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 suitable 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 stimulated.

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, 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 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.