One of the most fundamental and far-reaching deeds that has been
accomplished during the last quarter of a century has been that by which
the Negro has been helped to find himself and to learn the secrets of
civilization - to learn that there are a few simple, cardinal principles
upon which a race must start its upward course, unless it would fail,
and its last estate be worse than its first.
It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference
between being worked and working - to learn that being worked meant
degradation, while working means civilization; that all forms of labor
are honorable, and all forms of idleness disgraceful. It has been
necessary for him to learn that all races that have got upon their feet
have done so largely by laying an economic foundation, and, in general,
by beginning in a proper cultivation and ownership of the soil.
Forty years ago my race emerged from slavery into freedom. If, in
too many cases, the Negro race began development at the wrong end, it
was largely because neither white nor black properly understood the
case. Nor is it any wonder that this was so, for never before in the
history of the world had just such a problem been presented as that of
the two races at the coming of freedom in this country.
For two hundred and fifty years, I believe the way for the
redemption of the Negro was being prepared through industrial
development. Through all those years the Southern white man did business
with the Negro in a way that no one else has done business with him. In
most cases if a Southern white man wanted a house built he consulted a
Negro mechanic about the plan and about the actual building of the
structure. If he wanted a suit of clothes made he went to a Negro
tailor, and for shoes he went to a shoemaker of the same race. In a
certain way every slave plantation in the South was an industrial
school. On these plantations young colored men and women were constantly
being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters, blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, sewing women
and housekeepers.
I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery,
which was a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial
training in slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude,
and was given for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends,
because there was an absence of mental training in connection with the
training of the hand. To a large degree, though, this business contact
with the Southern white man, and the industrial training on the
plantations, left the Negro at the close of the war in possession of
nearly all the common and skilled labor in the South. The industries
that gave the South its power, prominence and wealth prior to the Civil
War were mainly the raising of cotton, sugar cane, rice and tobacco.
Before the way could be prepared for the proper growing and marketing of
these crops forests had to be cleared, houses to be built, public roads
and railroads constructed. In all these works the Negro did most of the
heavy work. In the planting, cultivating and marketing of the crops not
only was the Negro the chief dependence, but in the manufacture of
tobacco he became a skilled and proficient workman, and in this, up to
the present time, in the South, holds the lead in the large tobacco
manufactories.
In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly
twenty years after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the
industrial training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men
and women were educated in literature, in mathematics and in the
sciences, with little thought of what had been taking place during the
preceding two hundred and fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to
be escaped, to be got as far away from as possible. As a generation
began to pass, those who had been trained as mechanics in slavery began
to disappear by death, and gradually it began to be realized that there
were few to take their places. There were young men educated in foreign
tongues, but few in carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing.
Many were trained in Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too
many were taken from the farm and educated, but educated in everything
but farming. For this reason they had no interest in farming and did not
return to it. And yet eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of
the Southern states lives and for a considerable time will continue to
live in the country districts. The charge is often brought against the
members of my race - and too often justly, I confess - that they are
found leaving the country districts and flocking into the great cities
where temptations are more frequent and harder to resist, and where the
Negro people too often become demoralized. Think, though, how frequently
it is the case that from the first day that a pupil begins to go to
school his books teach him much about the cities of the world and city
life, and almost nothing about the country. How natural it is, then,
that when he has the ordering of his life he wants to live it in the
city.
Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C. P. Huntington,
to whose memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow
to the Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public
address some words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them
here:
"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my
opinion, they teach very few children just what they ought to know in
order to make their way successfully in life. They do not put into their
hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so many failures.
Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty
food, in order to give a son and brother a 'liberal education,' and in
doing this have built up a barrier between the boy and the work he was
fitted to do. Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work.
If the labor is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more
chance to be thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and
brings better pay, and to work out in your minds better and higher
duties and responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by
which you can help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to
your own higher level."
Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our
training at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was
almost impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man
who could teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them
who could teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost none
who could instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be
used by every one of us every day in the year. How often have I been
discouraged as I have gone through the South, and into the homes of the
people of my race, and have found women who could converse intelligently
upon abstruse subjects, and yet could not tell how to improve the
condition of the poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and
meat which they and their families were eating three times a day. It is
discouraging to find a girl who can tell you the geographical location
of any country on the globe and who does not know where to place the
dishes upon a common dinner table. It is discouraging to find a woman
who knows much about theoretical chemistry, and who cannot properly wash
and iron a shirt.
