our
business interests became intermingled. We had something which
they wanted; they had something which we wanted. This, in a large
measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant relations
that have continued to exist between us and the white people in
that section, and which now extend throughout the South.
Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find
that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the
community into which he has gone; something that has made the
community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to him, and
perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him. In this way
pleasant relations between the races have been simulated.
My experience is that there is something in human nature which
always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter
under what colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that
it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in
softening prejudices. The actual sight of a first-class house
that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of
discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could
build.
The same principle of industrial education has been carried out
in the building of our own wagons, carts, and buggies, from the
first. We now own and use on our farm and about the school dozens
of these vehicles, and every one of them has been built by the
hands of the students. Aside from this, we help supply the local
market with these vehicles. The supplying of them to the people
in the community has had the same effect as the supplying of
bricks, and the man who learns at Tuskegee to build and repair
wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in the
community where he goes. The people with whom he lives and works
are going to think twice before they part with such a man.
The individual who can do something that the world wants done
will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go
into a community prepared to supply the people there with an
analysis of Greek sentences. The community may not at the time be
prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may
feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. If the man can
supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a
demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the
ability to appreciate it and to profit by it.
About the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of
bricks we began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the
students to being taught to work. By this time it had gotten to
be pretty well advertised throughout the state that every student
who came to Tuskegee, no matter what his financial ability might
be, must learn some industry. Quite a number of letters came from
parents protesting against their children engaging in labour
while they were in the school. Other parents came to the school
to protest in person. Most of the new students brought a written
or a verbal request from their parents to the effect that they
wanted their children taught nothing but books. The more books,
the larger they were, and the longer the titles printed upon
them, the better pleased the students and their parents seemed to
be.
I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no
opportunity to go into as many parts of the state as I could, for
the purpose of speaking to the parents, and showing them the
value of industrial education. Besides, I talked to the students
constantly on the subject. Notwithstanding the unpopularity of
industrial work, the school continued to increase in numbers to
such an extent that by the middle of the second year there was an
attendance of about one hundred and fifty, representing almost
all parts of the state of Alabama, and including a few from other
states.
In the summer of 1882 Miss Davidson and I both went North and
engaged in the work of raising funds for the completion of our
new building. On my way North I stopped in New York to try to get
a letter of recommendation from an officer of a missionary
organization who had become somewhat acquainted with me a few
years previous. This man not only refused to give me the letter,
but advised me most earnestly to go back home at once, and not
make any attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that I would
never get more than enough to pay my travelling expenses. I
thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.
The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass.,
where I spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family
with whom I could board, never dreaming that any hotel would
admit me. I was greatly surprised when I found that I would have
no trouble in being accommodated at a hotel.
We were successful in getting money enough so that on
Thanksgiving Day of that year we held our first service in the
chapel of Porter Hall, although the building was not completed.
In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon,
I found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege
to know. This was the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from
Wisconsin, who was then pastor of a little coloured
Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala. Before going to
Montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon I had never
heard of Mr. Bedford. He had never heard of me. He gladly
consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the Thanksgiving service.
It was the first service of the kind that the coloured people
there had ever observed, and what a deep interest they manifested
in it! The sight of the new building made it a day of
Thanksgiving for them never to be forgotten.
Mr. Bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the
school, and in that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been
connected with it for eighteen years. During this time he has
borne the school upon his heart night and day, and is never so
happy as when he is performing some service, no matter how
humble, for it. He completely obliterates himself in everything,
and looks only for permission to serve where service is most
disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted. In all my
relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly to
the spirit of the Master as almost any man I ever met.
A little later there came into the service of the school another
man, quite young at the time, and fresh from Hampton, without
whose service the school never could have become what it is. This
was Mr. Warren Logan, who now for seventeen years has been the
treasurer of the Institute, and the acting principal during my
absence. He has always shown a degree of unselfishness and an
amount of business tact, coupled with a clear judgment, that has
kept the school in good condition no matter how long I have been
absent from it. During all the financial stress through which the
school has passed, his patience and faith in our ultimate success
have not left him.
As soon as our first building was near enough to completion so
that we could occupy a portion of it--which was near the middle
of the second year of the school--we opened a boarding
department. Students had begun coming from quite a distance, and
in such increasing numbers that we felt more and more that we
were merely skimming over the surface, in that we were not
getting hold of the students in their home life.
We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to
begin a boarding department. No provision had been made in the
new building for a kitchen and dining room; but we discovered
that by digging out a large amount of earth from under the
building we could make a partially lighted basement room that
could be used for a kitchen and dining room. Again I called on
the students to volunteer for work, this time to assist in
digging out the basement. This they did, and in a few weeks we
had a place to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and
uncomfortable. Any one seeing the place now would never believe
that it was once used for a dining room.
The most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding
department started off in running order, with nothing to do with
in the way of furniture, and with no money with which to buy
anything. The merchants in the town would let us have what food
we wanted on credit. In fact, in those earlier years I was
constantly embarrassed because people seemed to have more faith
in me than I had in myself. It was pretty hard to cook, however,
with stoves, and awkward to eat without dishes. At first the
cooking was done out-of-doors, in the old-fashioned, primitive
style, in pots and skillets placed over a fire. Some of the
carpenters' benches that had been used in the construction of the
building were utilized for tables. As for dishes, there were too
few to make it worth while to spend time in describing them.
No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any
idea that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular
hours, and this was a source of great worry. Everything was so
out of joint and so inconvenient that I feel safe in saying that
for the first two weeks something was wrong at every meal. Either
the meat was not done or had been burnt, or the salt had been
left out of the bread, or the tea had been forgotten.
Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door
listening to the complaints of the students. The complaints that
morning were especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole
breakfast had been a failure. One of the girls who had failed to
get any breakfast came out and went to the well to draw some
water to drink and take the place of the breakfast which she had
not been able to get. When she reached the well, she found that
the rope was broken and that she could get no water. She turned
from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone, not knowing
that I was where I could hear her, "We can't even get water to
drink at this school." I think no one remark ever came so near
discouraging me as that one.
At another time, when Mr. Bedford--whom I have already spoken of
as one of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the
institution--was visiting the school, he was given a bedroom
immediately over the dining room. Early in the morning he was
awakened by a rather animated discussion between two boys in the
dining room below. The discussion was over the question as to
whose turn it was to use the coffee-cup that morning. One boy won
the case by proving that for three mornings he had not had an
opportunity to use the cup at all.
But gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out
of chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it
with patience and wisdom and earnest effort.
As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad to
see that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those
discomforts and inconveniences. I am glad that our students had
to dig out the place for their kitchen and dining room. I am glad
that our first boarding-place was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and
damp basement. Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient
room, I fear we would have "lost our heads" and become "stuck
up." It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation
which one has made for one's self.
When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do,
and go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and
well-lighted dining room, and see tempting, well-cooked
food--largely grown by the students themselves--and see tables,
neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of flowers upon the
tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served
exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no
complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room,
they, too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as
we did, and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and
natural process of growth.
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