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 labor, 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 labor, but beauty and dignity, would be
taught, in fact, how to lift labor 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 labor.
At first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings erected
by the labor 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
the 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 labor 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 labor. 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 lead-pencil marks or by the cuts of a
jackknife, 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 brick making. 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 brick making, their distaste for
manual labor 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 brick making 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
molded 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 any 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 this 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 brick making 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.
Brick making 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 suitable to be sold in any market. Aside from this,
scores of young men have mastered the brick making 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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood 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 brick makers 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 stimulated.
My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes
an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what color 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 his 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 that 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
labor 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 an
attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that I would never get more than
enough to pay my traveling 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 colored 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 colored 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 colored 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, without 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 to 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, by 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 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 that 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.