Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. Emmett J. Scott
and religion. Finding no theology about Booker Washington or his school, they assumed there was no religion. Some of them even went so far as to warn their congregations from the pulpit to keep away from this Godless man and his Godless school. To this formidable and at first almost universal opposition from the leaders among his own people was added the more natural opposition of the neighboring white men who assumed that he was "spoiling the niggers" by education. A youth with a high collar, loud necktie, checked suit, and patent-leather shoes, dangling a cane, smoking a cigarette, and loitering impudently on a street corner was their mental picture of an educated Negro.
Among the original group of thirty students with whom Mr. Washington started Tuskegee Institute on an old plantation equipped with a kitchen, a stable, and a hen-house, was a now elderly man who to-day has charge of the spacious and beautiful grounds of the Institute. He was approaching middle age when he entered this original Tuskegee class. The following is a paraphrase of his account of the early days of the school: "After we'd been out on the plantation three or four weeks Mr. Washington came into the schoolroom and said: 'To-morrow we're going to have a chopping bee. All of you that have an axe, or can borrow one, must bring it. I will try and provide those of you who cannot furnish an axe. We will dismiss school early to-morrow afternoon and start for the chopping bee.' So we came to school next day with the axes, all of us that could get them; we were all excited and eager for that chopping bee, and we were all discussing what it would be like, because we had never been to one before. So in the afternoon Mr. Washington said it was time for that chopping bee, so he put his axe over his shoulder and led us to the woods and put us to work cutting the trees and clearing the land. He went right in and worked harder and faster and handled his axe better than any of us. After a while we found that a chopping bee, as he called it, was no different from just plain cutting down trees and clearing the land. There wasn't anything new about that—we all had had all we wanted of it. Some of the boys said they didn't come to school to cut down trees and clear land, but they couldn't say they were too good for that kind of work when Mr. Washington himself was at it harder than any of them. So he kept with us for some days till everybody had his idea. Then he went off to do something more important.
"Now, in those days he used to go off every Saturday morning and he wouldn't come back till Monday morning. He'd travel all round the country drumming up students for the school and telling the people to send their children. And on Sunday he'd get the preachers to let him get up in their pulpits and tell the people about the school after they had finished preaching. And the preachers would warn their people against him and his school, because they said it wasn't Methodist, and it wasn't Baptist, and it wasn't Presbyterian, and it wasn't Episcopalian, and it wasn't Christian. And they told the people to keep their children away from that Godless man and his school. But when he came along and asked to speak to the people they had to leave him, just as everybody always did—let him do just what he wanted to do. And when they heard him, the people, they didn't pay no attention to the preachers, they just sent their children as fast as ever they could contrive it.
"Now, in those days Mr. Washington didn't have a horse, nor a mule, nor a wagon, and he wanted to cover more country on those trips than he could afoot, so he'd just go out in the middle of the road and when some old black man would come along driving his mule wagon he'd stop him and talk with him, and tell him about the school and what it was going to do for the black folks, and then he'd say: 'Now, Uncle, you can help by bringing your wagon and mule round at nine o'clock Saturday morning for me to go off round the country telling the people about the school. Now, remember, Uncle Jake, please be here promptly at nine,' and the old man would say, 'Yes, boss, I sure will be here!' That was how he did it—when he needed anything he'd go out and put his hand on it. First, he could put his hand on anything he wanted round the town; then, he could put his hand on anything he wanted all over the county; then he could put his hand on anything he wanted all over the State; and then finally they do tell me he could put his hand on anything he wanted away up to New York.
"In those days, after we came to live here on the 'plantation,' I used to take the wheelbarrow and go round to the office when Mr. Washington opened up the mail in the morning, and if there was money in the mail then I could go along to the town with the wheelbarrow and get provisions, and if there was no money then there was no occasion to go to town, and we'd just eat what we had left. Most of the white storekeepers wouldn't give us credit, and they didn't want a 'nigger school' here anyhow. Times have changed. Now those storekeepers get a large proportion of their trade here at the Institute, and if there should be any talk of moving, they'd just get up and fight to the last to keep us here and keep our trade.
"And in those days the Negro preachers, or the most of them, and the white folks, or the most of them, were always trying to dispute with Mr. Washington and quarrel with him, but he just kept his mouth shut and went ahead. He kept pleasant and he wouldn't dispute with them, nor argue with them, nor quarrel with them. When the white folks would come round and tell him he was 'spoiling good niggers by education,' he would just ask them to wait patiently and give him time to show them what the right kind of education would do. And when the colored preachers would come round and tell him he was no Christian, and his school had no religion, he would ask them to just wait and see if the boys and girls were any less Christian because of the education they were getting. But whoever came along and whatever happened Mr. Washington just kept his mouth shut and went ahead.
"After two years of school I went out and rented some land and planted cotton, and just about time to harvest my crop Mr. Washington sent for me one Saturday and said: 'I need you. I want you to come back and work for the school on the farm. I want you to start in Monday morning.' When I told him about my cotton crop just ready to be picked he said: 'Can't help that, we need you. You'll have to arrange with your neighbors to harvest your crop for you.'"
To the inquiry, "Well, did you come?" the old man replied, "Of course I did. When Mr. Washington said come I came same as everybody did what he told them. I got a neighbor to harvest my crop and I lost money on it, but I came to work that Monday morning more than thirty years ago, and I've been here ever since."
The idea of not doing what Mr. Washington wanted him to do, or even arguing the matter, was evidently inconceivable to this old man. He had always obeyed Mr. Washington just as he had obeyed the laws of nature by sleeping and eating. That is the kind of control which Booker Washington always exercised over his fellow-workers. He accepted their implicit obedience as naturally and simply as they gave it.
As Mr. Page also points out in the introduction to "Up from Slavery," however humble Mr. Washington's origin may have been, what might be termed his intellectual pedigree was of the highest and finest. He may be called, in fact, the spiritual grandson of the great Dr. Mark Hopkins of Williams College. Just as Samuel Armstrong was perhaps the most receptive of Mark Hopkins' pupils, so Booker Washington became the most receptive pupil of Samuel Armstrong. As says Mr. Page: "To the formation of Mr. Washington's character, then, went the missionary zeal of New England, influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern education, and the wide-reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong himself." In his autobiography Mr. Washington thus describes General Armstrong's influence and the impression he made upon him: "It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great characters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of General Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave plantation and the coal mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be permitted to come into direct contact with such a character as General Armstrong. I shall always remember that the first time I went into his presence he made the impression upon me of being a perfect man; I was made to feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. It was my privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered Hampton till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in my estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, classrooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and that alone would have been a liberal education. (This recalls President Garfield's definition of a university when he said, 'my idea of a university is a log with Mark Hopkins on one end and a boy on the other.') The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great