In what I say here I would not by any means have it understood
that I would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro
student. No race can be lifted until its mind is awakened and
strengthened. By the side of industrial training should always go mental
and moral training, but the pushing of mere abstract knowledge into the
head means little. We want more than the mere performance of mental
gymnastics. Our knowledge must be harnessed to the things of real life.
I would encourage the Negro to secure all the mental strength, all the
mental culture - whether gleaned from science, mathematics, history,
language or literature that his circumstances will allow, but I believe
most earnestly that for years to come the education of the people of my
race should be so directed that the greatest proportion of the mental
strength of the masses will be brought to bear upon the every-day
practical things of life, upon something that is needed to be done, and
something which they will be permitted to do in the community in which
they reside. And just the same with the professional class which the
race needs and must have, I would say give the men and women of that
class, too, the training which will best fit them to perform in the most
successful manner the service which the race demands.
I would not confine the race to industrial life, not even to
agriculture, for example, although I believe that by far the greater
part of the Negro race is best off in the country districts and must and
should continue to live there, but I would teach the race that in
industry the foundation must be laid - that the very best service which
any one can render to what is called the higher education is to teach
the present generation to provide a material or industrial foundation.
On such a foundation as this will grow habits of thrift, a love of work,
economy, ownership of property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future
will grow practical education, professional education, positions of
public responsibility. Out of it will grow moral and religious strength.
Out of it will grow wealth from which alone can come leisure and the
opportunity for the enjoyment of literature and the fine arts.
In the words of the late beloved Frederick Douglass: "Every blow
of the sledge hammer wielded by a sable arm is a powerful blow in
support of our cause. Every colored mechanic is by virtue of
circumstances an elevator of his race. Every house built by a black man
is a strong tower against the allied hosts of prejudice. It is
impossible for us to attach too much importance to this aspect of the
subject. Without industrial development there can be no wealth; without
wealth there can be no leisure; without leisure no opportunity for
thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of the higher arts."
I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in
letters or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those
ends is by laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie
immediately about one's door. I plead for industrial education and
development for the Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I
want to free him. I want to see him enter the all-powerful business and
commercial world.
It was such combined mental, moral and industrial education which
the late General Armstrong set out to give at the Hampton Institute when
he established that school thirty years ago. The Hampton Institute has
continued along the lines laid down by its great founder, and now each
year an increasing number of similar schools are being established in
the South, for the people of both races.
Early in the history of the Tuskegee Institute we began to
combine industrial training with mental and moral culture. Our first
efforts were in the direction of agriculture, and we began teaching this
with no appliances except one hoe and a blind mule. From this small
beginning we have grown until now the Institute owns two thousand acres
of land, eight hundred of which are cultivated each year by the young
men of the school. We began teaching wheelwrighting and blacksmithing in
a small way to the men, and laundry work, cooking and sewing and
housekeeping to the young women. The fourteen hundred and over young men
and women who attended the school during the last school year received
instruction - in addition to academic and religious training - in
thirty-three trades and industries, including carpentry, blacksmithing,
printing, wheelwrighting, harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding,
shoemaking, brickmasonry and brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling,
tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical and architectural drawing, electrical
and steam engineering, canning, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking,
laundering, housekeeping, mattress making, basketry, nursing,
agriculture, dairying and stock raising, horticulture.
Not only do the students receive instruction in these trades, but
they do actual work, by means of which more than half of them pay some
part or all of their expenses while remaining at the school. Of the
sixty buildings belonging to the school all but four were almost wholly
erected by the students as a part of their industrial education. Even
the bricks which go into the walls are made by students in the school's
brick yard, in which, last year, they manufactured two million bricks.
When we first began this work at Tuskegee, and the idea got
spread among the people of my race that the students who came to the
Tuskegee school were to be taught industries in connection with their
academic studies, were, in other words, to be taught to work, I received
a great many verbal messages and letters from parents informing me that
they wanted their children taught books, but not how to work. This
protest went on for three or four years, but I am glad to be able to say
now that our people have very generally been educated to a point where
they see their own needs and conditions so clearly that it has been
several years since we have had a single protest from parents against
the teaching of industries, and there is now a positive enthusiasm for
it. In fact, public sentiment among the students at Tuskegee is now so
strong for industrial training that it would hardly permit a student to
remain on the grounds who was unwilling to labor.
