Started In With "Enthusiasm"

1900

In an interview, Booker T. Washington tells the story of some of his early experiences at Tuskegee.

"After teaching in the ordinary way awhile, the impression began to grow upon me that I was largely throwing away my time, trying to give these students a book education without getting hold of them in their home life, and without teaching them how to care for their bodies, and inculcating in them habits of neatness, order and industry. Here it was that I conceived the idea of such a work as has followed."

"Had you any capital to start such a school with?"

"I had unbounded enthusiasm. I began looking around to see if I could get hold of some land. I found a farm near Tuskegee, that I thought would answer the purpose, but I couldn't buy real estate with enthusiasm, and I hadn't a cent of money. But my boldness led me to write to Gen. Marshall, the treasurer of Hampton, and ask him to loan me $500 to make a payment on that farm; and to my unbounded surprise he sent me a cheek for what I asked, and I wasn't long in getting the school moved."

"How have you since managed to get all your buildings and the other thousands of acres of land?"

"It's a long story. I'll tell you how we got our first building, though. We pitched in and built it ourselves — yes, sir; people scoffed, but we even made our own bricks. The point at which we stuck was the burning of the bricks — none of us knew how to fire a kiln. We had no money to hire labor, but we had to have those bricks, and I owned a gold watch which I took to the pawnshop and got enough money to employ an experienced brick maker to burn the bricks."

"That was a heroic measure, sure. No doubt you cherished that watch as — "

"I have never got that watch out of pawn yet, but we are now manufacturing a million bricks a year. That was a pretty poor sort of building, but we builded self-respect and manhood into it, and when white people saw what we could do, we won their respect. Now we can put up a building that no one need be ashamed of. In our last building the steam heating apparatus and the electric light fixtures were put in by our own steamfitters and electricians. The plans were by an architect from our own school."

—The Ram's Horn, March 17, 1900, p. 14.