Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 110
Uncle Harry finally decided that he must have a real house. Accordingly he
came to his employer, told him his feeling in the matter, and laid before him his
meagre savings, which he had determined to spend for a real house. Mr.
Washington went with him to select the lot and added enough out of his own
pocket to the scant savings to enable the old man to buy a cow and a pig and a
garden plot as well as the house. From then on for weeks he and old Uncle
Harry would have long and mysterious conferences over the planning of that
little four-room cottage. It is doubtful if Dr. Washington ever devoted more time
or thought to planning any of the great buildings of the Institute. No potentate
was ever half as
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proud of his palace as Uncle Harry of his four-room cottage when it was finally
finished and painted and stood forth in all its glory to be admired of all men.
And Booker Washington was scarcely less proud of it than Uncle Harry.
With Uncle Harry Varner, Old Man Brannum, the original cook of the school to
whom reference has already been made, and Lewis Adams of the town of
Tuskegee, whom Mr. Washington mentions in "Up from Slavery" as one of his
chief advisers, all unlettered-before-the-war Negroes, his relationship was
always particularly intimate. These three old men enjoyed the confidence of the
white people of the town of Tuskegee to an unusual extent and often acted as
ambassadors of good-will between the head of the school and his white
neighbors when from time to time the latter showed a disposition to look
askance at the rapidly growing institution on the hill beyond the town.
Another intimate friend of Mr. Washington's was Charles L. Diggs, known
affectionately on the school grounds as "Old Man Diggs." The old man had
been body servant to a Union officer in the Civil War and after the war had been
carried to Boston, where he became the butler in a fashionable Back Bay family.
When Mr. Washington first visited Boston, as an humble and obscure young
Negro school teacher pleading for his struggling school, he met Diggs, and
Diggs succeeded in interesting his employers in the sincere and earnest young
Negro teacher. When years afterward the Institute had grown
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to the dignity of needing stewards, Mr. Washington employed his old friend as
steward of the Teachers' Home. In all the years thereafter hardly a day passed
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