Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 124
me a little garden. Den I sol' my neighbors greens an' onions, an' so I went
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on fum time to time 'til I dun paid for de lot an' de house in which I lib, an' I
keeps my pigs about me an' keeps my garden goin', an' dat's why I says all I is I
owes to dat little puppy dog an' to dis heah conference."
At these conferences the most elementary subjects are discussed. Booker
Washington would tell and have told to these farmers matters which one would
naturally assume any farmers, however ignorant, must already know. He never
tried to deceive himself as to the woful ignorance of the Negro masses, and still
he was never discouraged, but always said ignorance was not a hopeless
handicap because it could be overcome by education. While he frankly although
sadly acknowledged the lamentable ignorance of the rank and file of his race,
particularly those on the soil and dependent for education upon the short-term,
ill-equipped, and poorly taught rural Negro school, he as stoutly denied and
constantly disproved the assertion that these ignorant masses were not capable
of profiting by education. He earnestly strove and signally succeeded in
attracting to these great annual agricultural conferences the most pathetically
ignorant of the Negro farmers as well as the leading scientific agriculturists of
the race. But he always insisted that the meetings be conducted for the benefit of
the ignorant and not in the interests of the learned.
He would, for instance, tell the attendants at the conferences what to plant and
when to plant it, and what live stock to keep and how to keep it. He would have
printed and distributed among them a "Farmer's Calendar"
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which gave the months in which the various standard vegetables should be
planted and what crops should be used in rotation. He constantly insisted that
the Experiment Station at Tuskegee Institute, supported by the State of
Alabama, should not be used for scientific experiments of interest only to
experts, but should deal with the fundamental problems with which the Negro
farmers of Alabama were daily confronted. The titles of some of the Experiment
Station Bulletins selected at random suggest the homely and practical nature of
the information disseminated. Half a dozen of them read as follows:
"Possibilities of the Sweet Potato in Macon County, Alabama," "How to Grow
the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It for Human Consumption," "How to
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