Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 135
fighting the fly, and child welfare.
"The home economics teacher attracted the attention of all the colored farmers
and also the white visitors by
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constructing out of dry goods boxes an attractive and substantial dresser and
washstand, completing the same before the audience, even to the staining,
varnishing, hanging the mirrors and attaching the draperies." One paper, in
estimating the value of these Movable Agricultural Schools said: "Given ten
years of good practical agricultural instruction of the kind that was imparted to
the Negro farmers, their wives and children, for the past three weeks in Wilcox,
Perry, and Lowndes counties, there is no reason why every Negro farmer in the
State should not only help 'Alabama feed herself,' but so increase the yield of its
marketable products that the State will be able to export millions of dollars'
worth of food and foodstuffs each year."
These Extension Schools are advertised by posters just like a country circus,
except that the language is less grandiloquent. On the following page is a typical
announcement presented in heavy black type on yellow paper.
Thus did Booker Washington in the very year of his death, with the aid of the
National Government, launch the last of his many means for helping the people
whose welfare lay ever nearest his heart--the Negro farmers. These Extension
Schools are literally "going out 'into the by-ways and hedges' " carrying to those
who most need it Booker Washington's gospel of better farming.
One of the great secrets of Mr. Washington's success was his unerring instinct
for putting first things first. In nothing that he did was this trait better illustrated
than in the unceasing emphasis which he placed upon the
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24.03.2006