Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements

ett J.

young colored men and women for earning a living in the world of trade and business, tha

ed buildings and its equipment, and the many things on the grounds included in the name of handicrafts, is always in the public

of life and living. No one can remain long on the grounds as an intelligent observer of all that is to be here seen and felt, without recognizing tha

stitute are constantly looking beyond the present to a future filled with the evidences of a

tary effect. The stagnant life of centuries has awakened, and is casting off its bonds. A new term, "intelligent thrift," has come into its possession. Wherever this

ou?" and not, "What have you?" The man who does not rise superior to

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re more properly taught in the home, but in Tuskegee they mean everything. Tuskegee not only acts as a teacher, but assumes the r?le of parent, and lays emphasis on the importance of these virtues every moment of the time from the entrance of the student until Commencement Day. The "cleanliness that is next to godliness" is one of the Tuskegee ideals, and a stu

entleman before he can be recognized as such by others, and a girl's good manners are only outward evidences of her individual worth and passport to respectfu

ious training. The teaching force is made up largely of graduates from nearly every first-class educational institution in America. These teachers have been carefully sought out and brought to Tuskegee, not only for their teaching ability, but that the students may have the benefit of the best examples before them of what the highest culture can do for men and women of their own race. For the majority of our students the perspective of life is narrow: many of them have never lived ou

n contact with teachers whose minds, hearts, and lives have been enlarged and graced by the highest learning in the best educational institutions of the country. The school teach

-making, millinery, or any other trade, and quite as important. This may be called sentiment, but it makes for race deve

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the Tuskegee Institute by insisting that this institution must have nothing less than the best within and without it, everywhere. What is not best is only temporary. Those who have done most for the school have been made to feel that

g about the exterior and interior that must awaken a sense of pride in every pupil who enters its portals. Its facilities are sensible and unostentatious, yet they meet every requirement of the department. What is true of the new Academic Building is likewise true of the various dormitories for girls and boys. The cleanliness and the sanitation to be found at Tuskegee are in delightful contrast to the poor environment to which many of the students have

life; how faithful performance of every duty means nobility of character; how the value of achievement is determined by the motive behind it. But

lopment. The problem that the Tuskegee Institute is helping to solve is not only that the colored people shall do their proportionate share of the work, but that they shall do it in such a way that the benefits will remain with those who do the work. Who can measure

HUNTINGTON MEM

at make for such a condition of life in the heart of the South. So important is this aim and idea of Tuskegee, that it allows no criticism to affect, interfere, or obscure its vision. Tuskege

designed, first, last, and all the time, to transform and energize individuals into life-giving agencies for the uplift of their fellows. Principal Washington's whole educational

hat individual. But the highly educated person, the one who is really cultivated, is gentle and sympathetic to every one. Education is meant to make us absolutely honest in dealing with our fellows. I do not care how much arithmetic we have, or how many cities we can locate; it is all useless unless we have an education that makes us absolutely honest. Education is meant to make us give satisfaction, and to get satisfaction out of giving it. It is meant to make us get happiness out of service for our fellows. And until we get to the point where we can get happiness and supreme satisfaction out of helping our fellows, we are not truly educated.... Education is meant to make us appreciate the things that are beautiful in nature. A person is never educated until he is able to go into the swamps and woods and see something that is beautiful in the trees and shrubs there-is able to see something beautiful in the grass and flowers that surround him-is, in short, able to see something beautiful, elevating, and inspiring in everything that God has create

e, and nowhere more thoroughly reckoned as such than here, are only a means to an end: this is the gospel preached by the Tuskegee teacher. Life is the great, the eternal thing; t

lamp and gas-jet, as illuminators, have paled before the more brilliant white light of electricity, installed by Tuskegee students and operated by them.

, and an humble people to thrill with pride in itself and in its best men and women. Thus it is that Tuskegee Institute has never been satisfied with being merely a school, concerned wholly with its recitations and training in shop and field. Every student wh

gee graduates. The selected examples set forth in this book are evidence enough. It is sufficient to say that the Tuskegee Institute is determined to become more and more a distinctive influence among the regenerative agencies that are gradually bringing order out of chaos, and justice, peace, and happiness out of the wretched disorders of a painful past. It is easy to trace the inf

ing narrow and self-centered. Take from Tuskegee all this "vision splendid," and it will at once shrink into common-place insignificance. "Set your ideals high," says the distinguished man who here is Principal as he was f

than these, he has been incapable of perceiving and taking in the ideals that go with these accomplishments. He has been taugh

oided. Honor in one is as precious as in the other. Honor and efficiency-these, therefore, are the ideal test

world." Hope is strength and discouragement is weakness. Everything that is false and unjust and wrong is transitory. Those who are

independence without industry, and no power for

o Tuskegee; with them, as its very life and spirit and inspiration, Tuskegee shall lead into mor