It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the
Negro young man or woman in a weak position. For example, I have seen a
Negro girl taught by her mother to help her in doing laundry work at
home. Later, when this same girl was graduated from the public schools
or a high school and returned home she finds herself educated out of
sympathy with laundry work, and yet not able to find anything to do
which seems in keeping with the cost and character of her education.
Under these circumstances we cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill
the expectations made for her. What should have been done for her, it
seems to me, was to give her along with her academic education thorough
training in the latest and best methods of laundry work, so that she
could have put so much skill and intelligence into it that the work
would have been lifted out from the plane of drudgery. The home which
she would then have been able to found by the results of her work would
have enabled her to help her children to take a still more responsible
position in life.
Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind - and this I
think should be the policy of all industrial schools - fitting students
for occupations which would be open to them in their home communities.
Some years ago we noted the fact that there was beginning to be a demand
in the South for men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We
opened a dairy department in connection with the school, where a number
of young men could have instruction in the latest and most scientific
methods of dairy work. At present we have calls - mainly from Southern
white men - for twice as many dairymen as we are able to supply. What is
equally satisfactory, the reports which come to us indicate that our
young men are giving the highest satisfaction and are fast changing and
improving the dairy product in the communities into which they go. I use
the dairy here as an example. What I have said of this is equally true
of many of the other industries which we teach. Aside from the economic
value of this work I cannot but believe, and my observation confirms me
in my belief, that as we continue to place Negro men and women of
intelligence, religion, modesty, conscience and skill in every community
in the South, who will prove by actual results their value to the
community, I cannot but believe, I say, that this will constitute a
solution to many of the present political and social difficulties.
Many seem to think that industrial education is meant to make the
Negro work as he worked in the days of slavery. This is far from my
conception of industrial education. If this training is worth anything
to the Negro, it consists in teaching him how not to work, but how to
make the forces of nature - air, steam, water, horse-power and
electricity - work for him. If it has any value it is in lifting labor
up out of toil and drudgery into the plane of the dignified and the
beautiful. The Negro in the South works and works hard; but too often
his ignorance and lack of skill causes him to do his work in the most
costly and shiftless manner, and this keeps him near the bottom of the
ladder in the economic world.
I have not emphasized particularly in these pages the great need
of training the Negro in agriculture, but I believe that this branch of
industrial education does need very great emphasis. In this connection I
want to quote some words which Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Montgomery,
Alabama, has recently written upon this subject:
"We must incorporate into our public school system a larger
recognition of the practical and industrial elements in educational
training. Ours is an agricultural population. The school must be brought
more closely to the soil. The teaching of history, for example, is all
very well, but nobody can really know anything of history unless he has
been taught to see things grow - has so seen things not only with the
outward eye, but with the eyes of his intelligence and conscience. The
actual things of the present are more important, however, than the
institutions of the past. Even to young children can be shown the
simpler conditions and processes of growth - how corn is put into the
ground - how cotton and potatoes should be planted - how to choose the
soil best adapted to a particular plant, how to improve that soil, how
to care for the plant while it grows, how to get the most value out of
it, how to use the elements of waste for the fertilization of other
crops; how, through the alternation of crops, the land may be made to
increase the annual value of its products - these things, upon their
elementary side are absolutely vital to the worth and success of
hundreds of thousands of these people of the Negro race, and yet our
whole educational system has practically ignored them.
"Such work will mean not only an education in agriculture, but an
education through agriculture and education, through natural symbols and
practical forms, which will educate as deeply, as broadly and as truly
as any other system which the world has known. Such changes will bring
far larger results than the mere improvement of our Negroes. They will
give us an agricultural class, a class of tenants or small land owners,
trained not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and in
intelligent dependence upon its resources."
I close, then, as I began, by saying that as a slave the Negro
was worked, and that as a freeman he must learn to work. There is still
doubt in many quarters as to the ability of the Negro unguided,
unsupported, to hew his own path and put into visible, tangible,
indisputable form, products and signs of civilization. This doubt cannot
be much affected by abstract arguments, no matter how delicately and
convincingly woven together. Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently,
through summer and winter, sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by
foresight, by honesty and industry, we must re-enforce argument with
results. One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and
intelligently kept, one man who is the largest tax payer or has the
largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory
running successfully, one truck garden profitably cultivated, one
patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well preached, one office
well filled, one life cleanly lived - these will tell more in our favor
than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause.
Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through swamps, up through
forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through commerce,
education and religion!
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